Hello fellow OWH's. I've been heating with wood for over 35 years, having designed and built many plate steel wood stoves over my career, but never a wood boiler. In 2008 I bought into the Shaver hype about their OWB boilers. We ordered one in July of 2008, but by December 2008..no boiler, and given every excuse under sun why. Ben Shaver could write an encyclopedia of excuses, because we heard them all. I had purposely not rebuilt my oil fired boiler, since we were going to have the Shaver to heat the house. Or so we thought. After an all night online search we settled on Natures Comfort. We had no experience with them, but neither had we with Shaver, until they didn't deliver. I found a N/C dealer in PA & was given a very fair price for a NC250. We loaded up a trailer and drove to pick it up. 400 miles driving and one week later we had the 250 on the pad, and wired up. There is NO comparison to a Shaver. I am a nuclear certified weldor and fabricator. The welds on a Shaver look like something you'd find on a a high school shop project...pure crap! On the other hand my NC250 was the more professionally fabricated product that works flawlessly after 4 years of use.
I did file a complaint with the Arkansas State attorney Generals Office to get my deposit back. Which arrived a wekk after the letter from the ASAG office. Seems Shaver also has a hard time delivering your deposits back too.
Two words to remember for Shaver....Forget it!
Buy their junk at your own peril!
Remember, if it seems to good to be true..it probably is. In my case it absolutely was.
Shaver Hater