Outdoor Wood Furnace Info
Outdoor Furnaces - Manufacturers WITH EPA-Certified Models => HeatMaster => Topic started by: hondaracer2oo4 on February 18, 2017, 07:48:45 AM
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Out of curiosity I was wondering about the expierence the 10,000 mfe owners have on here with wood consumption, especially compared to another conventional if you owned one. I've got into a long discussion on one of the Facebook pages about the efficiency of his 10000. He went from an old cb boiler to the 10000 and thinks he may be using more wood. He has adjusted the flapper under the fan to only open less than 50% because this helped his old cb not burn as much wood. He also has his differential set to 5 degrees because "you burn way more wood with a large differential". I can't get him to even entertain using a 20 or 15 degree differential because he says at 160 water temp his forced hot air fan in the house runs twice as long. I am just trying to help this guy out since I know the mf should be much more effiecient than that old
Cb but he is trying to run it for what kept his wood use down on the cb. As far as th flap goes it says nothing in the manual about changing that from th factory setting. Does everyone else
Play with this setting?
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A 5 degree diff will definitely burn more wood, the unit short cycles too much to burn clean. A natural draft Classic will run a long time even with a 5 F diff. And the classic had no heat exchange area on the exhaust so it had to run choked down.
I've seen customers who switch from a flat bottom no grate unit to a grated unit sometimes have loading issues. They load the wood too tight on the grate or let ash build up and either way it chokes. Then it rolls thick smoke and the efficiency drops out the bottom.
I'd open up the draft to get a clean burn (that unit needs all the 1TDR3 fan can put out), 15 F diff, clean the grate off (if needed), load the wood so air can blow by the front and mix and burn off gasses. You'd be amazed how much difference some experimenting makes.
Just some thoughts.
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What I mean is every model has its nuances and you have to adjust.
Imagine running a G with no coals over the nozzle- etc.
A grated furnace compared to a nongrated natural draft unit is very different.
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Yoder, I have tried to impart some of those ideas on him and you made some great points from expierence. Is that one of your family members that runs that outdoor boiler page ( Lauren yoder)? Are you a part of it? You should try to help him out, he wants no part of my help.
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You always get people that say they burn more or less wood when switching to a different model or brand. But long burn times and more draft on a MFe or C model should burn cleaner and more efficient. The old MF leaves to much heat in the stack and you need to turn the air down. E. yoder is brother to Lauren who used to be a dealer.
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Lauren Yoder is my brother. Is that a facebook page? I've never gotten on facebook yet. Haven't seen the page, I guess.
Not sure when I will... I barely have time to check this and hearth but I think it's worth it for the knowledge shared back and forth.
Hearth isn't quite as friendly toward outdoor furnaces tho. It's hard for folks with OWBs to get help on there.
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Hearth has a lot of smart guys and they love their euro gasser batch burners. Te batch burners aren't for everyone. I send anyone looking for owb help over to this site. Then te hearth guys get butt hurt which is funny. The guy on the Facebook page says he is a member on this site but didn't tell me his name on here. I told him to come to this site and ask other 10000 owners about what they do but he has no interest in listening to me.
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I have a lot of respect for the knowledge that is there on hearth. I've read on there a lot and used info from there in my work. It would be nice to have more outdoor gasser folks on there tho. Probably will eventually.
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Eventually there might be. A lot of the guys don't realize how clean and efficient the epa phase 2 owb are.
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There's a leftover stigma from years ago that makes it an uphill journey to overcome. We need more guys with G series on there. Just about every one who has one loves it.
You have to see it to believe it. No comparison to a gasser from 10 years ago.
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Absolutely. I push the g series whenever I can. I think they hit the nail on the head with it and deserve to have good things said about it
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There's a leftover stigma from years ago that makes it an uphill journey to overcome. We need more guys with G series on there. Just about every one who has one loves it.
You have to see it to believe it. No comparison to a gasser from 10 years ago.
I used to get a lot of people that were interested in gassers and I told them they didn't want them. Now with the G series it is just the opposite. Unfortunately the higher price doesn't help trying to convince them it is the way to go.
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There's a leftover stigma from years ago that makes it an uphill journey to overcome. We need more guys with G series on there. Just about every one who has one loves it.
You have to see it to believe it. No comparison to a gasser from 10 years ago.
I used to get a lot of people that were interested in gassers and I told them they didn't want them. Now with the G series it is just the opposite. Unfortunately the higher price doesn't help trying to convince them it is the way to go.
Live in a state that decided not to enforce the EPA law?
Indiana you don’t have a choice unless its strictly commercial building being heated and even then I’d prefer people go with a G series unless even the G400 isn’t going to be enough.
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They say they won't enforce it here but I don't sell conventional for residential use anyway. I am assuming people that aren't interested in a gasser either don't buy anything or find a dealer that will sell them a conventional.
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I had a dealer offer to sell me a conventional owb before I bought my g-200 in Nov 2015. He said he could sell it to me as a coal stove , which is funny because there are no approved coal burners in MA. I didn't know how hard my town was going to enforce the new laws , but they did give the guy down the street a hard time. In the end I'm am very happy I went the direction I did. Couldn't be happier. Most of my friends burn more wood in their woodstove ;) and still have to pay for hot water.
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Thanks yoder for some of the suggestions. He has read this thread and made some changes such as stacking the wood away from the front, opening the flapper door back to 100% and upped his differential to 8 and he said he was amaze pad that 75% of the smoke went away and he is getting much longer burn times out of the same amount of wood. I am still trying to get him to up his diff to 15 but he was very thankful for the help.
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Great. Happy wood burners is what we want!
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Does anyone know when they started putting the timers on the mfe series? This guy does not have one and his build date is April of 2015. His boiler I believe is well oversized for his application and experiences long idle periods. He doesn't think he can bump the diff over the 8 he has moved it to because it wont restart. He called the factory and they said that it would be very difficult to retro in a timer, I looked at the wiring schematic in the manual and it does run to a bunch of different places.
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It could be done if you wanted to do some rewiring. The ranco control would be one route the power could go from the rocker switch to the high limit, timer could be a second route. High limit feeds to the fan and solenoid.
Adding some air leakage by drilling a hole below the solenoid flap might be all he needs though, and much cheaper. I'd try that first.
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I'll pass it along, any idea what the diff is set to from the factory with the 10000?
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180, 10 degree diff. on the ranco control.
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This is the stove my father in law has. He heats his barn, woodshop and house with dhw. It is a large stove so the wood consumption is marginally larger than what I use to heat my house and dhw. One thing that I have found with his stove, which also works well on mine, is that running a little less air with a larger differential temp seems to burn less wood and much cleaner out the stack. I'm not sure why this is but I figure it has to do with torching the wood. Father in law runs his flapper about a little less than half open with a 15* diff temp and 185* high temp. The stove itself runs a lot longer on a burn this way but believe it or not he uses less wood and it is a noticeable difference. Since then I have closes my air damper to 1/4 open on my stove with a 10* diff and I have also found a much longer available heat cycle for the wood i burn. My stove used to run 10-15 minutes then idle for a few hours and now it runs 30 minutes and idles for a few hours but uses less wood. I can't explain it but I do know a bumblebee by scientific terms isn't supposed to be able to fly but they still can!
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Easy enough to explain, while a MF E series is a efficient stove, it’s still not a gassifier, by limiting the air available your slowing the burn down and lowering the amount of heat lost out the stack. If you had a pyrometer to place in the stack then ran it like you are now, then set it back like it was originally when it burned for shorter times, I’m betting your stack temp goes up with the shorter burn times.
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I'm sure you are right as rain mr. lappin :) i know what works for me by trial and error. I hope hondaracer can get through to the guy! More air and shorter/tighter temp differential just doesn't work!
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Thanks guys. I'll tell him to check this thread out again although I think it might make him tear his hair out a little. He says that he has reduced 75% of his smoke and his wood consumption has dropped by close to half BUT he has opened his damper up to100% to get this. So you guys suggesting that he cut the air down is probably going to frustrate him but I think it's all about the differential. He is up to 8 degree diff from 5 but he doesn't want to go longer because he thinks that the boiler will go out from the long idle time. He also says that he is running 180 off and the boiler creeps to 185 so he does t want to go higher than 180. He also doesn't want to drop below 172 because he feels as though his house forced hot air runs twice as long to meet the thermostat. I told him that btus are btus and a lower forced hot air temp will actually be more comfortable but he hasn't got there yet.
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First and foremost. It was 66 degrees out yesterday, which is unheard of for wisconsin February weather, my owb would sit at idle for at least 6 hours and had no problem firing back up when the fan came on. I keep really dry wood (less than 20%) for times like this. Even with temps only 4 degrees less than my house temp my owb never got over 185. Another thing I'd like to mention having a brother in the hvac business is that running the furnace fan for longer periods is actually better for the fan motor/motherboard. It does however use more electricity but that is minimal, most electricity is used at startup. Look at this the same way you would treat your vehicle. If you drive your truck into town 1 mile everyday that is hard on the engine but if you drive it 25 miles everyday it is actually going to last longer, it does however use more gas ;). This is a true fact believe it or not, which is another reason we don't oversize our furnace.
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I told him that the new high efficiency forced hot air systems run the fan on very low cfm 24/7 to keep the air mixing and keep the space at a more even temp instead of the up and down swings, then ramp up only if it can't meet the thermostat setting. He is having a hard time coming around to thinking a longer hot burn on the owb is more efficient than short swings. He also is thinking that running the house fha for longer periods of times equals more btus used but I have told him that BTUS are BTUS weather its more in a short period of time or less in a longer period of time. He isnt afraid of electricity use, he runs his two PL36 pumps 365 because he is afraid of the heat exchangers plugging up or sludge covering the bottom of the boiler if he doesn't. I explained to him that the pumps down move anywhere enough water or to the right places to keep sludge off the bottom and that heat exchangers are going to be plugged up from use, not non use and they occasionally need to be flushed.
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He sounds like an old timer stuck in his ways. Some people change their oil at 3000 miles even with synthetic because they can't get that out of their system. It's not going to damage your car to run it 7500 miles or more these days. Our new Toyota calls for 10,000 mile OCI and Toyota won't even touch the oil until you're somewhere close to that. Anyway back on point, sometimes you just can't teach an old dog new tricks.
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There is a limit to how low you can turn the draft down tho. At some point creosote takes over. Every unit has its sweet spot. The MF units are purposely slightly overfired to compensate for the guys who let ash build up thick on the grate.
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Does anyone know when they started putting the timers on the mfe series? This guy does not have one and his build date is April of 2015. His boiler I believe is well oversized for his application and experiences long idle periods. He doesn't think he can bump the diff over the 8 he has moved it to because it wont restart. He called the factory and they said that it would be very difficult to retro in a timer, I looked at the wiring schematic in the manual and it does run to a bunch of different places.
I have an MF10000E out on the lot that was made 11/2015 and it doesn't appear that have the timer. I would guess it is only the ones that are the same as the C series.
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Does anybody know when they started putting on the electronic timer control on the HM 10000e? My sticker says it was built in Apr.2015. Sticker also said it was tested in Apr.2010. How can it be tested before it was made. I called the Company and gave my Serial no. and he said my boiler didn't come with a timer. I don't understand that they started putting the timer on after the May 1st 2015 deadline. I need someone to explain this to me.
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Hey you made it over here Robert. The test date is permanently printed on the tag right? That date is in all of them I believe and then they punch out the actual build date of when it was built.
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The test date is the date they did the UL test for that model. The other date is when that particular unit was manufactured.
They started using the timer when they retested with the oval firebox for 2016. These can still be shipped into the US for commercial installation.
It can be rewired to have a timer but it's not a "plug it in" type of thing.
But usually for wood burning just a bit more air leakage is all you need.
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Hey you made it over here Robert. The test date is permanently printed on the tag right? That date is in all of them I believe and then they punch out the actual build date of when it was built.
Stickers can be changed, but if HM didn't put the timers on until 2016 that would answer why my stove don't have one. My old CB and a metal plate with the date stamped in it.
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The test date is the date they did the UL test for that model. The other date is when that particular unit was manufactured.
They started using the timer when they retested with the oval firebox for 2016. These can still be shipped into the US for commercial installation.
It can be rewired to have a timer but it's not a "plug it in" type of thing.
But usually for wood burning just a bit more air leakage is all you need.
That's what the tech said when I called him. He said it was not done as far as he knows, but it would take major rewiring. I watched a video of a, I think it was the MF7000e, and they added a secondary air tube up the front of the stove. When I bough my 10000e, HM didn't have the 70000e. I knew the 10000e was oversized and the 5000 would be undersized. Maybe I should have bought the C-375. I heard of someone who burns wood in a C series, but when I talked to my dealer he said that the company might not cover the warranty because of burning wood in a coal stove.
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The EPA law requires that they state that the warranty is void if you burn unapproved fuels. Any make or model. Any manufacturer is supposed to say that now. Don't know if they all do.
You'll be fine with your 10e, just don't overload it and you won't burn any more wood than a smaller unit.