Outdoor Wood Furnace Info
All-Purpose OWF Discussions => General Outdoor Furnace Discussion => Topic started by: coolidge on January 22, 2016, 05:11:55 AM
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Not shure what is going on this year, burning wood like crazy compared to last year. Woke up this morning to 120 degree water at the boiler with some unburnt wood. Hope it an catch up today. Temps in the teens .
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crazy...thats pretty low! how many sqare feet are u heating????
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If nothing has been changed In the system. Sounds like a furnace malfunction ,maybe something is plugged. May need to be cleaned more than usual. Being warmer than last year maybe creosote build up some place other than the usual or obvious. ???
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If you are burning more substantially wood than previously with comparable outdoor temperatures or warmer outdoor temperatures you are sending the BTU's produced to somewhere. Most likely your are having underground line issues. If you are producing the BTUs by burning the wood than they have to go somewhere. Measure you temp loss on your lines. Measure the temp at your boiler then at the house.
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Temperature gauges tell the tale.
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Well my flapper arm broke, not allowing air in.
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crazy...thats pretty low! how many sqare feet are u heating????
Heating about 5000 sq ft, using Logstor.
Can't believe I amgoing too say this but I am going to try some wetter wood, stuff I am using now( s maple, w. Birch and ash) is quite dry.
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crazy...thats pretty low! how many sqare feet are u heating????
Heating about 5000 sq ft, using Logstor.
Can't believe I amgoing too say this but I am going to try some wetter wood, stuff I am using now( s maple, w. Birch and ash) is quite dry.
That might be your issue right there... especially if there is still wood in the firebox but no fire. Maybe you don't have a good coal bed established because of the wood quality?
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just plain weird, had that little issue yesterday, put my 12 hour load in last night at 730, temps in the single digits overnight, boiler should go until noon today without any wood.
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I have thought that my wood consumption is higher this year given the milder temps. The wood is seasoned for 2 years and it makes me wonder if after the blower shuts down the drier wood continues to burn where as if it were a little wetter it might stop burning quicker. It has me thinking now that being 3+ years ahead is a bad thing.
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I was discussing that with SlimJim yesterday and now today I haven't put a stick of wood on the fire using my 3 yr old stuff. Just need to stop thinking. :bash:
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What color is the smoke when it is burning good? If is gray or blackish then adding some wetter wood may help.
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What color is the smoke when it is burning good? If is gray or blackish then adding some wetter wood may help.
Watching it today, there was about a foot of a heatwave and the about 5 ft of blueish smoke and that was it. I added three small splits around 2pm this afternoon to get the coal bed down from last night.
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How many cords does it take for your 5000 sq ft there Coolidge? I'm heating 5400 sq ft as well as my domestic hot water and using around 10-12 cord. I'm located in Ky so my climate not as extreme as the Northern states. I burn oak and hickory mostly. Keep my house 72 from one end to the other, 24 hours a day.
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Going into this winter, I had some 4 year cut,split,dried sitting in the sun and wind red oak and elm. Loaded it and brought it to the furnace. That stuff burned like paper! Smoked black and gray. Full load wouldn't last more than about 6-8 hours. Too dry! I didn't think it was possible but yes, wood can bbe too dry.
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How many cords does it take for your 5000 sq ft there Coolidge? I'm heating 5400 sq ft as well as my domestic hot water and using around 10-12 cord. I'm located in Ky so my climate not as extreme as the Northern states. I burn oak and hickory mostly. Keep my house 72 from one end to the other, 24 hours a day.
Generally I am using 8 to 10 cord per year.
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Sounds like Im on track. I have wandered how im comparing to others with the same square footage. My house is an old Elementary school house that was bought at public aution by some other folks and remodeled to be a restaurant. Before they could get it open for business the health dept. shut their project down due to lack of septic drainage. So they then just made a house out of it and sold it at public auction again. Me and my wife just happened to be at the auction and thought we were gonna buy furniture. I think everyone was afraid of the house because of thier high heating bills the year before. (650.00-700.00) Large rooms with 11 ft ceilings. The OWB has been a problem solver on that. 120.00 per month average electric bill since I installed it 15 months ago. :thumbup:
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Same situation here. Dead Ash that has been down for at least 1 season, going thru it like a mad fool. Parents are the same way with their indoor wood furnace, high consumption. My first thought was it is TOO dry.
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Having wood that is too dry is like having too much money, it is not possible. The overall burn time may be decreased but the amount of net btu's is greater since there is less moisture that must be evaporated. It is simply a matter of heat transfer or lack there of and idle times.
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Without storage like the indoor gassification boilers use I think that there is a point that is to dry for outdoor conventional style boilers. Most conventional style boilers don't have the best heat transfer and also can have excessive idle times which burn off the btus to the atmosphere. There is a happy medium I believe for the conventional owb. To high moisture content and you are wasting most of your energy to burning off the water. To little and you are just burning it off while idleing and not moving it into the water. Somewhere in the middle the wood doesn't burn off fast when idleing but has less usable btus because of the burning off of water. The european indoor gassers burn wide open until expelled charging up a 'battery' of water typically 500-1000 gallons with the btus produced.
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Update; been burning some of my wetter wood as an experiment, off course longer burn times, but I am getting a blue ish flame in the gasification chamber instead of a orange blowtorch.
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Without storage like the indoor gassification boilers use I think that there is a point that is to dry for outdoor conventional style boilers. Most conventional style boilers don't have the best heat transfer and also can have excessive idle times which burn off the btus to the atmosphere. There is a happy medium I believe for the conventional owb. To high moisture content and you are wasting most of your energy to burning off the water. To little and you are just burning it off while idleing and not moving it into the water. Somewhere in the middle the wood doesn't burn off fast when idleing but has less usable btus because of the burning off of water. The european indoor gassers burn wide open until expelled charging up a 'battery' of water typically 500-1000 gallons with the btus produced.
I have a friend that claimed he got more heat out of green wood, I simply pointed out that his conventional isn’t efficient enough to capture all the heat from dry wood and most is lost up the stack, green wood burns slower so less heat is lost even though some is lost due to having to boil the water out of the wood before it can burn.
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My Manuel says to burn at 20-25% ...and that REallly dry wood masked creasot ….?????w???
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I have no free kin idea what is going on this year, this past weekend with overnight lows in the 20's I was getting 16 to 18 hours on a 3/4 load. Today highs in the 20's, I left for work, came home 5 hours later and water temp down to 158, that's with half a firebox load.
Cleaned heat exchanger, nothing. Put another half load in, gassing like a jet engine, you can hear it from 20 ft away, turned air settings all in, still a flamethrower. Figured what the heck, stuck 6 turbulators in.
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Well was up in the rafters of the garage, happened too look over by the t stat, looked kinda funny, went and checked it out looks like my oil change barrel had crushed the t stat wire and somehow the two were touching, thus heat running 24/7 in garage. :bash:
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Well at least you found out what the problem was. It could have been a lot worse !!