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241

Shaver Furnace / Re: Cough..cough..gasp..gasp...choke..choke

« on: December 19, 2011, 06:34:43 PM »

For natural draft you will need to have a taller insulated chimney. I haven't been following your posts so I don't know what all problems you are having, but if it helps at all there was a thread about 50 pages long over on arboristsite.com named "shaver improvement thread". Seems like a lot of guys had trouble regulating the water temp and blower/damper issues. Most seemed happy after some home made mods, good luck!

Mr. Woodperson....I'm "only" up to page 28 on that site and I HAVE earned a bunch.  Here's the situation, when I got this 250 Shaver, the invoice read that I had a 75 cfm with auto damper.  Well I had the 50 cfm with manual damper.  As I got to thinking this afternoon, the 50 cfm blower had the "manual slide" plate.  Shaver's thought son this was so that if one wanted to tinker with burn times, one could do so with this type of damper.  So me gets to thinking...folks be sayin' that we shouldn't be messing with the damper as far as how far it is open and we don't want it closed...if this is the case, why was there a "slide damper" on the 50 cfm?  Why was it not just WOT? 

Seems to me....that I could "preserve" wood if the damper OR Positive closure were adjustable down to 1/4- 3/8" open.  If this is NOT supposed to be right....what's up then wit da 50 cfm wit da slide damper?

Why doesn't Shaver cover this better than they do, which is NAUGHT?!!   

Lugnut

I guess I still don't understand what you are having trouble with. Are you getting too much draft or not enough? If it helps at all my fan is rated at 150cfm. It has a adjustable restricter plate on the discharge side of the fan. I have it closed about 2/3 of the way down. All I did was watch the smoke from my chimney and went with a compromise of a few minutes of smoke at start up then mostly a clean burn during the rest of the cycle. If I give it more air it comes up to temp a little faster but seems to send more heat heat out the stack. If I restrict it more it smokes almost the entire time and takes a long time to get the water up to temp. I have no cresolt issues and no trouble with 12-16 hour burn times.   

242

Shaver Furnace / Re: Cough..cough..gasp..gasp...choke..choke

« on: December 19, 2011, 06:26:52 AM »

For natural draft you will need to have a taller insulated chimney. I haven't been following your posts so I don't know what all problems you are having, but if it helps at all there was a thread about 50 pages long over on arboristsite.com named "shaver improvement thread". Seems like a lot of guys had trouble regulating the water temp and blower/damper issues. Most seemed happy after some home made mods, good luck! 

243

General Outdoor Furnace Discussion / Re: How much more wood consumption in Dec.

« on: December 14, 2011, 08:00:02 PM »

I will try to help if I can as I have basicly the same owb. First we need to know more info. What exactly are you heating? How big is it and how warm are you keeping it? What did you heat with before and how much fuel did you use in a comparable month? What kind of wood are you using and how long has it been seasoned? How deep is your water table and have you noticed any snow melt above your underground pipe. How full are you filling your owb? When the draft fan is on are you getting any visible smoke from the stack or is it just heat waves?

I am heating a 3000 sq ft house plus dhw. My boiler is a he1000 (same size as yours). I live in Michigan (cold). My underground pipe is logstor. I keep the house 73 when we are here 71 when we are not. When it is in the teens my house blower cycles probably every 15-20 minutes for about 5-7 minutes. I have a 140,000 btu water-air hx. When temps are in the teen's at night 20's during the day I have no problem going 14-16 hours before putting more wood in. I normaly put in half loads twice in 24 hrs.

As far as I am concerned, 6 hours between fills is unacceptable and should not be occuring unless you are grossly undersized for your heating demand. Without knowing anything more I would be leaning towards your undergound line's as this is where a tremendous amount of btu's can go if things are not perfect. You need to measure the temp at the line before the hx to see what your ground loss is. This however is easier said than done unless you have a temp gauge installed in the line where it enters the house. Good luck and keep us posted. 

244

HeatMaster / Re: difference between standard and E models

« on: December 06, 2011, 11:36:14 AM »

Thanks for the welcome and the replys. Here is a little background info. I live in SW lower Michigan, and have been heating my 3000 sq ft house and dhw, with a Hawken boiler for 5 seasons now. Overall I am happy with my boiler, but I use a fair amount of wood in a season (between 10-12 full cord from Oct-May). Part of it is because we keep the house at 73-74 most of the time but hey, thats what I bought it for. I think the design of my boiler is similar to a "standard" heatmaster and I was just wondering if there was a simple mod to make to mine to make it perform like the "e" model. If the increase in effeciency comes from a double pass chimney I guess I am out of luck. The design of mine forces the gasses over water filled tubes which go across the top 1/3 of the fire box, then up again and back through a channel above the tubes along the very top of the fire box. At the time I was looking at boilers this seemed like one of the better designs for increasing heat transfer, as the tubes effectivly increase the surface area of the water jacket/firebox. When the boiler is cycling there is no visible smoke from the stack, only heat waves. Sure would be nice to be able to capture more of the heat escaping from the stack.       

245

HeatMaster / difference between standard and E models

« on: December 06, 2011, 06:44:19 AM »

Hi guys!

As the title says, what is the design difference between the standard 5000 model vs the 5000e. All I can find so far is they are claiming a 25% wood usage reduction.