Outdoor Wood Furnace Info
Outdoor Furnaces - Manufacturers WITH EPA-Certified Models => Hawken Energy, support only => Topic started by: anightd on October 14, 2009, 08:37:28 PM
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I have a new unit. I am having difficulty getting the water up to temp. My wood is pretty dry, what am I overlooking?
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I have a new unit. I am having difficulty getting the water up to temp. My wood is pretty dry, what am I overlooking?
with your pumps shut off and your stove full of water (i am going to guess you have the 150 gal model???
150 gal is about 1500 pounds
lets say your water is 50 degrees going into the stove so you need to (again for easy figures) raise the temp 50 degrees (to 150)
to raise 1 pound of water 1 degree it takes 1 btu (these are true figures)
to raise your 1500 pounds of water 100 degrees is (1500 x 100) 150,000 BTU
for easy figuring again (this is close) 20 moisture wood (about 2 years old) holds 6000 usable BTU per pound..
150,000 devided by 6000 equals 25 pounds of wood to heat your water ...BUT..
lets say now that your stove is really only 50 percent efficient, so you double, 50 pounds of wood to bring your OWB water capacity to temp
i will guess if these gallons are true to your stove ,, with pumps off and valves closed it would take about 45 min to 1 hour to get your temp up the first time from "cold"... longer and more wood if you have more gallons... your stove may be more efficent i am just using easy numbers to show you the formulas
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should have read raise the temp 100 degrees ..sorry its late here
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my central boiler 5036 took 1 hour 45 min to go from 70 -180 degrees . 196 gal of water
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Does more or less air impact the issue? Is it possible the blower if brining too much air into the fire pot and heat is going up the chimney?
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i am gonna make a guess here....big guess...i would say not on your stove..you likely have a 150 or 200 cfm blower and i dought that could ever give too much have your tried opening the door and seeing how your fire is burning? if you are burning good dry wood after a few minutes you should see very little to no smoke coming out the chimney
most of these stoves (if loaded with small chunks of wood and loaded full) can actually be starved for air.. if the wood pieces are small and many edges are burning at once your blower may not provide enough air
it takes time as a new owner of one of these brutes to learn the temperment of it and how to run it on certain days..some days you may find you need to load it full other days not so much
it takes a winter or two to figure out
GOOD LUCK
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I had the exact same problem with the HE1100 furnace. it was blowing too much air into the furnace, effectively blowing most of the heat right up the stack.
the first firing took over 7 hours to bring the water up to temp and shut the blower off.
these furnaces are poorly made. I have a "temporary repair" that seemed to help some on the furnace I had.
unfortunately, it is the furnace, not you or the wood you burn.
I have been down this road. send me an email, and I will let you know what I know.
take care,
Ouch
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OK, I'm getting nervous. Water temp never went above 100 degrees today, what is going on with this thing?
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OK, I'm getting nervous. Water temp never went above 100 degrees today, what is going on with this thing?
test furnace by iether leaving the door ajar a small amount to let more air in or close your damper a bit to close more air off..try each way untill you get the result you are looking for then you will know what is happening..too much or too little
if your stove never got above 100 all day..does the wood burn up quickly or is it still mostly there.
most of these stoves will go a minimum of about 12 hours on a fill..if yoru stove is out of wood before that then yes i would guess too much air.
if your stove smokes badly all day..and you have wood left over i would make a guess of not enough air
you need to choke the air supply down and try a load of wood...or open the door and add air to see what makes the sstove work
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when the door is first opened there is little evidence of fire, soon a fire begins to rage. It is a blower driven unit, is there a way to increase air supply in these units?
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when the door is first opened there is little evidence of fire, soon a fire begins to rage. It is a blower driven unit, is there a way to increase air supply in these units?
i do not know how your stove works but i think there is a damper that is (and can be) adjusted at the factory to allow more or less air into the stove..to make sure you are not getting enough air..open your door a little and don't leave it unatended...see if the fire rages and let it run like this for 5 or 10 min.s...if yoru water is 100 when you start this test, it should not take more than 5 or 10 min for teh water to rise, and i suspect it will rise to the set temp or close to it in that time
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Thanks I will give that test a try.
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In my case the solenoid that operates the damper had gone bad. It turns out to be an easy fix.
Dave
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OK, I'm back. I am still not getting my water temperature above 100 degrees and of course not it is an issue. I put in a new solenoid to control the damper that works in harmony with the blower. For 1 day the temperature went up to where it is suppose to be. The damper is working correctly now, but the problem has not been solved. I am actually getting water in the ash at the bottom of the inside of the unit even though the wood being used is more than a year into the drying process. If I go outside now and open the door there will be only thick black smoke and with the door open the fire soon ignites.
I don't have a clue as to what I can try to do next. Your suggestions will be appreciated. I am getting very close to asking them to take the unit back. I read where someone in our group here actually cut down on the amount of air going into the unit. That theory doesn't make sense to me.
Dave
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Sounds like you are not getting enough air inside for combustion. You may have already checked but make sure your flue is not blocked with something. Check set point on temp control. Check solenoid make sure it is working. Make sure damper is opening. I am not familiar with your stove but if you have fire inside and it is getting air, it is going to burn unless it has no way to exhaust air out (maybe flue blocked)
Hope you get it figured out.
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With the door open and the fan running do you feel air coming out of the discharge area of the door going into the stove?
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Once again problem solved.
During the time that my damper was not opening, creosote built up in the chamber leading to the stack to such an extent that it was blocking the air flow. It was a wet gooey mess and was not much fun to clean out, but when finished the unit heated quickly, is doing just fine once again. Hopefully we are all set for the winter now.
Dave
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Once again problem solved.
During the time that my damper was not opening, creosote built up in the chamber leading to the stack to such an extent that it was blocking the air flow. It was a wet gooey mess and was not much fun to clean out, but when finished the unit heated quickly, is doing just fine once again. Hopefully we are all set for the winter now.
Dave
As i said in my very first post dave "it takes a year or two to figure these brutes out"
glad you got your problem solved with a lilttle digging into how your brute works. you will likley find now that these things are just like your car..as you use it you will "get the feel for it" learn to reconize a "noise that wasn't there yesterday" or what the furnace is doing by the smoke it makes (or doesn't) and things like that
Happy "burnin and learnin" and enjoy your new toy
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I have resolved my issue. During the days when my damper was not opening, the upper chamber leading to the stack had plugged with wet creosote. It was a nasty job to manually clean that out, but now my until works great and I am very happy with it.
Dave