Outdoor Wood Furnace Info
Outdoor Furnaces - Manufacturers WITH EPA-Certified Models => Portage & Main => Topic started by: american-pacemaker on March 14, 2015, 05:03:00 AM
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Now that it is warm out im having some trouble with the fire not relighting. I lost the fire again yesterday after getting home from work. I reloaded with smaller splits and started it and also moved the differential to two degrees from the five that it has been at.
Did I do the right thing or is there something else I should be doing ? This is my first spring running my boiler so Im learning :bash:
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It's strange, when the temp is 20 out I get 12 hrs out of half a load. Above 30 and it some how uses more wood! My temp is 184 dif is 10. I lowered my dif to 7 and it didn't seem to help. I started turning it off during the day with good coals in and re lighting before bed. Curious what other 250 owners do?
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I have been putting 5 to 6 medium splits in for overnight, temps in the 20s. In the morning i put another 5 to 6 splits in. Hasn't gone out yet.
Crack a window by the thermostat?
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Coolidge, I said that last night about the thermostat, that I will start opening windows to put a load back on the boiler if it goes out again.
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That's part of my problem the house is so warm, the heat doesn't kick in at all. I'll try putting in less wood once. I turned it off for the weekend with the warm temps. It's going to be a little cooler this week.
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It's been in the mid thirty to Fortys here for the past week and I have never had any issues with the fire going completely out last year I ran it well into April , I just make sure that the ash/coal bed doesn't go out totally. I Put 5 pieces under 6 in in this morning at 530 and it went till 7 tonight and still had two chared pieces and an inch or two of coals I run it hot 197 with 5 degree diff, we have a pretty high consumption of domestic hot water here so I think that helps keeping a load on it. on another note were looking at another foot of snow tonight into tomorrow,, yeah!!! I'm super excited,....
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Rain ice and a dusting of snow here randy.
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1.5" here
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58 and sunny here, doing yard work.
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Weather app says 69 here today northern MN
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Yup snowing Here 6 in so far and still a white out
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Now that it is warm out im having some trouble with the fire not relighting. I lost the fire again yesterday after getting home from work. I reloaded with smaller splits and started it and also moved the differential to two degrees from the five that it has been at.
Did I do the right thing or is there something else I should be doing ? This is my first spring running my boiler so Im learning :bash:
This is a recap of a previous post I made on how I run the Optimizer 250 during shoulder seasons:
Hi all,
I've been experimenting with a technique for running my Optimizer 250 in warmer weather. Temperatures here are still well below freezing at night, but can climb above freezing during the day.
What I have been doing is loading the boiler about half full at night with all my pumps and heating circuits running normally, then shutting the boiler and all pumps off in the morning before going to work. I have radiant floor heat inside a concrete slab in a part of my home so the house doesn't cool off too much during the day.
Because I loaded the boiler fairly full the night before, there is still a good amount of charcoal and very charred wood in the firebox. When this charcoal burns, it doesn't produce any water vapor as the hydrogen part of the wood molecules have already been burned, leaving the carbon part to be burned next. This fact prevents it from leaking any water or condensation in the firebox during the day while it's shut off and the fire goes out. Then after I get back from work around 6:00 I turn the pumps back on but not the stove. The tank has stratified and I am pumping 180 degree water for a few hours. Before bed I relight the charcoal with a quick blast from the propane torch. The water temperature in the stove is now down to about 140.
I load it full of wood again for night and the stove then works fairly hard all night to bring the water, slab and house back up to temp. I repeat this process the next morning. The fire never goes out overnight as it isn't idling as much as it would if I burned it all day.
So far this seems to be working well. Am I missing anything that might be harmful to the stove? It seems to be a much cleaner way to burn in the shoulder seasons. I guess it's kind of like using storage, but not burning the wood batch completely. The tricky part is to correctly gauge the amount of wood needed at night to only have really charred wood and charcoal left in the morning so the firebox isn't full of steam all day.
Comments? Your feedback is always appreciated!
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i'd say u are doing her rite !..... I started that posses last nite myself
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I just wanted to let everyone know that since I lowered the differential down it has been burning great again.
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I just wanted to let everyone know that since I lowered the differential down it has been burning great again.
:post:
Thanks for the update!