Couple of things.
Scott you keep insisting you have to babysit a Garn for 2 hours. That may be true for the initial burn when the tank is cold to get the water heated up to 180, but after that it's a matter of loading 50-100 lbs. of wood into the boiler and walking away. I would say 10-15 min. max. because first you have to get a decent fire going before you can really load it up.
The biggest pain is starting a fire every time because no matter how much wood you throw into a Garn it is completely eaten in 3-4 hours...no idling and no holding back the fire so no coals left alive. With the help of a propane torch and some kindling even starting a fire doesn't take much time.
As for the UL/CSA sure as sh*t Garn has that designation or they wouldn't be crossing the border.
The EPA testing is completely bogus and pretty much all the wood boiler companies already know this. Thought that conversation has been run through on here a couple of times??? Even the EPA acknowledges this and has suspended their testing proceedures until they can figure out a legitimate "real world" test for wood boilers. Never mind the claims of 95% efficiency and the stickers plastered to the boiler like medals and look at the actual emissions numbers.
The numbers are much closer than they used to be, there initial test showed boilers making more btu than they were putting in lol
I think burning firewood might be a good first step in more accurate EPA tests. When a stove is being tested they are fine tuning it, running it on lean so to speak, when you receive your boiler, it can't be on the same settings, it has to be different to allow for various condtions
In regards to the wood usage....
If it was 100 when you refilled, and you had 2000 gallons and wanted to go to 200, that's 16,680 pounds of water. 1 btu per pound per degree, so to go from 100 to 200 degrees would require 1,668,000 btu's
Wood produces on average around 8600 btu per pound, Let's say wood moisture content is 18%, 7052 btu per pound is available then, and Garn can average around 84% recovery, so it can recover 5924 btu per pound of wood
That would come to 281.56 pounds of excellent cured wood to go from 100-200 degrees.. That's also assuming no other btu's are being lost in the system which we know is impossible..
To go from 150-200 would require 140.78 pounds of wood
To go from 175-200 would require 70.39 pounds
A cord of oak weighs around 3900. If you raised the temp from 100-200 every day you would go through a cord of wood every 13 days, that's once again assuming the rest of the system loses nothing.
I'm also not implying that you have to raise 100 each day, that all varies.
But 50 pounds of wood would only raise the temp 16-17 degrees in 2000 gallons
Author
Topic: Does any boiler out there fit all of these needs? (Read 28673 times)