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[BoilerHouse]

The only thing I can add to Jackels post is that mass storage should also be part of a building you wish to heat.  Otherwise residual losses may eat efficiency gains.

[martyinmi]

I'm with ya on the weekend thing. It would be nice to be able to go away for 3 or 4 days and not have to worry about throwing wood at my boiler. I've got that covered,though, with my neighbor who never goes anywhere in the winter. We just give him a twenty if we'll be gone for a few days and ask him to wait until after we get back before he buys beer with it. I guess where I'm losing ya' is on the wood savings. All the gassers that I've seen in operation are extremely efficient from the time they first start cycling until the time that cycle is complete while they are in operation. Their first fire is always the most inefficient. I would think that every time a fire is built for a mass storage system you would lose an awful lot of efficiency in the time that it takes your furnace to start gasifing. I've heard of gassers that start gasifing in the first 15 minutes, and maybe there is some merit to those claims. I've owned two of then now and I've not encountered that. They usually smoke quite a bit until the refractory material gets up to temperature. That is the point where they become truly efficient. The time frame that I've seen for realistic full gasification is usually between a half hour and an hour. A half hour or hour smokey burn is a lot of wasted fuel. I'd bet that the amount of fuel wasted between cycles where the furnace is idle would not be anywhere near as much as the first half hour of a new fire. The only real savings in mass storage that I can see might be in not having a circulating pump running 24/7 from the house to the boiler(thermal transfer to the earth).
   I will say this, though, jackel- if there's anyone on this forum that can make it work- and work more efficiently, it will be you!

[jackel440]

I agree that the efficient burns takes awhile to happen.I find that my furnace will not really start gasifing  until it has ran in bypass for a long time on a fresh restart.Takes a long time to get that brick heated up.
I planned that i could have my stove to start charging the mass storage ,and it would start burning efficiently fairly quickly.I feel that the stove would burn quite good going through a non stop cycle.I also think that I could get quite a few days of heat of a couple thousand gallons of hot water.
I still have to design the system like I want ,but I have a plan that just needs a few tweeks.
I think instead of several on and off burns and the time it takes to gasify during the regular cycles.I would just get a great burn with it running wide open for one long burn getting the maximum btu's out of the wood.
Thaks for thinking I can make it work.
I am just gonna have to mudle through it to make it work like everyone else does

[higgins11]

Jackel,

Plan on using a heat exchanger in the tank or just pumping out of the tank and returning to?

[jackel440]

I haven't decided yet on how i want to do it.There are pros and cons for either way.If I got a large tube exchanger I think it would work quite well.I just happen to have a large on to use.
Oh well that is another project for another day right now.I imagine it will be awhile before i get to the point of installing the mass storage.