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[caper]

Hello everyone, im new to the forum so bare with me, i know this question has prob been answered a 100 times, however here it goes again, ive had my furnace for one year so far, ive been playing around with the settings abit and i am wondering whats the best scenerio, i have a heat master 5000 and i heat my home and garage,approx 3500 sq feet in total, i burn about 10 cords from nov till may, ive found that when i set it at 165 with a 5 degree diff it works well, what exac is the best setting and why, i really dont want the fan coming on alot as my neighbor does complain alittle bit ,but not much,only really smokes when i refill in morning and maybe once during the day when fan comes on again, i know alot of people like diif settings ,but what is the best.....thanks DW

[Scott7m]

Id to 180 with a 15

It would burn longer on each burn and that would make a hotter and cleaner burn, and keep firebox cleaner as well

[slimjim]

If you want to apease your neighbor, try loading smaller amounts of wood more often and you might try adding some firebrick to the burn chamber of your boiler, it really does help keep the fire hotter and cleaner.

[yoderheating]

Scott is right, longer cycles of the draft fan will create a cleaner burn. And please don't start adding firebrick or doing anything else to change the design of the furnace. The HeatMaster MF series is one of the best designed simple furnaces on the market, don't change the way they are designed to work.

[Scott7m]

If you have quality wood and use the longer burn cycles that I mentioned, your furnace could be roaring inside and nothing but a bit of haze out the stack, but most importantly is the quality of your wood.  What's your wood like?  If its wet, Green, or rotted your gonna smoke quite a bit

[caper]

thanks everyone, i think i will try the 180 with a 15 , as for my wood,its all hardwood with a bit of juniper,and yes its dry, as far as the brick,thanks but mmmm i dont think ill be trying that, lol.. i work 12 hr shifts so i fill in morning and when i get home, so my options are that , so lets hope the 180-15 will damper the smoke issue alittle...

[caper]

ok guys lets see if i got this right,last year i set my furnace at 165 with a 5 degree diff, i found it worked good and i thought before i found this forum that was better, however now i believe i know better, everyone is saying 180 with a 15 diff, however would this cause the furnace to produce more smoke as the fan will be on for a longer time trying to get the furnace back up 15 degress, im tryn to cut down on the smoke when fan cuts in and thats why i set it at a 5 degree diff, quick and fast, however now if i set this new setting the fan will run for a longer time,causing more smoke ,making my neighbor cranky,causing me grief,  the more i read the more educated i am getting ,so thank u everyone

however sometimes i read guys saying 180 -15 degree diff ,but when i read old pages from year ago the same guys say 155-7 diff, eventrually i will wrap my head around this stuff, i just want less smoke during fan time that s all.....thanks guys

[Scott7m]

Never try to go that low, we were likely experimenting and knew our delta t..


Just go 180 and 15

No, what u were doing was far worse for smoke, short fires that never get raging are smokey.  Long steady fires get hotter, more efficient, because they are burning cleaner!!

[yoderheating]

 I always start furnaces at 170 and a 10 degree differential and let the customer experiment from there. I often run mine as low as 150 and it works fine. 

[slimjim]

I would not even dream of running one of our gassers at 150 degrees, our 250 should be run at 185+ but then again thats because of the high efficiency heat exchanger on the 250 harnessing the heat before it leaves the boiler. Our exhaust temp at the breach is 270 degrees with water temp in the boiler at 190, a conventional boiler with the same water temp will run over 1000 degrees, thats a lot of wood going up the stack but that is where the cost of the boiler is, designing and building an efficient easy to maintain unit costs money. Conventional boilers are a good deal for those who can't afford a better unit but the gassers do save a lot of wood and labor as well as keeping you on speaking terms with a nearby neighbor. I just fired up another 250 up here in Dover Foxcroft ,Me. another happy customer that went with efficiency and not just price. Most homes with hydronic heat have the radiation in the home designed for 185 degree water flowing through the piping, why then would you wish to reduce the boiler temp down from that point.

[yoderheating]

 We are not talking about a gasser, he is asking about a MF5000.  Its true that gassers operate better at high temps. I'm slowly buying into the gasser idea, especially since HeatMaster just came out with thier new models that have by far the best test results of any batch wood gasser on the market. However for those who live in a rural area where small amounts of smoke is not an issue I would almost never recommend a gasser. It costs more and has more things to go wrong.

[slimjim]

The true test of any gasser is in the field, not in the lab. Tests can be and are manipulated every day, for instance look at what CB has advertised thier efficiency rating at, (97%) and when you confront the dealer with the question of how they came up with that result they say that it came from the test lab. If you happen to know anything about heating you understand that the only thing that will give you those kind of numbers will be a gas wall hung ( condensing boiler ), where is thier condensate drain on the boiler? I think that the entire country will eventually go to gassers only and truthfully sharing ideas on improving them instead of bashing one product against another will go a long way towards improving the image of all wood boilers, little things like adding firebrick to insulate the fire even on the conventional boilers can make a big difference on how the boiler performs, checking stack temps are another way to see in the field what works best, I would be willing to bet that most of you have never checked the stack temps on your personal unit, try it sometime then compare that to real life gassers in the field. I can tell you that a typical conventional boiler stack temp runs over 1000 degrees and all that smoke is unburned fuel, if you can drop the stack temp and burn the smoke you will burn less wood and not tick off your nieghbor, just maybe if you added some brick to the chamber you might find that it will burn more of the smoke and the fire will stay hotter longer

[yoderheating]

The EPA don't even try to test efficiency any more because of the way companies would rig the tests. When I say the G100 tested better than any other furnace I'm talking about how clean it runs.
 When you compare a gasser to a conventional furnace there is some benefits on wood consumption with the gasser but not as much when you compare to an efficient conventional furnace. I've burned a gasser two years ago and then a mf3000e which is a conventional triple bypass furnace, I couldn't tell that much difference between the two. The 3000e smoked a bit more but the stack temps are cool enough on it that we know its not too far behind.
 When you talk about testing there are so many other things that go into it that its hard to keep track of. Stack temps are a good starting point, then you have oxygen levels and unburned gasses and the list goes on. I disagree that furnace companies should be sharing ideas, that would be like asking Ford and Chevy to work together to make a similar car. The consumer wants choices not a one size fits all product. Competition helps improvements as much or more than anything,  2 years ago everyone thought Central Boiler was way ahead of the curve but now they are struggling to catch up. If they would have simply shared their info then every furnace manufacturer would be producing an inferior product right now. In my mind nothing is better for the industry than for one company to produce a vastly superior product and force the rest to do some r&d and catch up.

[slimjim]

I certainly do not think that any company should  in any way be forced to give up trade secrets but for issues that are common among similar units it sure would be nice to share information that would help the consumer in the long run rather than the constant battle of bashing competition as I have seen here in Maine that led ultimatly to conventional boilers being banned throughout the entire northeast, if instead of bashing one another we had  used the knowledge we all had to clean up the problem stoves and did a little bit of policing our own industry we would not have the regulations that we now have rammed down our throats. We just did the Fryburg Maine fair that has about 20 or more different vendors in one area (Energy Row) all of us doing our own thing with alternative energy, we all worked together to promote not just our own product but when one guy has a problem we come together to help him fix his issue rather than laugh at the competition. I will take this opportunity to invite you to the show next year to show your boiler running on the grounds and we will more than likely be heating at least one of our expo buildings with at least 3 different wood boiler manufacturers, great chance to show your stuff running in front of the public.

[caper]

Hello everyone, gotta say since i started the ole girl up, i changed the settings from 165 with a 5 degree diff from last year, wow what a diff, i know its not very cold out but it appears to have made a big diff, does smoke half as much, my neighbor alSO appears to be happy,lol... thanks guys for all the advice...DW