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[hondaracer2oo4]

Most important thing is to get a good 3-4 inch coal bed built up. Another thing I learned not to break up the wood in te firebox when reloading. Just load back up and make sure you pack the wood tight togeather, if you have rounds split them so they have one flat side. Your going to be super impressed with the amount f wood you burn.

[slimjim]

Nice job, we are back home if you need anything, the commercial job in CT went very well, there will be some very happy workers at the sawmill this morning!

[FrozenMongrel]

So I had the boiler go out at some point today. Still had several pieces of wood, but no flame. Water temp was 149 and the fan was blowing, so I'm guessing it went out between calls for heat. I'm running a mix of mostly dry pine with some oak and maple mixed in. I don't have much of a coal bed yet, but I hit the coals with a propane torch and it relit instantly and began gasification within a couple minutes. Temps were in the high 40's and steady rain. No one was home all day, so I'm guessing there were no calls for heat. Anyone know what the factory setting is for running between calls for heat?

[mf40diesel]

I have had a similiar issue with mine.  It actually went out a couple times on us.  More recently now that we have been having more regular cooler weather (30's day, and 20's night) the wife hasn't reported any issues. 

It is pretty easy to look at the settings in the Logo! control panel.  Mine was factory set to run 3 min every 30min between cycles.  I changed mine to 4 min.  Not sure if that was a wise thing or not, but it's what I did.  At the time we had issues, were the days when it was still in the 60's during the day , the boiler litterally wouldn't call all day except the 3 min.  To compound that, I was really pushing it with the wood quality, really cramming some questionably wet stuff in there, experimenting with what I could get away with.

My situation is a little unique, I go to sea for a living, so my wife and son have to take care of the heating when I am gone.  I need it to work with no issues while I am gone.  The wife's onboard, but I also don't want to make it hard at all, or I'll risk her jumping off that wagon.

[mlappin]

The G series is a pretty forgiving unit, probably the closet gasifying stove available thats almost like running a conventional OWB.

Biggest thing I’ve found, don’t be afraid of getting too many coals, unlike some of what I’ve heard about other brands, I’ve yet to have any issues from too many coals.

[hondaracer2oo4]

Thick coal bed is key. Use some quality dry hardwood to build it up. You are going to need to understand that your going to put about twice as much wood in as you normally would for a 12 hour run, but after that initial heavy load you are going to e good to go with a nice coal bed. Plan for 12 hour loadibgs(guess how much you need depending on temp and wind conditions during th next 12 hours). Also as far as wood quality goes, you bought a 10,000 + boiler, put quality wood in it. First year you get a little bit of a pass because you might not have had a chance of having one year cut split stacked wood. But after the first year you shouldn't have much of an excuse when it comes to wood quality. Don't gum up a 10000 boiler is what I say.

[FrozenMongrel]

Relit it and it ran fine all night. When I checked it this morning it's starting to build up a nice coal bed. I've got a stockpile of maple and oak that was cut this year for next season, just burning through the pine I had from last year while the weather is warmer. It's all pretty dry with around 15% moisture content. The oak and maple I have is still in the 30's.

[FrozenMongrel]

Boiler's been going great, picked up a miller mobile home furnace to convert to heat for my barn. Ripped out all the heat exchanger parts and am working on re-routing the outlet of the downdraft to front outlet.

[hondaracer2oo4]

So what's your plan to do with the furnace?

[FrozenMongrel]

So what's your plan to do with the furnace?

Put a water to air hx under the blower fan where the old propane hx used to be then duct the hot air out under that through a new vent either in the door or side. I may shorten the door and put a permanent vent under the shortened door.

[mlappin]

So what's your plan to do with the furnace?

Put a water to air hx under the blower fan where the old propane hx used to be then duct the hot air out under that through a new vent either in the door or side. I may shorten the door and put a permanent vent under the shortened door.

Thats what I did in the shop, took an old down draft, mounted an HX in it and relocated the filter rack, tis nice to just change filters instead of having to clean the HX. Do a lot of welding and plasma cutting in the shop so always a little smoke settling on stuff.

[FrozenMongrel]

Haven't had a chance to do anything else with the barn heat, too busy with other things. I did get a new tool to help with the change to a gassifier from a basic wood boiler. Hopefully I can get it put together tomorrow night and start splitting up some of the dry hardwood that I have stacked up all over the place. Boiler has been going extremely well, 12+ hour burn times with a mixture of dry pine and dry maple. I haven't seen the total temp drop over 15* from the output water temp to the boiler return and that was with a washer, dishwasher, shower and 1 zone calling for heat. I've still not adjusted completely to the gassifier's efficiency and lack of smoke. Just tonight I heard the blower kick on and had to go out to the boiler to check on it because I couldn't see any visible smoke or steam in the dark. Loving the fact that I'm no longer smoking out the neighbors!

[mlappin]

Loving the fact that I'm no longer smoking out the neighbors!

I’m sure they appreciate that as well

Every once in a great while I’d be a little concerned about my ole smokey, smoke would come out, hit an temperature inversion, follow the ground, across the pasture and finally cross the state highway, always figured someday I’d be getting a visit from the county board of health or code enforcement because somebody got a bee in their butt about the smoke.

Took a while for my wife to tell the difference between steam/condensation and smoke, a few times she’d get up early, look out the kitchen window and freak, then wake me up because she though it was smoking and something was wrong, a glance out the window would assure her it was condensation. Started it earlier in the year when it wasn’t cold enough to cause the warm exhaust to condensate so she expected it always to be clear.

[FrozenMongrel]

Finally got the log splitter put together and ran it for about 20 min to get some more wood split for the week. I've got the day off Friday so I'm planning on getting everything that I've cut to length split and stacked. I also ordered a heat exchanger online for the miller furnace. Should be in tomorrow and I've got some free time tomorrow night, so we'll see how far I can get on getting the heater setup. Seems like I'm going through about 1/3 of the wood that I was last year, we'll see if that keeps up though the winter, but it's been much colder this year than it was last at this point.

[FrozenMongrel]

Gutted the Miller furnace I bought a couple weeks ago and started working on mounting the heat exchanger and wiring it to have a switch. I may wire it to a thermostat someday, but this year an on/off switch will have to do.




Made a bracket for the heat exchanger to slide into. I'll have to cut a slot into the side of the furnace housing for this to be riveted into, then the heat exchanger will slide into it with the copper fittings on the side sticking out.



The markings on the side are where the slot will be cut for the heat exchanger bracket