A little over a year ago I wrote a popular item on the dilemma of New Englanders who depend on oil for home heating. The pellet stove insert I’d installed in the living room fireplace a few years before was helping, but there was no way to distribute that heat. As oil shot past $100/barrel on the way to $140 it was clear I needed to find another way to fuel our hydronic central heating system.
My research led me to a couple of options. First, a pellet boiler. Second, a wood gasifier. I chose the gasifier mainly to diversify my sources. Although I expect that wood pellets will remain available and attractively priced relative to oil, I didn’t want to make another bet on a commodity whose price I can’t control. I don’t produce the firewood that my gasifier burns, but if I had to, I could. A couple of crazy winters riding the oil-heat rollercoaster left me craving that assurance.
After further research and consultation, I settled on the EKO wood-fired boiler. It’s made in Poland by Eko-Vimar Orlanski, imported into the U.S. by New Horizon, and sold locally here in southern New Hampshire by Mechanical Innovations.
In May 2008 I bought an EKO-40 boiler. It arrived on a pallet a few weeks later, and was unloaded into my garage while I finalized my installation plan. Had I known that process would drag on for six months, I might have reconsidered my decision to inform the City of Keene about my plans, and apply for a permit.
But despite the incredible hassle I described here, I’m glad I did. From the start, I had two goals in mind. One was to make the house affordably warm for the first time in three winters. The other was to be able to write this essay.
Wood gasifiers aren’t new technology. Northern Europeans have used them for many years. But they’re new to the U.S. Most of our city housing officials and our insurance agents don’t know about them. Now mine do, and I hope what I’ve learned will help validate this solution elsewhere.
From the city’s perspective, the issue was code. The main objection was that the code requires U.S. certification (UL, ASME), but the EKO is European-certified (TUV, CE). When I dug further, though, I found that the UL 391 sticker — which the city initially said was needed — doesn’t apply to solid-fuel-fired boilers. What does? UL 2523, a standard that’s currently in development and to which no products are yet certified.
Eventually I engaged an engineer, Mark Vincello, to look at the boiler, confer with my dealer/installer, Bob Jennings, and write the city a letter saying that the boiler was well-made, had been pressure-tested, and would be safely installed.
In October, I finally got my permit. For the record, I want to thank the city’s chief building officer and assistant director, Medard Kopczynski. Like many code-enforcement departments, ours is widely criticized for, among other things, resisting innovation. But although Med had never seen or heard of a residential wood-fired boiler, he was intrigued by the solution, and worked with me to find a way to approve it.
With permit in hand, I contracted Bob Fairbanks to line the chimney I’d be using. He installed an insulation-wrapped flexible liner. The boiler requires an 8″ liner and the chimney is 8″ x 12″, so it was a tight fit, but Bob “ovalized” (squashed) the liner and got it in.
By now it was November and the boiler was still sitting in the garage. The next hurdle, which gave me a few sleepless nights, was moving this 1500-pound beast into the basement, through a narrow entrance under the barn and then across the barn’s muddy floor onto the basement’s cement pad.
It was kinda crazy. In the end it took four of us, a tractor, a pallet jack, a bunch of thick planks, and a bottle of dish soap. The tractor inserted the boiler into the barn. We slid it on soapy planks across the dirt floor, wrangled it onto the pallet jack, and then wheeled it across the cement floor to its current home.
Finally, in early December, Bob did the hookup and we fired it up. It’s been running continuously ever since.
In photo 1 you can see glimpses of all four heating-system eras my 1870 home has known.
The chimney, one of three, originally vented several fireplaces.
The brown box sandwiched between the green-and-white EKO boiler and the woodpile is a coal burner which must have supplemented wood heat at one point.
Then came oil. You can see one of two 250-gallon tanks in the corner behind the woodpile.
And now the EKO boiler, a modern, electronically-controlled device that brings us full circle back to wood.
Photos 2 and 3 show how the EKO ties into the pre-existing hydronic system. In photo 2 you’re looking at five circuits. Right to left, corresponding to four circulator pumps, are three house zones and a water heater circuit. The leftmost fifth circuit runs through the EKO.
Backing away in photo 3, you can see the EKO on the left, and all five inputs to, and outputs from, the oil burner at bottom right. The EKO is hooked up in series. This costs me some efficiency because, although the oil burner rarely runs, its water jacket soaks up heat. But that may be healthy for it, and though mostly sidelined it’s still a crucial piece of the puzzle.
If the EKO’s water jacket drops below a set temperature — currently 140F — the fossil fuel furnace kicks in automatically. Among other things, that means we can go on vacation without worrying about frozen pipes.
Photo 4 shows parts of the control and safety systems. The green tag is hanging next to a pressure relief valve. If the boiler were to overheat, that valve would open and dump water out onto the floor.
The red circulator pump appears near the center of the photo. The green box at top left activates the circulator when the boiler’s water jacket reaches a threshold currently set at 160F, and then keeps it on until the water temp drops below 140F, at which point the oil burner kicks back on. With the EKO running continuously, the EKO’s circulator can, and does, run for days, idling the oil burner completely.
Photo 5 shows a sensor that’s been placed directly on the boiler’s water jacket through a hole drilled into the top cover. Its signal travels to the digital controller shown in photo 7, which actuates the pump switch in photo 4. It also controls a safety cutoff, shown at the bottom of photo 5, that would shut down the boiler (electrically) if its temperature went above 210F.
In photo 6 you see the EKO’s control panel. The dial controls the setpoint, which is currently set to 165F. Because the current temp in this photo is below that, the EKO is running in gasification mode. Once it reaches the setpoint, it drops back to idle mode.
There are a bunch of menu options here, but so far I’ve only had to fiddle with the setpoint and the fan control. Gasification works by way of a downdraft that sucks wood gas from the firebox in the top chamber down into a bottom chamber where superheated combustion occurs. In idle mode the fan runs at 40% capacity. In gasification mode it can run from 50% to 100%. I’m currently running at 60% unless it’s really cold (10F or below), in which case I bump up to 70%.
This isn’t ideal. I throttle back to keep the boiler from running too hot. Even when idling, there’s a minimum amount of heat produced, and it has to go somewhere. In the ideal scenario, you run flat out in 100% gasification mode and charge up a big thermal battery — e.g., a 500-gallon insulated water tank — then draw on that stored heat. That would be the most efficient, cleanest-burning way to use the EKO.
But the current setup was already a financial and logistical challenge so, like a lot of folks, I’ve punted on the storage tank for now. Meanwhile, we’re thinking about extending a circuit to the attached barn where Luann has her studio, which is currently heated by propane. If we do that we’ll give the EKO more water to heat, it’ll work harder, and it’ll be happier.
There’s one more safety feature related to overheating. In addition to the relief valve and the high-temp cutoff, the digital controller can activate one of the house zones (the biggest one) and dump excess heat there, even if the zone isn’t calling for it.
The controller appears in photo 7. It senses the EKO’s temperature, switches the EKO’s circulator pump, and controls its high-temp cutoff (see photos 4 and 5). It also controls the fossil fuel furnace, turning it on when the EKO’s water drops below 140F, and off when it rises above 160F.
damper open/close rod
Photo 8 shows the only two manual controls. The lever at top left cleans the heat exchanger. You just give it a stir whenever you load wood.
The rod with the ball handle opens and shuts the damper. Here it’s pulled out, the damper is closed, and the boiler is running. To load fuel you push in the rod to open the damper, power down the fan, and open the firebox door. When you’re done you shut the door, pull out the rod again to close the damper, and power up the fan.
Photo 9 shows the firebox. It’s big, you can load four or even five good-size armloads of split wood. The slot in the bottom connects the top chamber, where the wood burns and emits gas, to the bottom chamber, where gasification occurs.
Photo 10 shows the gasification chamber. You can see the same connecting slot, here from the bottom. Remember, the wood fire burns in the top chamber. Some people like to say that wood gasifiers burn upside down. There isn’t a lot of heat in the top chamber, and the stack temperature runs below 300F. The real heat happens in the bottom chamber.
Photos 11 and 12 show the two chambers in action. In photo 11, I’ve lit a wood fire in the cold, freshly-cleaned boiler. You just use newspaper, kindling, and a match, as with any wood fire.
In photo 12, a few minutes later, I’ve loaded more wood into the top chamber, shut the damper, and powered up the fan. What you see, and hear, is like the exhaust from a small rocket engine. At full blast, the temperature approaches 2000F.
A couple of minutes after photo 12, the readouts in photos 6 and 7 hit 160F, the oil burner clicked off, the EKO’s circulator pump clicked on, and my wood-fired central heater was back in action.
Today’s January 11, and it’s been running since Dec 4. There isn’t much maintenance. I should clean out the ash (and scrape out the creosote) weekly, but I’ve probably only done it three times since I started. Photo 13 shows the entire quantity of ash I’ve removed. As you can see, it isn’t much. The EKO has turned a lot of wood — I’m guessing close to two cords by now — into a very compact volume of powdery ash.
Two cords? I know. Although it does burn for a long time — a full load can go from eight to twelve hours, depending on the outside temperature — this thing eats wood for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. I bought six cords of semi-seasoned wood, it’s only January 11, I may need to supplement with some seasoned wood come March or April.
Still, I’m OK with that. It’s wonderful to sideline the oil furnace. I’m not saving as much as I would have at $140/barrel oil, but I’m still saving. And I feel like I’ve bought insurance against price volatility that was driving me nuts. Lots of friends pre-bought oil at four-fifty or even five bucks a gallon. That bet paid off every year except this one. I hated living with that craziness.
At May 2008 oil prices, I was looking at a three- or four-year payback for this solution. That doesn’t seem likely now, but I don’t regret the decision. The house is future-proofed with a flexible trio of heating systems. There’s the pellet stove which I still use in spring and fall, the wood boiler for winter, and the oil furnace for backup and for summertime water heat.
There’s been no help from the federal government, by the way. I did some research last fall to find out if my investment in this solution would qualify for a tax credit. According to energystar.gov, there is a tax credit for biomass stoves. But not for 2008. I’d have had to wait another month to earn 2009′s $300 credit. Oh well. EKO-Vimar probably doesn’t provide the manufacturer’s certification statement anyway.
To be honest, I’d rather be living in a smaller, newer house that doesn’t need a furnace. Maybe someday I’ll be able to gut and super-insulate this old house. But meanwhile, like nearly all New Englanders, I’ve got to burn something to survive winter. Most of us still burn oil. But some of us are going back to the future. It’s 1870 again with a twist. We’re burning renewable biomass in clean, efficient, smart appliances, and pumping dollars into the local economy. It’s a start.
January 11, 2009 at 7:56 pm
Wow…great story, Jon. I’ve heard bits and pieces in the blog and podcasts over the past year, but this really brings it together. I don’t think I’ll ever need this particular solution in Georgia *grin*, but you should that there are ideas out there to be tried, that persistence can make things happen, and sustainability doesn’t have to mean deprivation. Bravo!
January 11, 2009 at 10:47 pm
The impressively small quantity of ash speaks for the high efficiency of your system, Jon. (The two stoves that supply the only heat in our house–one an efficient kitchen cookstove, the other an EPA-certified Napoleon 1400–produce that much in a week.)
Do you get all your household hot water from the EKO-40? If so, that’s quite a savings.
But what about power outages? Don’t all three heating systems have electronic components?
January 11, 2009 at 11:46 pm
> sustainability doesn’t have to mean
> deprivation.
Now that I personally heave every log, though, it does, make me acutely conscious of the amount of energy — of one sort or another — I have to pump into this structure.
I would love to see a WPA-style effort dedicated to major home retrofits in the northern US climes.
Think what could be done with a fraction of the money we’ve given to the banks to do…what exactly?
January 11, 2009 at 11:49 pm
> Do you get all your household hot water
> from the EKO-40?
We do. We’d already switched hot water from electricity to oil some years back.
> But what about power outages? Don’t
> all three heating systems have
> electronic components?
Exactly right. I should’ve mentioned that. It’s a pretty significant vulnerability, especially in light of the epic outage that took out the majority of NH homes in December. A lot of folks bought generators in the wake of that episode. I haven’t yet but probably should.
January 12, 2009 at 12:36 am
I commend you for trying and succeeding in the face of the permit bureaucracy.
I would be interested in a rigorous analysis of the investment and savings (perhaps just with the actual experience of oil prices rather than theoretical oil prices). I have personally installed and compared direct solar applications for many years for my personal use and the payoff is over very long time periods. This is despite reducing the monthly costs in half for heating.
The dependence of these systems on electricity is troubling. Only direct solar can avoid that with convection but NH is a little far north for that to be useful.
January 12, 2009 at 12:55 am
There are two notions I find intriguing.
If you want to build a cost-comparable and conventional-looking passive solar house, then the “solar slab” design from James Kachadorian is brilliant. His Green Mountain Homes started building passive solar houses (in New England!) in the 1970′s. He also wrote a book on how to use the design.
If you are less concerned with convention, the use of high thermal mass walls (rammed earth or similar) in the design of a house is also interesting.
January 12, 2009 at 10:37 am
I agree with previous comments made about the ash output. In Virginia we heated the house with nothing more than a single cast iron woodstove in an old 1890s era farm house. There was no ductwork or radiators, just a giant open stair well that all the bedrooms opened onto. We had electric baseboard as a back up in each bedroom. The minimum amount of wood we used for any given winter was 3 1/2 cords, but we always estimated 4 for a measure of safety. And sometimes we would cut the wood ourselves or split the logs ourselves with a borrowed log splitter. Boy that takes me back.
January 13, 2009 at 11:47 pm
Thanks, Jon. I’ve been wondering how the gasifier worked out. We almost bit on a pellet boiler last fall, but balked at the price. Instead, we knocked out most of the first floor wall bisecting our cape, which improved the circulation so much that the pellet stove in the living room is keeping most of the house mostly warm most days and nights.
January 14, 2009 at 6:38 am
> Instead, we knocked out most of the
> first floor wall bisecting our cape
That’s a good strategy. Thought about that here too but the house is just too compartmentalized.
January 14, 2009 at 7:25 pm
[...] More here: Central heating with a wood gasification boiler [...]
January 19, 2009 at 10:11 am
[...] January 19, 2009 A conversation with Bob Jennings about new ways to heat with wood Posted by Jon Udell under Uncategorized On this week’s podcast I spoke with Bob Jennings, an engineer who specializes in alternative heating systems. In his view, the sun and the forests are major sources of practical renewable energy for New England’s near future. He designs and installs solutions based on solar hot water, and also on wood gasification boilers like the one whose installation and use I described here. [...]
January 19, 2009 at 4:15 pm
Thanks for all the helpful info, Jon. I ordered a pellet “furnace” for the basement which never showed up…and wondering what to do for next winter. I’m considering a second woodstove as an option…wondering why you didn’t go with a pellet furnace…was it only because you wanted to diversify your fuels?
January 19, 2009 at 4:46 pm
> was it only because you wanted to
> diversify your fuels?
Yep, that was the main reason.
January 19, 2009 at 5:52 pm
Nice story. Fugacity works. Wood gasification, fugacity. Oil has fugacity traits as well. Heated with water anaerobically it can be gassified as well. Oil gassification is also magnitudes more efficent then just oil. Any ideas about a possible oil gassification unit for heating?
January 23, 2009 at 3:11 am
Great project! Thanks for sharing and the write up. How did the insurance aspect pan out?
January 23, 2009 at 8:12 am
> How did the insurance aspect pan out?
Smoothly, once I assured them that the city was on board, and that licensed installers would be doing all the work.
January 26, 2009 at 2:44 pm
Hi Jon
I’m admiring of the way that what you have done illustrates some of the directions that governments should be taking. Thinking ‘local’, using a fuel that’s to-hand, high quality technology, an energy solution that ‘remembers’ that the market is a poor judge of what’s good for people and the planet, and breaks dependence upon agencies that use the market to decide what’s good for us.
Jim
January 27, 2009 at 8:47 am
[...] On this week’s podcast I spoke with Bob Jennings, an engineer who specializes in alternative heating systems. In his view, the sun and the forests are major sources of practical renewable energy for New England’s near future. He designs and installs solutions based on solar hot water, and also on wood gasification boilers like the one whose installation and use I described here. [...]
January 31, 2009 at 10:11 am
Hello,
I just listened to one of your podcasts about heating with alternative sources in New England and you discussed wood and solar. I wish you would’ve talked about geothermal as an alternative, too.
Geothermal systems are extremely efficient, provide heat, air conditioning, preheat for hot water and hopefully reduce the CO* output.
We invested in a geothermal system two years ago in Bedford, New Hampshire. Our electric bills that cover water (we are on a well), all electrical appliances, hot water and heat are between $200 and $250 in the winter. So we are saving even with the low oil prices ;)
-lajos
January 31, 2009 at 10:59 am
Interesting (heat and power) dual use system:
In September 2008 Pritchard Power Systems, with assistance from the Federal Government’s COMET program, completed and demonstrated a small steam engine fueled with wood pellets, the S5000, designed to produce around 5kWp of electricity.
Pritchard Power Systems – home:
http://bit.ly/eK2J
Pritchard Power Systems – Technology:
http://bit.ly/xHW0
January 31, 2009 at 11:16 am
Videos: http://bit.ly/2XxUiN
The Pritchard Power Systems S5000 is a small scale, multi-utility, enterprise energy system, capable of delivering mechanical power and electricity, hot water, space heating and if required, steam, all from the lowest grade fuels. The S5000 is designed to produce around 5kWp of electricity, and is shown in a test run.
February 2, 2009 at 4:44 pm
> I wish you would’ve talked about geothermal
> as an alternative, too.
Me too. So far I haven’t had any personal experience with geothermal, or met an appropriately knowledgeable expert, but maybe you can help me find one!
February 4, 2009 at 12:31 pm
[...] Jon Udell: Central heating with a wood gasification boiler [...]
February 4, 2009 at 1:29 pm
[...] alternatives to oil or gas for central heating, how about a wood gasification boiler for the home? Central heating with a wood gasification boiler Jon Udell I’ve been reading a lot recently about wood gasification, mostly about home-made camp stoves and [...]
February 23, 2009 at 3:52 am
Dear sir
I need some information ebout big wood coal machinery to purchase
March 29, 2009 at 2:28 pm
Very intressting too read abuot your meating with gasification boiler
April 23, 2009 at 1:20 pm
[...] Keene has a long way to go. My struggle to get the city to issue its first-ever approval for a clean, modern, efficient wood gasifier was epic, and cost me more than few sleepless [...]
April 26, 2009 at 9:11 am
Thanks for a most interesting article. We live in a large house in SW France. The recent hurricane here has left us with approx 60m3 (17 cords) of oak logs so we are considering an EKO-40 (with storage tank). (Currently the house is oil heated). Your wood burn rate is quite high. Do you have any idea what it would be with a storage tank?
April 26, 2009 at 3:11 pm
> Your wood burn rate is quite high.
Yes.
> Do you have any idea what it would be with
> a storage tank?
No, and I’m very curious about that.
May 27, 2009 at 10:28 am
The burn rate could be down to the type of wood,or just need a little tweek
May 27, 2009 at 10:28 am
Forgot to thank you for an excellently written article
May 29, 2009 at 4:30 pm
I have just purchased a wood gasification boiler that I will put in a shed about 150 feet from the house – piping the heat to a 100,000 BTU copper tube heat exchanger in a 900 gallon thermal storage tank. I have an oil furnace currently with about 6 zones to the baseboard in my old farm house in Maine. I am wondering about how to design the system. I have heard that it is better to hook the twp systems up so the wood boiler heat does not run through the oil boiler. This is much more work and more complicated and wonder if there really is much heat loss in going through the existing boiler. Do you have any sense of just how much loss there is?
June 1, 2009 at 10:01 am
> Do you have any sense of just how much
> loss there is?
I do not. However Bob Jennings (http://blog.jonudell.net/2009/01/19/a-conversation-with-bob-jennings-about-new-ways-to-heat-with-wood/) did suggest that there is another benefit to keeping the oil furnace warm: It’ll stay healthier that way.
July 22, 2009 at 9:04 pm
What is happening with the wood tar and spend fuel?
August 11, 2009 at 1:50 pm
Great article, just about finished with my install of the EKO 60. It seems that wood gets such a bad rap. But the truth is, wood is cheaper per BTU than any other heat source out there. Our install was a nightmare as well. After reading about the gasifiers, I decided on the EKO and found a few guys in the area who could do it for what seemed a reasonable amount. Well, it was headache after headache. Codes, prevented me from doing the Powervent option, plus I heard that option isn’t ideal, so we ended up building a chimney, but that was after we got the EKO delivered. Then, getting the 2000 pound beast in the basement was a chore in and of itself as originally we were going to put it in a shed outside. Code prevented us from doing that since it needed a vertical dump zone. We had the thing put in a shed though before we found out about the code violation. Most states allow this, but Maine needs the vertical dump zone to protect the shed apparently. :) You would think states with lots of trees and few people would be on board with wood heating devices and make it easier. Oh well. We had trouble finding an installer who wouldn’t rip us off with the install and who would do it the way we wanted. Most were scared to death of the beast. The problem was we needed an installer with a wood burning license, somewhat common, but limiting, then on top of that, how many of those have experience installing something like this. We eventually convinced one of the installers, who was scared to take the project on, into doing it. I think he did a great job, but it was a learning process for both of us. We did go with two 500 gallon propane tanks for storage. You would definately find your wood consumption dropping with the use of storage due to the fact that these beasts like to burn flat out, and if the thing is idling all the time because your zones are satisfied, then heat is just going up your chimney, not to mention a lot of creosote. I am hoping for one load a day during the coldest days, because my wife won’t touch the thing, that was our agreement. We are keeping our oil boiler as a backup, so they are tied in series. I figure either tonight or tomorrow night will be the first burn, as I am almost done insulating the tanks. It is about 80 degrees and can’t imagine how hot the house would get without the insulation.
I wish people like us were more common. These gasifiers are falling by the wayside as more “green” sources such as geothermal and solar get a lot of attention. Solar is great if you have radiant floor heat since you are able to use the lower temps, but most in NE do not have that. Geothermal, still uses a lot of electricity, so it isn’t necessarily green, plus it is only useful for forced hot air, so you would need to change to ductwork throughout your house. Granted, you get AC in the summertime, but here in Maine, I can count the AC usable days on my fingers and toes. Plus I grew up with forced hot air and didn’t like it as heat was not constant and changed with room location. With forced hot air you would generally have only one zone, which lets face it is not ideal.
Once again loved the article. I feel your pain, and love your perserverance.
August 12, 2009 at 9:47 am
> the Powervent option
What’s that?
> Code prevented us from doing that since
> it needed a vertical dump zone.
What’s that?
> We did go with two 500 gallon propane
> tanks for storage.
Nice. Wish I had but it was dicey enough just getting the basic system in. Hope we can add storage in the future.
> These gasifiers are falling by the
> wayside as more “green” sources such as
> geothermal and solar get a lot of
> attention.
Interestingly there /is/ an incentive here in Keene, although nobody knows about it, and I was the first to claim it:
http://blog.jonudell.net/2009/04/23/a-different-take-on-green-keene/
August 13, 2009 at 9:13 am
In Maine and many other states you can’t vent oil and solid fuels out the same chimney. A Powervent can be used for the oil boiler, but it has to be so many feet from a window, so many feet above ground, and can stink if you have a window open anywhere near it.
Basically the vertical dump zone, also to Maine code requires the boiler to be hooked up to a zone that is above the boiler so that if it overheats, some of the heat will be distributed to the zone, thus hopefully cooling the boiler down. So if we had it in a shed, we would need a pipe coming up through the roof of the shed into the side of the house. :) That idea got squashed pretty quick. The vertical dump zone really just protects the boiler, but there are many safety features on these that make the dump zone seem unnecesary. Now, with the boiler in the house am I glad I have the dump zone, yes definately. But in a shed?
On the tanks, they are older propane tanks that could still hold propane and high pressures, but were instead taken out of service and had fittings welded to them. They are not ASME certified, so they aren’t to code, but they are able to hande pressures to over 1000 pounds and will generally be working with pressures of around 15 to 20 pounds. At worst, 30 pounds until the pressure relief valves kick in. We have relief valves on the EKO, one on the tanks hooked up to both of them, one on the oil boiler and one on the superstorage for the domestic hot water, so I feel very safe. We have ball valves on the tanks to be able to shut them off from the system, with collars I can take off so if a code officer came by, technically they wouldn’t be connected. I am really hoping the storage makes life easier. We went with the propane tanks instead of the open tanks for a lot of reasons, the liners on the open tanks degrade over time, there is a lot of copper coil needed for the open tanks = $ and possible leaks, we wouldn’t be able to keep the tank to the higher temp that we can with the propane tanks, and it is extremely simple, no exchanger necessary, plus they were at least $2000 cheaper even considering the huge expansion tank needed and the rigging company required to get them in the basement and the shipping charges from NY. So it was a no brainer.
Well, thats just it, nobody knows about these things, not even many of the installers. They are familiar with wood boilers, just not gasifiers. Its quite sad. My father-in-law who burned most of his life will argue with me about wood having gas that can burn. People don’t understand and associate wood burning with a campfire or wood stove.
We will qualify for the government tax rebate of I think $1500 for boilers installed in 2009. It meets the defintion so we will go for it. These incentives are nothing compared to the rebates on the geothermals and such. The problem this posed is that we are first to market and you experienced what I experienced because of it. These things are safer than a wood stove yet they are harder to get installed in regards to codes??????? Like Bill Clinton “I feel your pain.”
September 17, 2009 at 5:46 pm
That is a great article. I really think that money would have been better spent on something like geothermal.
October 20, 2009 at 3:42 pm
Hi Jon
Great Article.
I am in the process of deciding on a heating solution for a house I am building in the country. I’m in Canada, Ontario and winters can get quite cold over here. Since the house is in a rural area, with no connections to anything other then electricity and a phone line, the options for heating are not that great, and once you do decide on something, the installation and provision of fuel to the system could be very costly too. Currently I have a cabin heated by a wood stove and it surpasses all my expectations. In the new house, a gasifier would be an idea solution in my opinion, I just hope the building inspectors in the area have heard of such a thing, and the lack of air ducts, oh, a dream come true!
Great work! Congrats!
October 24, 2009 at 8:17 pm
I have had a EKO 40 in my home for 2 heating seasons.
A thermal storage tank is what I would like to install next.
October 24, 2009 at 8:38 pm
I have had a EKO 40 in my home for 2 heating seasons.
A thermal storage tank is what I would like to install next.
Where can I get info on parts (gaskets) and old propane tanks dimensios?
December 18, 2009 at 4:06 pm
Nice.
Sorry for my english.
Some facts:
1.wood gasification boiler must be conected to water storage tank(insulated min 50l on kw of power or more)
2.water return must be higher than 65 degres(celzius), use (laddomat,esbe,etc,..)
3.use dry wood(less than 20% humidity)
December 28, 2009 at 4:27 pm
[...] only thanks to a serendipitous encounter with a city councilor at a social event — that my wood gasifier qualified me for an exemption. This was the first such exemption, and to my knowledge is still the [...]
December 28, 2009 at 4:37 pm
[...] only thanks to a serendipitous encounter with a city councilor at a social event — that my wood gasifier qualified me for an exemption. This was the first such exemption, and to my knowledge is still the [...]
January 14, 2010 at 10:29 pm
I have a Royal indoor boiler and want to upgrade to a gasifier.Eko 120000 BTU. I like the propane tank heat storage idea, Where could i find such a tank?
Gerald
June 4, 2010 at 6:25 pm
My husband and I currently use a woodstove to preheat water for a propane-fired radiant heat system. We are thinking of our next step up the sustainability ladder, and a wood gasification boiler could be it, especially since we live in a woodlot. This is a great article!
When you say “cord”, do you mean a standard cord (4′x4′x8″) or a face cord (4′x8′x16″, or thereabouts)?
June 6, 2010 at 9:40 am
Yes, standard cords. I had 8 on hand last winter but it was mild and I only used 6.
June 7, 2010 at 5:07 pm
Hi Mate I live in Australia and have been researching wood fired boilers for some time your site has been the most helpful to date one question .Could you bury the holding tank 500 gal and would the ground be good enough insulation
Thanks Mate great story
June 8, 2010 at 7:20 am
Could you bury the holding tank 500 gal and would the ground be good enough insulation?
Dunno. I’ve never heard of that being done but it’s an interesting idea!
August 24, 2010 at 3:50 am
Hi Greg, I live in Northern Tasmania and have installed a Kuenzel wood-gasifying boiler system from Germany. There is a bit more information as a case study on my web site. It was not a cheap option, but we chose it as it enables us to use the wood grown on our property as conveniently and efficiently as possible.
August 24, 2010 at 3:53 am
Sorry Greg: web site is http://www.hamiltonenergy.com.au The Kuenzel system has 3,000 litres of very well insulated heat storage in two tanks, and a domestic hot water tank which can be heated indirectly by the stored hot water and by solar hot water collectors.