Heating

[Stereo]

Alycidon, I accept that moisture content is absolutely critical to these machines. I would question though how many people in reality have a year's worth of firewood at 20% or less to hand? The reality is that most people will be buying 'seasoned' wood as they need it which will probably be closer to 25-30%. I'm sure the logs you used at your show were perfect for the job (20% ash is about as good as it gets).

 

I do plan next winter to try kiln drying batches of wood using a mud oven type thing to see if it makes a worthwhile difference. I would also guess that your show machine was perfectly clean inside and this can make a big difference to performance. Again, very dry hard-wood will keep the machine clean but if you are using softwood, even very dry you can get a significant soot build up quite quickly.

 

Don't get me wrong. I do love our machine and I like the thought that has gone into the design of it. I have some issues with build quality but it's not too bad overall.

 

I just wonder how realistic a concept it is to build a machine which requires such dry timber. I always get the feeling that we could get a lot more out of ours if we had better fuel. I kind of wish we had gone for a simpler machine such as an old second hand Rayburn for cooking and ambient heat only and got an eco angus boiler or similar for the water. I sometimes think that the effort of heating the water takes a lot out of the cooking performance of the machine.

[renewablejohn]

You just need to feed it with dry ( min 20% MC) wood or heat logs or smokeless solid fuel.

 

A

 

Surely you mean Max 20% MC. If you feed an Esse with Min 20% MC it will be tarred up within a matter of weeks and then you will have the fun of trying to clean the airways.

 

As for the W23 it was sold to me as a stove which could provide DHW and central heating and as such was eligible for reduced rate Vat. Esse obviously have now downgraded the stoves to DHW only.

[Stereo]

We got the reduced VAT as well. There's quite a lot of stuff on the net about the output figures being 'ambitious'. Still it's nice to have glowing away on a winter's day and will cook a leg of venison better than anything I have ever tried.

[WINTERBOURNE]

^^

 

It's called Renewable Heat Incentive (RHI).

 

I'm assuming that you're in a non smokeless zone.

 

G

 

As the supplier Eco Angus we will know very shortly on wood gasification log boilers (and wood pellet boilers/wood chip boilers) with regards to DEFRA and smokeless zones.

We are expecting the final announcement on the RHI for domestic installations around July. It is hoped that their will be a tally between MCS approved boilers (Microgeneration Certification Scheme) as ours are and smokeless zones with DEFRA.

We have test reports showing emissions data on all our boilers.

They pass the proposed Government standards.

These wood boilers burn cleaner than all wood burning stoves as 95% of the time the chimney flap is shut and you are burning the wood gases.

When the boiler is at full output all you get from the top of the flue is a heat shimmer!!

To envisage a typical installation we have a picture on our web site

http://www.ecoangus.co.uk/ecoangus_images/Eco_Angus_Wood_Gasification_Log_Boiler_installation.jpg

[bjm logging]

I have an oil Rayburn No.1 and I think it's about time it was replaced with something more efficient. Just wondering what you all use for heating & hot water and how you rate it? I have plenty of firewood available so I'd like to make better use of that resource but I'm open to any ideas. Thanks

 

Hi mate Ihad the same problem as you, Rayburn of22 fuel bills rising went onto website they said it would be costing around £51 quid a week to run never mind about all the faff to change the wicks and vaccum out regularly,I have fitted a Dunsley Highlander 10 in place of rayburn does hot water heating and have found out you can cook on top of the stove. We live 1000ft above sea level and in a draughty old farm house,I can say we have never been as warm it runs 7 large rads and loads of hot water in fact i now have that many showers i am think i might get a skin condition

[Alycidon]

Renewable John,

Surely you mean Max 20% MC. If you feed an Esse with Min 20% MC it will be tarred up within a matter of weeks and then you will have the fun of trying to clean the airways.

 

As for the W23 it was sold to me as a stove which could provide DHW and central heating and as such was eligible for reduced rate Vat. Esse obviously have now downgraded the stoves to DHW only.

 

 

Yes you are right, maximum moisture 20% and 14% preferable. Sorry. 'Seasoned' wood at 30% is no good at all. I have photos of a flue access panel leaking tar down a wall following a cooker being fed wet wood. Took several chimney clean logs to clean the tar in the chimney.

 

The VAT issue I took up with the Revenue at length about a year ago. Initially their local view was that it was up to me as the retailer to decide if it qualified for 5%. They did agree though that if a subsequent VAT inspection disagreed with this the retailer would have to pay the balance of the VAT, plus a fine of at least the same value, more if there are other accounting errors. There seems little scope for an appeal.

 

This would mean the retailer loosing money very heavily, margins on these are very thin anyway. In the end I insisted on a written letter from the main VAT office in Nottingham telling me what rate to charge, they rang all wood fired cooker with water boiler manufactures and asked them what the appliances principal job was, was it cooking food ( 20%)or heating water (5%). As they are all principally Cookers then the cooker rate applies, currently 20%. Esse have subsequently amended their advice to retailers.

 

The only way you can now buy a wood fired appliance at 5% VAT is if its principal job is to heat water as a boiler and any cooking facility is secondary. So it needs to also look like a boiler as well. Retailers that have sold cookers with integral boilers at 5% in the past are on very thin ice when the VAT man comes to check.

 

A

Edited May 5, 2011 by Alycidon

[gensetsteve]

Our boilers will burn all softwoods, all hardwoods.

Pallet wood is absolutely no problem.

Even if there is nails or bolts in the wood these will fall through eventually into the combustion chamber with the (very minimal) fine ash.

I have been burning old floorboards from my house for the last week that have plenty of nails.

I clean out the combustion chamber once a week and put the half coal bucket of ash on my vegetable patch ( i have a garden riddle that fishes out the nails first).

Now that i have turned the heating off i can get accumulator tank to 90°C and this can provide hot water for about 4 days now.

When the top stat on my tank gets down to 50°C i just do another batch burn. This would be a full loading chamber that would burn through in gasification mode in about 4 hours and the tank would be back up to 90°C to go again.

What they do not like is MDF, chipboard or plywood bacuase of the glue....not good for emissions.

The pallet wood would be best used as a mix with softwoods or hardwoods as you will prolong the burn time.

It is also good wood to build up the ember layer when you start the fire before adding the chunkier stuff to fill up the loading chamber.

 

I would be careful what you burn as pallets get sprayed with all kinds of paint especially in china. Any timber that has been preserved will more than likely have tanalith on it which does not break down in a domestic boiler. The side effects of putting the ash on your veg plot will be it comes up through the plant and will give head aches etc. One way to see if you have concentrated preservative left in the ash is to pour water on it if it goes green and bubbles its a good hint. We produce bags of kindling but would never use preserved timber or pallets. If you do a search online with tanalith it will give more info.

[Linesman1]

I have a 355 SFW linked to an oil fired boiler (rayburn acting as lead boiler) all linked by a bit of kit by 'heating innovations' - we burn @ a cube a week and in addition to being the warmest for years saved @ a grand on oil!

[Alycidon]

I would be careful what you burn as pallets get sprayed with all kinds of paint especially in china. Any timber that has been preserved will more than likely have tanalith on it which does not break down in a domestic boiler. The side effects of putting the ash on your veg plot will be it comes up through the plant and will give head aches etc. One way to see if you have concentrated preservative left in the ash is to pour water on it if it goes green and bubbles its a good hint. We produce bags of kindling but would never use preserved timber or pallets. If you do a search online with tanalith it will give more info.

 

There are a lot of 'commercial' grade wood pellets around made of pallets, I am burning a 50/50 mix of commercial and virgin DIN standard pellets. The commercial alone produce clinkers. For some reason the above mix does not. I just load a bag at a time of alternate stacks.

 

A

[Woody Wood Pecker]

I would be careful what you burn as pallets get sprayed with all kinds of paint especially in china. Any timber that has been preserved will more than likely have tanalith on it which does not break down in a domestic boiler. The side effects of putting the ash on your veg plot will be it comes up through the plant and will give head aches etc. One way to see if you have concentrated preservative left in the ash is to pour water on it if it goes green and bubbles its a good hint. We produce bags of kindling but would never use preserved timber or pallets. If you do a search online with tanalith it will give more info.

 

I've wondered this too. A normal wood burning stove burns at a certain temperature. However, a wood gasification boiler burns at up to 1200 degrees centigrade (I believe) - this is the same temperature that a commercial incinerator burns at which gets rid of all pollutants (or at least deposits it over Rotherham if the reports in the Sheffield newspapers are true).

 

Now, I'm not sure what the firebox temperature is in a gasification boiler and whether that would allow the odd offcut of stuff like decking to be mixed with wood from tree surgery. Having just finished my decking in my garden, I have a few kilos of offcuts to get rid of - so long as they won't cause more damage to the environment throwing in a gasification boiler rather than burying in a landfill site, I may as well produce a little hot water with them.

 

G