Heating with Woodchips

[Mr Ed]

Surely though you will be using so much of the heat in the boiler to combust the fresh chip coming in that it will be very very ineffcient even if you do have access to large amounts of chip ?

 

No. most european boilers run at over 85% efficiency even with fresh chip.

All your doing is usingthe exhaust gasses to heat the boiler rather than the direct flame. Effectively your gassifying the chip and using the heat and combusting gasses to heat your boiler.

 

 

 

 

Tradtional problems with woodchip fired installations are chip quality as the infeed systems are frankly crap and jam up all to easy. If the chip infeed is automatic and it jams while your at work your going to have either a very cold house and no hot water or a broken boiler.

 

Personally and I know it's a ball ache i'd stick with log burners if i had access to free wood.

 

Certain boilers have feed issues... and some dont. its down the design.

 

And after nearly 30 years of feeding a log boiler, I'm sick of it.

[Mr Ed]

would it be nice to look at?

Be a feature?

Run 10 Radiators

 

Will it be nice to look at? Yes, it will look like a small garden shed.

 

Be a feature? not like your little log boiler... but I have a big old farmhouse with 14 radiators, an office and 2 workshops to heat.

[firewoodman]

are the boilers reliable???

i know the one i supply - binder- has quite alot of down time

[Mr Ed]

are the boilers reliable???

i know the one i supply - binder- has quite alot of down time

 

every log burner I know has endless 'downtime' - like everytime I fail to put logs in it.

 

I know that some of the more complex boilers have issues - mainly with electronic sensors.

Lets face it, you'll never get the kind of reliability of oil and gas with a woodboiler. but long term, how reliable is the supply fossil fuels?

[bob]

how much chip would they use in a 24hr period

[Chris Sheppard]

I did this course in 2007

 

 

http://www.northwoods.org.uk/c.php/home/training_&_skills/ignite_woodfuel_training

 

 

Yep, Me too - was worth the £100 for the three days but when I did it it seemed aimed more at the bigger installations like hotels and community projects. Learnt a lot though and would recommend it to others. Did mine through Yorwoods but the guy from northwoods was running it.

[Quickthorn]

Have you looked at grants?

 

Low Carbon Buildings

 

Lots of hoops to jump through, plus you have to have an approved product, but they include at least one boiler that's designed for up to 55% moisture content chip..

 

Binder

[garth mc garth]

i looked into supplying chip for a domestic market as i was unsure my supply of timber would be sufficient to supply commercial or industrial applications but found even with woodfuel being pushed and pushed as an alternative fuel people ie domestic werent interested. courses are being run locally for people interested in supplying chip, selling the boilers and even members of public who potentailly gonna invest but found course numbers were small even when well advertised. more suppliers than clients

[stoxs]

HA. you read my mind...

Going to build myself a woodchip fired inclined grate furnace with 2 pass 30kw boiler. It will have to take fresh chips from my tree work, not g30 25% mc chips.

I'm going to design the whole thing onto a skid and put a roof and sides on it so it requires minimum installation costs.

 

Like the idea,

 

could it all be made for under 10k?

[Lyn Ed]

saw a good programme on horse and country channel, sky channel 280 called rural matters, about a guy who burns woodchip, looked like it was softwood, he was putting it through a jenson but dont know if he was drying it, he was using an austrian binder boiler, keep an eye on the listings they always repeat programmes.