Wood chip boilers?

[DanS]

Anyone here ever look into wood chip boilers for home heat? I've heard of people in Europe using this pretty reliably:

http://www.heizomat.de/int/heizomat.php?id=heizomat&lang=ENG

The reason it's real interesting to us is that we have a nearly endless supply of wood chips, and the only electricity required to keep the house warm would be enough to run the auger, a combustion fan, a water pump, and a couple valves.

Since we were going to run radiant heat in the floors (and have a solar system to heat the water mostly), this wouldn't be a whole lot of extra work for us to ad. And the ability to keep the house at a truly constant temperature all winter long would be pretty key for us. We do have a 1912 Baldwin Piano that we'd like to keep as stable as possible, and of course with the sheer number of wood chips we'll produce every year, it seems like it's about like having propane (in that it would be automatic heat), but based off of the caloric energy that lands on our property from the sun--and as I said: we've got a lot of trees to cut and thin every year.

So, has anyone here used, or looked into systems like the Heizomat?

Dan

[DanS]

Nobody eh?

Here's another one:

http://www.froeling.com/en/t4-movie-en.html

So cool! Trying to find US distributors of these things in residential sized units isn't looking too easy though.

Research continues...

[loghousenut]

Nobody eh?

Here's another one:

http://www.froeling.com/en/t4-movie-en.html

So cool! Trying to find US distributors of these things in residential sized units isn't looking too easy though.

Research continues...

It looks really cool but there's sure a lot of things to go haywire.

[rckclmbr428]

I have seen a lot of wood pellet stoves that are similar style, but you have to buy the pellets. I have shoveled a LOT of sawdust when we had horses on the farm for 15+ years, I would be concerned the auto feed auger would just drag a tunnel out and it would take constant poking at it to keep it falling down in

[loghousenut]

Agitator in the hopper would be easy.

[DanS]

It looks really cool but there's sure a lot of things to go haywire.

I'm seeing an auger motor, the auger itself, and then some pretty simple control sensors. No more than I would see with a propane furnace.


I have seen a lot of wood pellet stoves that are similar style, but you have to buy the pellets. I have shoveled a LOT of sawdust when we had horses on the farm for 15+ years, I would be concerned the auto feed auger would just drag a tunnel out and it would take constant poking at it to keep it falling down in

I'm thinking it's almost exactly like a pellet stove (we've got one in our rental, and it's been really simple and reliable for us), but using chips instead of pellets (which reduces the processing required). And the chip bins I'm thinking of have perforated floors, so that if you get any sawdust in there, it would fall through a grate and not foul the auger.


Agitator in the hopper would be easy.

I see a couple versions of agitators and things to ensure that it has a steady feed of chips.

I'll keep researching, as there's probably another 2-3 years before we have to get serious about hooking up water lines for heat, but I'm still very intrigued by the idea of chipping up trees and getting my heat from that. It would be easy to use simple wood boilers, but that would require us to be home enough to get that much heat.

Although if the reliability of the wood chip boilers isn't up there, we'll probably go with solar water heat for the house (to keep it nice and toasty) and then install a simple wood boiler for the shop (so that I could heat the shop only when we're home).

More research required....

Dan