Garn 2000 for house and shop

[mynx]

Grigg Good to hear ever thing with the Garn is good. Hope the guy that welded mind when built, was long gone before yours was built. I open the door to my Garn barn very slowly ever time I go to reload and hope water not running out on the floor again. Made it past the year mark of the last leak. I hoping for a good winter with no leaks. Have a good holiday season.

That’s funny! I do the same thing after my rust out disaster the year before last. Every time I go in to make a fire, I cautiously peak all the way around looking for water. Thankfully, none so far. I guess the 27 ft.² of plate that we weld it in is doing its job. When I was looking through the OP’s Photos, I was thinking that if mine had been enclosed to that extent, I would never have known about the leak until all hell broke loose. Mine is in a dedicated building with 3 feet all the way around and 8 feet in front. I have 5 feet of space over the manhole so I can access easily. I strongly recommend a periodic water inspection! I too am very happy with my unit now that it is functional. I hate 4000 ft.² of house and 1000 ft.² of shop and sometimes my greenhouse. I live in the upper peninsula of Michigan and burn about 10 cords per year. This year I have really nice dry hardwood and it’s amazing how much less wood i use. And with temperatures in the teens and 20s, I burn two fires per day each with about a dozen good maple or oak splits. I keep my temperature between 140 and 180. I try never to let it go below 140 because there is a bit of a temperature drop between the boiler and the house.

 

[Grigg]

...When I was looking through the OP’s Photos, I was thinking that if mine had been enclosed to that extent, I would never have known about the leak until all hell broke loose...

I thought about that and the front sill has a bunch of saw kerfs in it to let water out of the enclosure, at least that's the idea. Hope to never find out.

 

[sloeffle]

I try never to let it go below 140 because there is a bit of a temperature drop between the boiler and the house.

If you have good pipe in the ground you should see about 1° per 100'.

 

[mynx]

If you have good pipe in the ground you should see about 1° per 100'.

On a slightly different topic, have any of you found a wireless surfacemount temperature sensor that you like? I would really love to have my temperature information accessible in my house so that I don’t have to trudge through the snow to check up on things. It would be a real bonus if I could check it remotely as well when I’m traveling.

 

[sloeffle]

On a slightly different topic, have any of you found a wireless surfacemount temperature sensor that you like? I would really love to have my temperature information accessible in my house so that I don’t have to trudge through the snow to check up on things. It would be a real bonus if I could check it remotely as well when I’m traveling.

There's a multitude of them. Inkbird, Firboard, and mocreo seem to be popular ones. Personally I went with a PID controller but I can't monitor it remotely, I do have some alarms that will go off if my water is getting too cold etc. I'll probably do a control by web device next year for my system.

 

[mynx]

There's a multitude of them. Inkbird, Firboard, and mocreo seem to be popular ones. Personally I went with a PID controller but I can't monitor it remotely, I do have some alarms that will go off if my water is getting too cold etc. I'll probably do a control by web device next year for my system.

Thanks for the recommendations. I looked at those, but not them are really what I’m looking for. I would like some thing that I can connect a surface mounted temperature probe from my outlet and inlet pipes to and ideally send remotely. The ladder is not a dealbreaker because I could always put a camera on the screen. But I do need some thing that I can connect probes to.

 

[peakbagger]

There are wireless barbeque grille monitors for sale on Amazon for cheap. Just a couple of thrermocouples and whatever is needed to communicate to wirelessly.

 

[Tonty]

That’s what I use. They make a more basic one, also, but this one has more options. But it will cost more than the aforementioned barbecue probes
Edit: first link doesn’t work. Here’s a new one:
UbiBot WS1 Pro WiFi Temperature Sensor,Wireless Thermometer Hygrometer,Temperature Data Logger with Alerts, Remote Humidity Monitor,IFTTT(2.4GHz WiFi only) https://a.co/d/22Ibby0

 

[brenndatomu]

wireless barbeque grille monitors

This...many of them will go 300' line of site...just tape the probe to the pex line and insulate over it...gives fairly accurate temp readings.

 

[salecker]

Someone once used an old iphone's camera to "watch his temp gauges.
He would just access the phone and see what his gauges read