Help with correct sizing

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Moosestache

New Member
Hearth Supporter
Apr 11, 2008
9
Southern Maine
Hi everyone!! I'm thinking hard about getting an indoor wood boiler but I'm having some trouble figuring out how big I should go.

I live in a 2 story 7 year old colonial with about 2500sqft plus I have a room above the garage of about 900 sqft, plus the basement of about another 1200 sqft, which has one daylight side. I'm not quite sure how to calculate the basement in my calculations for my needs.

I've been looking at wood gun and tarm units some, and they both have 140k btu units and then a larger unit the E150 in wood gun which is about 150k btu's or so. When I talk to the companies, both seem to think I'm sort of in between the two models. I hate to pay more to get a bigger unit if I don't need it, and yet I would hate to have a unit that isn't big enough for my needs. I also read about some problems that occur when you have a unit that is too big for your needs (I don't plan on putting a tank in to start with).

I guess while I'm typing I may as well ask everyone's opinions on both the wood gun and the tarm units. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
 
Alot depends if you are going to have some type of heat storage , if your boiler is oversized slightly it will be easier to operate . If your not going to use storage ( which makes your life so much easier) you will need to operate the boiler more on the heat load , maybe have several smaller fires than one large one. Lets put it this way if you have to small a boiler and no storage your not going to be happy.
 
Welcome to the Boiler Room, Moosestache.

You can download a free heatloss calculator at http://www.heatinghelp.com

If you're looking at the Tarm and the Wood Gun, also consider the EKO and Biomax (top banner) and the Econoburn (bottom banner). All three are similar in design (Euro downdraft) to the Tarm and Wood Gun models.

You can get a good sense of how people like the individual brands by browsing the threads in this forum.

I'd echo what woodmaster said about sizing. If you have storage, there's room for sizing error on both ends. Without a tank it gets a little trickier. My personal preference would be to slightly oversize if you're planning to add a tank at some point. Undersize if you're planning to run longterm without storage.
 
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