Tarm Bonus Plus 30 Sale

[velvetfoot]

Now, I'm no shill, but I just happened to see the subject gasification boiler on sale for $3500. That seems like a good deal to me. It's small, and I bet you could get by with a smaller tank as well.
(broken link removed to http://woodboilers.com/hs-tarm-bonus-plus-30-wood-boiler.html)

 

[Bad LP]

I was very tempted by that deal but too small is a problem.

 

[jebatty]

I think the idea of a package deal, boiler, loading unit, storage, at cetera, is really a good idea. That eliminates many of the design problems and not getting the right parts or the wrong size parts.

 

[maple1]

I don't think it's 'that' small.

I have a 40kw boiler and would not hesitate to consider that one to replace it, and I think I would be all over it if I was looking for a new one right now. But would not reduce the amount of storage just because it is 'smaller' - that comes down to how much flexibility you want, and more storage = more flexibility.

Lotsa guys out there doing some great heating with an Eko 25.

But if you have a quite large heat load, a bigger one would be better. Hard to say if it would be 'worth it' or not though.

 

[jebatty]

Maple has a point. I have a Solo + 40, 140,000 BTU, for my shop. The shop has a calculated heat load of 35000 BTU. The highest heat load I've ever seen has been slightly under 20000 BTU. A smaller boiler would meet the shop's needs well, although it would take longer to heat the 1000 gallon storage up to a high temperature. A 30 certainly would work, the question is how much flexibility, how much storage and how fast you want it to load storage.

 

[velvetfoot]

Plus, I think, how often you want to load wood. It looks like a sweet unit and Tarm's rep is for a long lasting unit.

 

[maple1]

The Tarm name is the sealer for me.

Right now with mine I was burning about 6 hours max a day last winter. Typical would be light at 4pm, reload around 6:30, then another visit around 9 or so and maybe add another half load. (I rarely stuff it full). Or more often reload around 7 or 7:30 and that would be it. It would only be maybe one more trip to the boiler to throw another half or full load in (maybe not though if stuffed full), which only takes a couple minutes - easy to do with a basement boiler, or if it's in a shop during the day where you are puttering around anyway. Once you get the boiler lit, adding another load later is easy. You would still have to burn every day so not seeing having a bit smaller firebox as an issue. For me at least. Being able to skip a days burning or not at times is something worth considering, but that is way more on size of storage than boiler.

 

[jebatty]

When thinking about "too small," don't confuse a Tarm Btuh rating with a fossil fuel boiler rating and think that you need a Tarm with the same rating as a fossil fuel replacement. Wood gasification hot water heat typically is typically longer periods of providing hot water at a lower temperature than a fossil fuel boiler. An example is when Deep Portage switched to wood with a Wood Gun E500 and a Garn WHS3200. Without going back to the details, both were shown to be able to provide long period Btuh output at about 500,000 each, or 1 million total. And these two wood boilers replaced LP boilers rated at 2.4 million Btuh. DP never has had to switch "on" the LP boilers due to lack of required hot water heat, including the periods into the -40F range which occasionally happen around here (although much less frequent in occurrence and duration than in the past).

 

[TCaldwell]

That could be a sweet o2 control project!

 

[peakbagger]

I want one but as long as my burnham keeps running I cant justify it.