inguy said:
To answer your question; I would rather have a 1984 Ford pick up (instead of the model T) than a 2012 ford pick up. Too many gadgets on new vehicles to go wrong and it costs more to work on them which is one of the biggest complaints I have heard about gassers.
I think I may be finding a difference here. We may be talking apples and oranges. Being on this site, I have seen a lot of stove names I have never heard of before. The OWB companies that make gassers now are not showing up on this site. For example, heatmor, heatmaster, shaver, hardy central boiler, hawken and many more. They are the gassers that I've heard negative things about. people like their OWB's better than their gassers-partially b/c these companies are new at it will all the EPA guidelines.
So, tell me more about these gassers i've been seeing on here like the orlan, atmos, frohling, econoburn etc. They don't look weather durable. Are they meant to be inside? Are they more durable than say the OWB's? What about leaking? Can you give me some brand names to research. Every site I've been too won't give prices without calling them. I just want an idea of how much one would cost to heat 2500 sq ft house and 3200 sq ft garage/barn.
Speaking to your first question as to why many of the OWB companies don't push their gassers;
In many cases the first attempts by these companies have not and do not work very well. Witness the fact that the big guy on the block, Central Boiler, is already on their second iteration and from what I understand from a CB dealer out east the company has stopped backing up the first and left dealers and customers hanging in many cases. I know a guy that kept all of his repair receipts and after a couple years and nearly $5K out of his pocket in non warranty repairs got a lawyer involved and made CB buy it back. Talking with end users in my travels and after installing a few different brands here locally, I hear pretty much the same stories all over.
It must be said though that in probably 50% of the cases, poor quality unseasoned wood is being used. No gasser out there is going to do good with that. My son in law discovered that with his Econoburn and everyone else here has also. Traditional OWB's due to the nature of their design will "digest" green wood. And I do mean "digest" because what happens in there really can't be called combustion. A traditional OWB gets away with that due to the nature of the design, Most are more like a pot of water hanging over a camp fire than an actual boiler meant to transfer maximum heat value of the fuel into the water.
As far as the design of the European style gasification boilers is concerned you are correct. These are not outdoor rated units. There are a couple manufacturers that have enclosed their gasification unit and made it an outdoor capable product, Econoburn for one, but any of them can be installed in an outbuiling and piped to your house the same as an OWB. This is by far the most common route around here. You have to remember that these units were and are designed in Europe where there are realistic emission laws and such a thing as an OWB does not exist. I remember telling some of the big wigs at Viessmannn (Germany) about outdoor wood burners and they could not for the life of them understand why anyone would put heating equipment outdoors.
Pricing: You'll find that a decent outdoor gasification unit like the Portage and Main will start out at around $11,000 with the next model up jumping to about $15K. (Your sq ft might work better with the larger one) Econoburn's outdoor rated unit will be in the same ballpark. Others will be similar.
If you consider an indoor unit for either your basement or in an outbuilding (my first recommendation always) You can drop the cost to around $9K and up for a unit sized to heat your load. Added to that would be the cost of storage, which IMHO should be and probably some day will be, mandatory. For a unit with lot's of storage built in like a Garn 1500, which would run your load nicely, you would be looking at about $13,500 depending on the choice of flue. (Vertical flue a few hundred higher)
Gassers by their nature are a bit more complex, with Garn being the exception there, and they may require a little bit of a learning curve for satisfactory operation. I think that has a lot of the OWB dealers a bit gunshy about them also. It certainly would not be too much for someone like yourself who is not afraid to ask questions.
The dealers don't understand them in many cases and they don't want to educate themselves or their customers. In addition, the sad reality is that if they started really telling the truth about gasification efficiency, it would pretty much expose what they have been saying about the traditional OWB's for years as a lie.
Hope that gives you a little guidance.
Send me a PM here if you want. I'd be happy to help you talk it out.
