Central heating with a wood gasification boiler

Energy & Sustainability
Central heating with a wood gasification boiler

Wood gasification

Jon Udell has posted an informative piece for anyone considering installing a wood gasification boiler; he gets into everything from dealing with local regulations to installing the unit:

By now it was November and the boiler was still sitting in the garage. The next hurdle, which gave me a few sleepless nights, was moving this 1500-pound beast into the basement, through a narrow entrance under the barn and then across the barn’s muddy floor onto the basement’s cement pad.

It was kinda crazy. In the end it took four of us, a tractor, a pallet jack, a bunch of thick planks, and a bottle of dish soap. The tractor inserted the boiler into the barn. We slid it on soapy planks across the dirt floor, wrangled it onto the pallet jack, and then wheeled it across the cement floor to its current home.

Finally, in early December, Bob did the hookup and we fired it up. It’s been running continuously ever since.

This thing really cranks, too:

What you see, and hear, is like the exhaust from a small rocket engine. At full blast, the temperature approaches 2000F.

Jon Udell: Central heating with a wood gasification boiler

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I'm a tinkerer and finally reached the point where I fix more things than I break. When I'm not tinkering, I'm probably editing a book for Maker Media.

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