Wood boiler gasifier ish thing? lol its to heat my house

wood boiler gasifier ish thing? lol its to heat my house

ok i dont know ware to post this so im putting it here if it needs to be in the gasifier area or General discussion than can u plz move it for me thanks :slight_smile:
im thinking it will end up a gasifier by the time im done haha

im making a wood stove to heat my house im heating water and running it throw a radiator to heat the water im using a hot pressure washer coil as i have been pressure washing for a long time i have extra coils laying around (i will post pics of what they look like later its just pipe in a coil) so i was going ing to make a roket stove to burn wood and run the heat by the coil, so we made a roket stove and it worked good but to make a long story short we didnt have a way to keep it feed for long, so skiping ahead we now have some thing that kinda looks like a down draft gasifier? i dont know what to call it as its not a gasifier i dont think? we get heat but there is still smoke so i know im not geting a good brun in and its not geting as hot as it did win it was a rocket stove but we have a 5hr burn and i know i can get more buy adding more room to it im hpoing for 12hrs or so… is made of 55gal barrels

if any one wants to help me find out whats up with it, y im not geting good heat in the coil that be awsome!!! any ideas will hellp just let me know and i will post pic’s and give u a run down of it and clear up what i can on how im thinking it works

i did this just b4 i seen this site :slight_smile:
thanks every one

im going to put some pics up to get this thing going













i will get better ones tomorrow maybe a video? will see sry this is from my phone i will use the camera later

sry for the mess we are working on stuff and made a real mess :slight_smile:

heres a drawling of my idea i know its bad looking haha

right now the house thats 60ft x 28ft will stay at 64 F win its 30 F outside and i can hold my hands on the water pipes and its warm not hot

One thing pops out right away. Where’s your secondary air?

You’ve made an downdraft gasifier, which is fine - but the gas never gets enough air to burn completely. Of course some air is probably leaking in, and you will get some heat from the hot gases.

Add some secondary air as it enters the rocket, and I think you’ll see an improvement.

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Chris is right about secondary air, You need to deside where you want your woodgas flame to be and let air in just befor that point.you are making gas and releasing it out the top. If you lite the smoke comming out it will probably burn,BE VERY CAREFULL,If you have air leeks it could puffback. One other thing,you need a port to light the thing after the seconary air inlet. have fun be safe.

thanks i will try and add some thing in

i tried leting air in at the ash inlet door at one time and didnt seem like it did any thing and if i let to much air throw the door i loss my draft,

do u think i need to just let air in? or use a fan to push it in?

also i get a lot of smoke out the top but i cant get it to light up do u think my draft fan is mixing to much air in the wood gas?

i didn’t have time to take any more pics or video today but i will try and get some up soon

Whether you’re making good gas is a separate issue. I don’t know anything about your gasifier, it may just be a smoke maker. First make sure that you’re getting flammable gas from the gasifier before coupling it to the rocket stove. Hot smoke won’t do much to heat water.

Assuming the gasifier works, adding oxygen to hot gas WILL create heat. If it gets added through leaks in the ash door, you’ll have heat under the grate. If you have everything sealed and the air is added inside the rocket stove, you will create a clean hot combustion right at the air inlet.

Most rocket stoves don’t have draft fans at all. You may still need one if your gasifier is restricting the airflow, but there should be a good draft from the rocket chimney itself.

this pic shows air leeks and more also i have a 6in stove pipe coming out the gasifier is that to much?

if i get this all working good i will make a lot better graphic of the unit… now that i think about it i dont know y i didnt make it a vector graphic to start with haha

I guess I am not understanding why you want to couple a downdraft gasifier to a rocket stove. I understand that the rocket stove is limited in burn time without frequent attention but if you have to run a draft fan anyway why not suck and burn the syngas in a more efficient boiler? I always thought a rocket stove was a kind of gasifier in itself as long as the hottest part of the burning process was in the rocket stove itself. Maybe I’m just not getting it; - that has happened before.
Don M

hi Don this stared out as a rocket stove and turned in to this :slight_smile: so there maybe a better way but this is what i have to play with at this time

this is what i have now #1

a new pic i re did it to make it ez to move stuff around as things move forword

idea #2
or is this a better idea?

Hey Ryan,

From my perspective it looks like you are putting together 2 types of setups, a gasifier and a rocket stove. From what I have read and understand (from the experts in both areas) they both serve different purposes.

I would be very very careful with water heating, there is a chance of a complete failure (explosion) without warning. When water turns to steam it expands greatly and just cannot be contained (explosion).

For the experts on rocket stoves - goggle “Ernie and Erica rocket stoves”, (ernieanderica dot info) they have built literally hundreds of them and know what they are talking about.
Ernie will not even talk about water heating anymore, he is very much against experimenting with water heating due to the dangers, this is more of the closed loop pressured systems (I understand).

Another discussion on RMS and concerns of water heating can be found here - http://www.permies.com/t/18871/podcast/Podcast-Rocket-Mass-Heater-Workshop

All the best,
Bill

thanks i will look that up and right now its not a closed loop pressured system its open system it started out as a rocket stove now the rocket stove half is more of a big stand now? for the coils

Usually the wood fired boiler systems have a large reservoir of water that is heated and stores some heat for smooth even heating. that water is then pumped through the coil in the house as needed.

I would look at the key stone stove for ideas.
its got the top down burn that makes me thinks its easier to use and run in batch mode.
I saw a large propane tank used as a heat storage someplace.
I think a large tank like that filled with steel or stone ( greater thermal mass ) is the way to go

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Try: www.garn.com
Study. Carefully. Copy this. Sit back and enjoy.
S.U.

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How interesting, so that is the coil unit out of a diesel fired hot washer, so that coil is thick walled steel tubing, like sch. 40 pipe? Seems like the perfect coil for your application.

Leakage is not your friend, gotta fix those. Should increase your temperatures quite a bit.

Moisture in the wood supply is not your friend, gotta get it as dry as possible. That change should increase your temperatures quite a bit.

6" stove pipe connector from firebox to the clay heat riser is the hottest part of your set-up, you might think about changing that to a fire brick burn tunnel that extends from the hearth, [in the center of the stove, idea #1] thru the wall of the stove, and the brick burn tunnel connects to the clay heat riser. That change should increase your temperatures quite a bit. Cover the entire external part of the brick burn tunnel with thick clay/ash heap, [which looks like what you have been doing]. Add your secondary air port in this area if ya want.

If damp clay/ash was used in the heat riser, curing/burning the moisture out of the unit, the more you use it, the better it will get, if it gets rained on tho…you have to continue wasting heat to burn out the excess moisture in the clay…

Preheat your secondary air, to increase temperatures.

Keep air flow thru the unit somewhat slow, to conserve fuel.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yK93KkFT7sE this guy has good practical ideas, he even has a special homemade rain cap that helps the draft.

Look for JO’s wood boiler here at DOW, is a good thread that identifies the principals of an efficient unit.

oliver

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I was reading this week that Kathleen Wynne, Ontario Premier wants to end the use of NG for home heating and push the province to adopt electric heat.
So I am waiting to see if there are road blocks put in place to prevent wood from being used too.

I can see some sort of run at it a long the lines of pollution controls.

I am all for cleaner greener and cheaper but heating your house with electricity is nuts…

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