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[hondaracer2oo4]

So I wanted to take a few minutes and put in a good word for SlimJim. As some of you may have seen I bought SlimJim's show boiler that he ran this fair season. The deal was when he was done with it after Fryeburg he would deliver it to me. Well he dropped it off this morning with his new school bus work truck and new brindle that he built, both are top notch! He easily backed right in and dropped the G200 right on my pad(which was quite unlevel from 5 years of heaving). Richard left me with a few feet of truck heater hose which he likes to hook up from the pex to the pump flange incase of heaving or movement between the pad and the lines. It worked out really slick, anyone who has tried to hook up 1 inch pex before knows what I am talking about. I had the stove hooked up in about an hour. Richard had left the charcoal and some firewood in the firebox from the last burn at the fryeburg fair. He had not cleaned the stove in 15 full days of running. The small amount of ash in the secondary and the primary box was impressive for 15 full days of run time. I added some newspaper and kindling to the firebox and lit it up. At about the 5 minute mark it was already gassing! It took about 2.5 hours to come up to temp and shut down. I had seen the unit running at Richards before so I knew that it really does put out zero smoke as soon as it starts to gas and the same was true today. As soon as it was gassing the only thing you could see was the heat waves. Ill keep everyone updated on how it runs. I took some pics, the first couple are 5 minutes from light up in the secondary chamber. The third one is the stack and lack of smoke!

[mlappin]

Glad to hear it.

Must have completely different soils up/over there.

I have several slabs we poured around here at the farm, none have ever heaved. Did a 12x16 slab for a garden shed and my boiler slab over 15 years ago and both are still level. Take the loader. take out soil that has organic material, then replace with sand and pack, take a dirt shovel and work around the outside one shovel deep to make a mini footer. All our grain bins are monolithic pours with footers not even a couple foot deep.

[schoppy]

Good to hear and see it running well. I am changing out my P&M this weekend, which was undersized, for my new G400. Wasn't sure if I was going to get it done due to shoulder surgery(don't tear your rotator cuff-it's a bitch) but I sold my P&M so has to be done now. Will be changing some of my piping and adding load which slim has been helpful with advice also. It will be interesting to compare the operation of the G400 to my P&M both for smoke and wood consumption. We'll have to compare notes as the season goes on.

[hondaracer2oo4]

So day 1 is in the books. Last night temps were about 33 degrees for an overnight low. I threw in two splits last night on top of a 2 inch or so coal bed that was mostly around the nozzle area. The splits were about 6-8 inches at the widest part and 24 inches long. I came out at 5:45 to load the stove before work. Water temp was 169 and the draft fan was running. Upon opening up I had very few coals left and just a couple of small pieces left whole still from the two splits(should have probably put in two more splits last night). I threw in some smaller kindling ontop of the coals that I raked togeather and then loaded logs(probably 6 splits of 4-6 inches in diameter ontop of that. I piled them into a triangle right over the center and the last log ontop of the pile landed at the bottom of the door lip. Temps today peaked around 60 degrees in the afternoon. When I got home around 7 pm tonight the inducer was not running and the temp was at 175. Opening up I found two logs left about half burned and a decent coal bed. I broke down the logs that were left as much as they would, cleared the nozzle and evened out the coals. I piled up 4 splits on top of the nozzle area. Tonight calls for 42 degrees for a low. We will see if tonight I will have good coals left at 6am. So something new that I saw happen tonight was the stove went into some type of purge mode? The owners manual doesn't talk about it that I saw. It said something to the effect of "Purge Cycle" and counted down from 2 minutes and 30 seconds. It ran the inducer fan during this cycle. The stove was at 165 at that point. The two minutes were just long enough for the boiler to start gassing before it shut back down. I assume this happens after so many minutes of non running but I would be curious to know how long that is.

[mlappin]

Central Boilers do that as well on their E series, is to make sure your coals stay lit so when it does call for heat it will have enough hot coals to take off and burn, probably also helps to keep the refractory hot so it gasifies as close to possible to immediately.

[hondaracer2oo4]

That makes sense. I would be interested to know what the interval is with no firing before it kicks on. This morning was 41 degrees and I has three partials left out of the 4 I added last night. I don't have a lot of loose coals, I am thinking I should try to build up a coal bed but I'm not sure. Hopefully slim can chime in.

[slimjim]

I can't remember what the interval is off the top of my head! Yes go ahead and build up a bed of coals, the G-series does not seem to be affected as much as other gassers by nozzle plugging, 2-6 inches of coal and ash seems to work very well!

[hondaracer2oo4]

Thanks Richard. I'll get a bed built up.

[MattyNH]

So I wanted to take a few minutes and put in a good word for SlimJim. As some of you may have seen I bought SlimJim's show boiler that he ran this fair season. The deal was when he was done with it after Fryeburg he would deliver it to me. Well he dropped it off this morning with his new school bus work truck and new brindle that he built, both are top notch! He easily backed right in and dropped the G200 right on my pad(which was quite unlevel from 5 years of heaving). Richard left me with a few feet of truck heater hose which he likes to hook up from the pex to the pump flange incase of heaving or movement between the pad and the lines. It worked out really slick, anyone who has tried to hook up 1 inch pex before knows what I am talking about. I had the stove hooked up in about an hour. Richard had left the charcoal and some firewood in the firebox from the last burn at the fryeburg fair. He had not cleaned the stove in 15 full days of running. The small amount of ash in the secondary and the primary box was impressive for 15 full days of run time. I added some newspaper and kindling to the firebox and lit it up. At about the 5 minute mark it was already gassing! It took about 2.5 hours to come up to temp and shut down. I had seen the unit running at Richards before so I knew that it really does put out zero smoke as soon as it starts to gas and the same was true today. As soon as it was gassing the only thing you could see was the heat waves. Ill keep everyone updated on how it runs. I took some pics, the first couple are 5 minutes from light up in the secondary chamber. The third one is the stack and lack of smoke!

Awesome!!! I can say I did see your stove at the fair lol.. Yeah def keep us posted!

[schoppy]

When I was talking to the factory about the G400 this summer, I asked them about the unit cycling to keep the fire going or maintain a coal bed so it didn't go out in mild weather. I was told if the unit does not call for heat for a hour it will cycle once per hour to maintain the fire in the firebox. I thought they said it would run for 5 minutes but that may have been for a G400. I do wish the manuals were more in depth in a lot more areas also. My G400 will be half in and half out of my wood shed and I need to find a way to alert me if or when the red warning light comes on at the control panel. Swapping it out today, hope all goes well.         

[hondaracer2oo4]

I am sure everything will go fine.

[mlappin]

When I was talking to the factory about the G400 this summer, I asked them about the unit cycling to keep the fire going or maintain a coal bed so it didn't go out in mild weather. I was told if the unit does not call for heat for a hour it will cycle once per hour to maintain the fire in the firebox. I thought they said it would run for 5 minutes but that may have been for a G400. I do wish the manuals were more in depth in a lot more areas also. My G400 will be half in and half out of my wood shed and I need to find a way to alert me if or when the red warning light comes on at the control panel. Swapping it out today, hope all goes well.         

This is a pretty easy fix actually, easiest would be to mount a little mirror and aim it so you can see it from the house when the light is on. If this isn’t possible contact Heatmaster and clear it with them then purchase another LED warning light from them, mount it in a weather tight box and run two wires to the original light in the stove.

When we upgraded corn dryers the new one is quiet enough can barely hear it in the house. Also has automatic moisture controls, so I ran a conduit over to the control shed for the grain leg and dump pit, mounted four LED lights in it that I can see from the house, can look out the kitchen window, office window or sit up in bed and look out the bedroom window to see whats going on.

Green for normal.

Yellow for slow speed (corn being discharged is wetter than the set point)

Blue for high speed (corn being discharged is dryer than the set point)

Red for emergency stop.

Nice not having to get up every couple of hours, putting all the warm clothes on and having to walk out and manually check it like with the old one.

[Mike Watkins]

My G200 was installed a couple of months ago (mid-September).  My experience so far, however, has not been quite as straightforward as others would appear to have been.
Lots of smoke, daily re-lights, substantial (?) fuel consumption and, it seems inevitably, the damper running throughout the night (under our bedroom window) until cold start temp is reached.
The temperatures here (NC) have remained quite warm so conditions are far from ideal to evaluate the G200 performance.  My lack of experience with OWFs is another major factor although I understand these G models are quite different from traditional systems. Apparent senility may also be something of a hindrance  . That said, despite being told "everything will be fine when it gets really cold!", I am still seriously struggling - and failing - to understand how to optimize this equipment and its burn cycle.
To date, I have burned through 1.5 cords of kiln-dried hardwood, the energy from which has largely, ultimately, been wasted - mostly due to my own inability to clearly think through that cycle.

Has any one developed any kind of optimization models for these devices under varying ambient conditions?
Like: how long does it take to get from 74 F to 180 F when it's 35 F outside?  how much fuel does that take? how long to cool down from 180 F- 160 F when its 45 F outside - or to get down to cold start when its 65 F, etc...  helping figure out when to light the fire, with how many sticks of wood, so that the water temp is still reasonable in the morning, the damper hasn't run all night ...and so on?

The more I think about it, the more variables I find need to be built in to the model. So, if I have to build my own, it would be nice to not have to start entirely from scratch?

[hondaracer2oo4]

One month update, no news is good news. First off running it is super easy. Loading the boiler I break down the coals and even them out across the bottom. I put a big piece right over the nozzle and then stack up the rest of the wood over that, stacking th wood tightly togeather gives best performance. I had my first bridge out last night. It was totally my fault, I placed a big knotty piece over the nozzle coupled with a warm day so very few full burns other than the purge modes.  I cleaned out the ashes from the lower chamber after 1 month and and had about three spade shovel fulls. I opened up the upper chamber where the inducer fan is and the exchanger tubes dump into. I had a hint of ash up there but that was it. As far as consumption I have gone through about 3/4 of a cord so far. I am hoping to burn 7 cords for 6 months of burning. I think I will be right on that. Great product heatmaster!

[mlappin]

When I was talking to the factory about the G400 this summer, I asked them about the unit cycling to keep the fire going or maintain a coal bed so it didn't go out in mild weather. I was told if the unit does not call for heat for a hour it will cycle once per hour to maintain the fire in the firebox. I thought they said it would run for 5 minutes but that may have been for a G400. I do wish the manuals were more in depth in a lot more areas also. My G400 will be half in and half out of my wood shed and I need to find a way to alert me if or when the red warning light comes on at the control panel. Swapping it out today, hope all goes well.         

My 400 runs for three minutes if no call for heat in one hour.