Wood Burning Insurance Policy

[brokenknee]

I have a stove insert. The fire is contained in the unit and the smoke goes up the chimney, i dont have anysmoke smell in my house, or as your just saying in general that its running through a chimney attached to your home?

10 grand is a lot of money. Some insurance dosent have an increase for wood stove over a fireplace etc or at all. If yours jacks you again i would look and shop around. But even if they double that wood premium you still cant pay the note on a 10 grand loan for the new gassifier, or call that worth it to for out 10 grand outta pocket. And dont forget you still will need to cut and split the wood or even buck n split if you but treelength dropped off, if your a new burner.

It is my first year burning wood. I do not mind the css it is the feeding the beast every four to five hours that I do not care for.

I did purchase a ten cord load of red and white oak for $70 a cord.



I also have a lot of poplar on my property I can harvest.



Right now I am in the research faze of the purchase. Actual purchase is most likely one to two years away.

 

[lampmfg]

Efficient yes im sure. CHEAP i doubt buying your system and installing in can remotely be called cheap. I admit i have not clicked the link but have an idea what it is and what it may run.

I too thought this thread was gonna be a complaint about insurance or about how to obtain it after a burner install.

I have an indoor FP insert. It a cat model stove. I have not used my heatpump this season (although its been a mild winter i know), and install last february saved $100 over the previous year in feb.

Whats the pay off in years for your system vs a similar system thats not as fancy (ie computer controlle). Whats the pay off vs installing a high effeciency wood stove stand alone unit in your home like the eglander 30 or a blazeking king? Yes these are indoors but i wonder if the cheaper cost will allow a quicker rate of return, well im sure it will. After all recooping your investment as fast as possible is what folks intodays tough times are after. They either need to pay the loan off fast or want that money back in the account for other things if needed.

I really am curious, one day id love to have an outdoor wood boiler/heating system. My problem is that i dont have $6k for one right now. Which is why i went with my used $900 stove that i purchased instead. Did i mention i too am cheap?

You could get our larger VaporFire 100 delivered for under $5,000 which isn't cheap for some, but these things our built to last. The fireboxes are under warranty for 25 years. With brick lining to the ceiling and ceramic lining behind the fire brick it is designed for a lifetime. All the internal parts are made with stainless steel and are replaceable.

If your interested in comparison vs many of the stoves one see's at Menard's or Lowe's here's some good info:

What is the impact on total wood consumption per year if you use a super efficient furnace like our VaporFire?
Here are the important numbers that need to be examined: 1 gal. #2 fuel oil = 140,000 BTUs; 1 gal. propane - 91,500 BTU's; 1 cord paper birch wood = 21 M BTU's; 1 cord red oak = 25 M BTU's.

VaporFire furnaces were tested to have an overall efficiency as high as 85%, 99.4% combustion efficiency, less than 1 gr/hr of emissions, 99% smokeless burn cycles, internal flue temperatures 285-400 degrees F., and external flue temperatures 150-250 degrees F. VaporFire furnaces have been used for over 25 years with no condensation issues whatsoever, because the flue temperatures are still high enough to support a natural draft system when installed according to our written directions.

A good estimate for oil usage for a heating season would be 500-1,000 gal., with lots of variables. We'll take a look at an average home using 750 gal. of oil for the heating season. 750 gal = 105 M BTU's. If a wood furnace was 100% overall efficient, which is not possible, it would take : 105 M BTU's /21M=5 cords of birch or 105 BTU's/25M=4.2 cords of oak.

Our VaporFire furnace at 82% average overall efficiency would be; 105 M BTU's/(21Mx82%) = 6.09 cords of birch or 105 M BTU's/(25 M x 82%) = 5.12 cords of oak.

Most manufacturers struggle to hit 60% overall efficiency, but we'll look at their results based on 60%. 105 M BTU's/(21M x 60%) = 8.33 cords of birch or 105 M BTU's/ (25M x 60%) = 7 cords of oak.

Therefore, using our efficient VaporFire furnaces will, without a doubt, use less wood to deliver the same amount of BTU's you'd require in oil or propane for the heating season then a less efficient furnace would. The other big advantages are minimal air pollution, longer more even burns, and minimal creosote accumulation from 99% smokeless burn cycles. The safely aspect is also huge in saving homes and lives.

I'm quite sure a lot of manufacturers will be very surprised to see their furnace test results when regulations come into effect in 2013-14. They're not going to believe how much air pollution and wasted wood their so called efficient furnaces have produced. Many manufacturers will have to fold or redesign their furnaces quickly. I'm thankful that I invested the time, effort and money in preliminary testing so that our company is prepared for the future. We knew the regulations were forthcoming.

I'm also not aware of any manufactures you actually post their actual test results online for everyone to see like we have on our website. I saw a PGS Caddy EPA forced air furnace (probably the next best we have seen) manual on their website and it has the following:

Average emissions rate: 6.56 g/hr
Average heating efficiency: 71.43%

Compare that with ours:

.45 Gr/Hr. Emmission
99.4% Combustion Efficiency
99% Smokeless Burns
84% Overall Efficiency

 

[lampmfg]

Yep, you did say under $100, curious do you repair the control right at your shop or do you send them out? What is the most common failure of the unit?

I'm hoping to start doing this someday, but we currently send them out.

 

[clemsonfor]

YOu kind of answered my question. But we only compared whole house central wood heat systems. Yours looks good yes, the numbers seem great.

Most of us heating with wood use a Wood stove and are just accustomed to the uneven heat they produce. I like my bedroom in the 60s and my family room warmer, which a stove does. unless hooked up to some super expensive central system you cant do this. I guess what i was saying is that i can buy an englander 30 stove at Lowes for $1000 that is 100% us made as well and then several hundred more on a chimney and i can heat a 2000 sq ft home easy on way less thay 7cords a year. Yea you need to feed it more but in my eyes this is more effecient. I also do not live in a super cold climate though. My house lacks all but r19 ceiling insulation so it in effect is like my house is in a climite colder than i am due to the loss of heat so fast. More like a house several hundred miles north of me with better insulation, is what mine probly represents.

And yes if i was buying 1000gallons of fuel oil a year if would be a no brainer, but im not and never will or was. I have heat pumps and my worst bills were not even $200month over what they were with no heat or air running when i used the Heat. My point is that i am heating up to 2500sqft with my woodstove insert. At my current heating cost with my other heat it would take me (using an avg of $100month for 3 months and $50 month for 2 other months for the winter) 12.5 years to recover the initial cost of the unit and thats ignoring interest , not like you can earn it anywhere now anyway. This is fairly high numbers i feel as well to use for each month. This also does not consider that i will have to at least double if not triple my wood pile and gathering activities. I do not live on my land so i have to cut wood on public land near my home. This will increase my time as well as the fuel associated with getting the wood, making the pay off that much more.


I am kind of knocking you i guess but really am interested in them as i considered them in the future, but after seeing your numbers it seems like it would not be a wise financial decesion for me or anyone who lives in my area. I mean a 12+ year payback plus haveing to at least double the wood i burn just im my mind does not make sense. And that 12 year pay back is assuming that i was using my heatpump currenty. As of right now heating with my stove i have not turned them on this heating season, so at this current rate of consumption it would NEVER pay off.


This is just my opinion and i hope it helps those who may be thinking of one and are in a similar situation as me.

Also to the guy considering one, who said you load a stove every 4 hours. You need to get a more effecient wood stove. I usually load mine every 12 hours and in all but the coldest weather this provides continuous heat and enough coals that when i reload the wood just starts burning right away. In the coldest weather it may be reduced back to 9-10 hours reload time. This usuall equates to a 10 hour over night burn load up in the mourning and throwing a few peices on when i get home from work 9-10 hours later and letting it rip till there coals to get quick heat in family room then reloading before bed (this would be continuous nights with temps in the mid to low 20s).

 

[lampmfg]

I agree with what you say on climate playing a big part... If you can make it off only a stove and don't have a house already equipped for a central heating system I can see where this would appeal to some. In our winters (even when it's mild like this one) it would be pretty tough. I just looked at the spec's on a Blazeking and see that it's right around 300 #'s. Our furnace is over 700 so you can see the difference in materials used. Furnaces aren't some products yet where lighter is better.

When burning wood our high efficiency is just part of the total package... The most important part to me and my family is safety and the "Smokeless" burn eliminates the dangerous creosote!! How often do you clean your chimney, because we don't even own a chimney brush?

Anyone that's interested read some of our customer reviews on our website or Facebook page. I could also probably put you in contact with someone in your area and they can tell you about their experience.

 

[clemsonfor]

I agree with what you say on climate playing a big part... If you can make it off only a stove and don't have a house already equipped for a central heating system I can see where this would appeal to some. In our winters (even when it's mild like this one) it would be pretty tough. I just looked at the spec's on a Blazeking and see that it's right around 300 #'s. Our furnace is over 700 so you can see the difference in materials used. Furnaces aren't some products yet where lighter is better.

When burning wood our high efficiency is just part of the total package... The most important part to me and my family is safety and the "Smokeless" burn eliminates the dangerous creosote!! How often do you clean your chimney, because we don't even own a chimney brush?

Anyone that's interested read some of our customer reviews on our website or Facebook page. I could also probably put you in contact with someone in your area and they can tell you about their experience.

I just put the stove in last FEB. I ran it till it got to spring and then started this year on off around oct. Since then i have not cleaned it at all. It still is just shiny black with just a bit of fine grainy crosote on the cap. Im going to line it this summer or so so im not going to clean it at all till i reline the fluetiles. But on what i see i think once a year will be more than adequate with every 2 years plenty once i reduce the flue size which will help keep smoke temps higher. I have a catalytic model stove, with dual combusters that if were using times to determine smokless burns i get an easy 95% overall smokless burn as well. Only smoke is a fresh start or for about 10 mins after a reload.

As far as your numbers on the Blazeking i think that might be right for the small one they make but the Blazeking "King" model has a 4.5cuft firebox on it and with its electronic t-stat can go for 40 hours on one load of wood. My stove has about a 3.5cuft firebox and it alone weighs in at 565 pounds so i can hardly see how the "king" can only weigh 300 or so?

Again would love to have a central system but after seeing these numbers it just dosent make econmic sense for me. I appreciate you honesty though and showing the evaluations of you and a competitors model.

 

[Clyde]

I truly understand the engineering you put into your product to pass not only now, but future EPA requirements. However, in this free form of advertising, I think you owe it to us to compare your product to the competitors, even from your own state of MN. I did all my homework when I bought my E-Classic from Central Boilers. The next year they designed an even more efficient model under the E-Classic name but I'm happy with what I purchased and I better be cause I'm not replacing it soon. A internal stack temp of 400 degrees is acceptable but to claim 99% efficiency I'm not understanding. Seems to be alot of heat still going up the stack to me. As for the creosote problem - is that really an issue for most in an outside environment. One doesn't place these burners under and trees because of draft problems. What is it going to hurt with snow on the ground? I actually try to induce a chimney fire every two weeks to clean it out and never, ever have had to brush my flue.

Your price is definitely under the cost of a Central Boiler and you have a great warranty of 25 years versus Central's 20 year plan. Stainless steel is a poor conductor of heat transfer. Many companies tried it and went back to steel plate for that reason so your product doesn't impress me yet.

Your quoted price as in your replies is great, but along with anyone else's product, you brought it and now I have to hook it up or arrange for installation. Let's for example, for a 100' run to the house in buried and insulated tubing, coming into the house to serve not only the furnace but domestic hot water, and hydronic floor heat(already intalled prior), that is a cost never mentioned by the manufacturers, what is your best estimate of that cost if a contractor was to put it in? A contractor was brought into the equation because a prior poster said he had to pay extra insurance for self install.

Next thing you have to do is spread the word thru advertising and not just with isolated forums that just select readers will see it. If I knew about your product 3 years ago, I definitely would have given you serious thought but the stainless issue would have turned me away. Next, get a dealer network set up. When it is 20 below, the wind is howling up my butt cheeks, I can not afford to wait for you to send me a new motherboard. I need someone now!!!

I wish you the best - Gary

 

[clemsonfor]

You have to read between the lines. he said 99% combustion effeciency, not overall efficiency. I took that to mean that 99% of the wood burns each load. 99% effeciency is impossible to obtain even with his 150F stack temps, way to much heat lost to be close to that #, aslo all the heat lost in the system would never allow over 90% in my opinion.

 

[lampmfg]

You have to read between the lines. he said 99% combustion effeciency, not overall efficiency. I took that to mean that 99% of the wood burns each load. 99% effeciency is impossible to obtain even with his 150F stack temps, way to much heat lost to be close to that #, aslo all the heat lost in the system would never allow over 90% in my opinion.

You are correct 99% combustion efficiency is definitely different than 99% overall efficiency. If you look at our test results on the website they very between 80-85% depending on the type of burn, which still blows our furnace competitors away.

This type of advertising is cost effective for me, but last year we also spent 10x more then the previous year in marketing and now do (MotherEarth, Grit, Farmshow, Farmers hotline, various newspapers, Field & Stream, to name a few). Actually last year we spent more in marketing than the past 20+ years combined. We needed to complete the testing process which was over $20,000 and is a lot for a small company (less then 10 employees) so we would have proof when we say World's #1 Indoor Wood Furnace before we went all out.

If your interested look at these threads from arboristsite.com (another forum that our competitors are on as well) where we more or less challenge all of our competitors including MN (Yukon, Charmaster) to show us their results. http://www.arboristsite.com/firewood-heating-wood-burning-equipment/192349.htm http://www.arboristsite.com/firewood-heating-wood-burning-equipment/188358.htm http://www.arboristsite.com/firewood-heating-wood-burning-equipment/187653.htm
Our biggest advocate on a few of the forums is someone who had purchased a Yukon (Made much better than furnaces at Menard's or Lowe's) a few years back, but was unsatisfied with his creosote problem. He had read about us and then made the trip up to our plant in Tower, MN. After speaking with my dad and seeing how clean the chimney was he turned around and purchased a Kuuma. As you can see from some of the threads he loves his Kuuma...

We only manufacture what we know and have been slowly perfecting for the past 30 years and that's Indoor Wood Furnaces and Sauna Stoves not Outside Boilers. We get an e-mail almost daily with someone requesting us to build an outdoor unit for them because they like what they have read about our furnaces. This just isn't possible because it has taken years and years along with thousands of test burns just to get our furnaces right.

We make an optional H2O coil that works great for heating domestic hot water. I'm not sure about your stainless steel comment because our patented design and INDEPENDENT test results speak for themselves. I don't see us getting into a dealer set-up in the near future even though we receive requests often from interested parties.

 

[Clyde]

You have to read between the lines. he said 99% combustion effeciency, not overall efficiency. I took that to mean that 99% of the wood burns each load. 99% effeciency is impossible to obtain even with his 150F stack temps, way to much heat lost to be close to that #, aslo all the heat lost in the system would never allow over 90% in my opinion.

Good point on your part. Alot of "efficiencies" to look at but never stated in layman terms. Going by your interpretation of that verbiage, the ash that is left over is the other 1%? How then is that 99% versus the missing 1% interpreted? Do they weigh it and say that minus the moisture, the weight of firewood used was 100 lbs and the ash weighed 1 lb? I always expected a fire to consume everything it could and the rest was ash. Is this woodboiler a new concept to that age old fact? Actually in that ash is also heat retention.
I, in no way am a scientist or able to contest the manufacturers claims. However, if you want to sell a product - then compare it to your competition before I'll be impressed or convinced to buy. Rhetoric is for the judicial system - just give me something to compare it to. I have no argument with your interpretation however.

Gary