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Pellets - A Burning Desire To Get Off Oil

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I learned of pellet boilers or at least they captured my attention about 8 years ago as I was becoming more familiar with the Viessmann line of heating products. At the time it was not considered as a marketable product in the U.S. For a boiler to be sold and installed in the U.S. it must go through extensive testing and approvals. The boiler vessel itself must be certified by ASME and be labeled with their stamp to be installed in any sort of commercial application. The unit must also be approved by an independent testing laboratory (such as U.L.) to be installed in any location. These approvals are tremendously expensive and a manufacturer must be very confident on a return on investment.

Another issue faced by these manufactures is having technical support for the product as well as having qualified installers and service personnel available to properly install and service their product.

In much of my writings I warn consumers of products rushing to market, or at least products of lower quality becoming available in the name of cashing in on a particular technology that is the latest craze. I witnessed this occurrence 30 years ago with the first solar craze and wood furnace and boiler craze, then in the 90’s with the radiant floor craze. A lot of crap hits the streets with an equal amount of hack installers.

I earned my Master Solid Fuel Installer license in 1981. I was actively involved in wood and coal boiler and furnace installations. While I attended Technical College, the largest solid fuel testing facility in the U.S. was operated out of my heating class lab. I was fortunate to become familiar with many boilers and their construction. At my school we studied boiler vessel construction. With this background and having now worked on thousands of heating products, I feel I have a good sense of what works and what doesn’t and can recognize what issues may occur with any  given design.

Wood pellets were first developed in the United States. The Europeans were quick to jump on this technology as an affordable alternative to high priced oil. We in the U.S. focused most energy on the development of pellet stoves ,   while the Europeans focused on boilers for central heating.

Wood pellets are favorable over wood for many reasons. One of the primary reasons for its use is heating is because of the control over the combustion process. As with oil or gas the combustion process can become more easily turned off and on, as well as control over the size of the fire. When a wood fire of logs is established you cannot turn it off when overheating starts to occur. Typically we smother the wood fire to slow the combustion process; this causes the production of creosote and soot. This is dangerous as well as inefficient. Wood pellets do come in different qualities and only premium pellets should be used.

While I have been waiting for some of the European boilers to arrive several options have become available. Most of what is now available here came from stove manufactures. While I think they understand the combustion process, I sometimes wince at their boiler designs and construction.

     The Traeger boiler is a good quality basic unit which is excellent for the price. The unit requires a lot of personal interaction. It doe not have automatic ignition and requires loading bags in the hopper by hand. The unit is available from www.Evergreenheating.com. I know the owner of the company, Mark Norwood. Mark shows a lot of personal concern and is very sincere in his desire to have a happy customer.

     The Harman pellet boiler is from a stove manufacturer. I have never been a fan of water tube boilers ,and I don’t care for the tube scrapper. It is a more economically priced than others I have seen. I also question the marketing. It is being sold through a preexisting network of stove retailers. I fear that installations will be made by unqualified, unlicensed individuals, or that homeowners will be led to believe it is a do it yourself project.







The Tarm boiler was probably the first Euro boiler to come into the U.S. For a European boiler it lacks some features found on their European Brethern. It does not have automatic ignition or automatic tube cleaners. The unit also requires manual loading of the hopper.

An important feature to look for in any pellet boiler is the fire breaks in the fuel stream. You do not want the fire backing up into the fuel supply. It is a most important concern with a hopper mounted directly to the boiler.

ENTER THE BOSCH PELLET BOILER

Bosch purchased Buderus in 2004. Buderus has been casting iron since the late 1700’s and has been producing boilers for about 100 years.

The Bosch / MESys pellet boiler is essentially a Buderus wood-coal boiler with a Swedish Jansfire pellet burner.  It was developed by Bosch Thermotechnology Corp. in conjunction with Maine Energy Systems. The boiler is a very well built product.The burner has automatic ignition and a very sophisticated control system which is weather responsive. The boiler operates with a bulk storage system which eliminates the need for handling bags of pellets. Maine Energy Systems is a Maine owned company intent on helping the Maine economy and the people of Maine. Maine Energy Systems is developing a network of certified installers throughout the state as well as a bulk pellet distribution system. Pellets will be delivered to homes by trucks.

I am pleased to offer the Bosch / Mesys pellet boiler, while there are more sophisticated European boilers on the horizon, they are not here yet. The price of the Bosch boiler seems reasonable, and when the more sophisticated Euro Pellet Boilers arrive in this market they will cost thousands more.

Maine Energy Systems is allowing people to reserve boilers. The first shipment will be arriving in the U.S. the last week of July.

     I have printed out an example of the financial calculator that can be found at http://www.maineenergysystems.com/savings_calculator.htm . This snapshot of the calculator is a typical scenario. You can visit the website and enter your own data. I will be posting more info on my own website as it becomes available.