[at-l] (OT) Solar Advances

[ellen at clinic.net (Bob C)]

"non polluting? What did it do, dissolve the wood?"

Well, most everything humans do causes some pollution. This wood boiler burned wood under forced draft at 2,000?F. And the only way for the smoke to escape was through the hottest part of the fire, so the smoke was all consumed. The heat was transferred via a water jacket to a thousand gallon tank of water. The baseboard radiators drew their energy from the storage tank, rather than directly from combustion of wood. It was easily the most convenient way to burn wood, since I could burn the wood whenever I had time, rather than when the house needed heat. It took on average about two hours a day of burning to keep my house warm. I would burn it heavily on weekends and coast through part of the week. Nor was starting a fire a problem. A few crumbled up and rolled up newspapers in the bottom of the fire box were enough to ignite an array of six inch diameter, three-foot logs. The manufacturer claimed 95% efficiency. I had no way to check, but that seemed about right. Four cords of wood would heat my moderately-sized house on an open peninsula on the midcoast of Maine.

After eight weeks the first winter, a neighbor asked when I was going to begin using it since he had never seen smoke coming out of my chimney.

Weary