Choosing a Boiler for Your Home and Farm This Winter

Winter is fast approaching, making now a perfect time to start thinking about how you want to heat your home and water for those cool days. There are a dozen different ways you might accomplish the task, but if you’re looking to keep your long-term costs low and live as sustainable as possible, then an outdoor boiler is one of the best options.

Set just outside the home, the outdoor boiler works by heating up a special jacket of water surrounding the upper portion of the firebox where wood is placed and burned. Once heated, the water gets pushed on through insulated piping to a home or outbuilding where heat is distributed into the air via an integrated system like radiant heating pipes or a water-to-air heat exchanger. So, while a home’s boiler may be located just outside its walls, this is a wonderful piece of machinery that serves as the beating heart of a home, providing heat to all of your property’s buildings.

So, why choose the Portage & Main Ultimizer Wood Series outdoor boiler?

Let’s look at the reasons why Portage and Main is the very best outdoor boiler available today.

Why I Chose the Portage & Main Ultimizer Series

First off, I like the wood series product by Portage & Main because I enjoy using wood as a natural resource – I can harvest the fuel myself! It is quite arguably the best natural, renewable resource we have. Not only are we readily, sustainably growing it throughout the country (when you’re not doing so on your own property), but often healthy forests require sustainable thinning–such as Idaho which estimates about 8 million of the state’s forestlands need thinning (“What Makes Wood Products So Green?” Idaho Forests, n.d.).

Forests are essential to our lives. Forests provide us materials to build and heat our homes and forests clean our air. The forest industry also employs many people to provide for their families.

Burning wood also harkens back to a favorite activity, camping. At the campsite, that fire pit is the centerpiece of the campsite. As evening temperatures drop, we gather around for the warmth and comfort a campfire provides. Gathering, cutting and layering the wood makes for something of a social activity and that fire we build up offers other benefits like the ideal setting for roasting hotdogs and marshmallows.

In fact, the Portage & Main Ultimizer operates a lot like that campfire that is surrounded by brick which absorbs the heat and gives it back to the fire resulting in less smoke and more efficiency. What makes the Ultimizer the best outdoor boiler on the market today is how fast and efficiently it gets those energy-packed coals going so that owners enjoy wonderful hot water and heated air throughout their home and any additional property buildings they might have connected. As we will soon see, all boilers, stoves and fireplaces will greatly benefit the cleaner burning with the use of fire brick of sufficient quantity the hold and give back heat to the fire

Choosing a Boiler for Your Home and Farm This Winter

Winter is fast approaching, making now a perfect time to start thinking about how you want to heat your home and water for those cool days. There are a dozen different ways you might accomplish the task, but if you’re looking to keep your long-term costs low and live as sustainable as possible, then an outdoor boiler is one of the best options.

Set just outside the home, the outdoor boiler works by heating up a special jacket of water surrounding the upper portion of the firebox where wood is placed and burned. Once heated, the water gets pushed on through insulated piping to a home or outbuilding where heat is distributed into the air via an integrated system like radiant heating pipes or a water-to-air heat exchanger. So, while a home’s boiler may be located just outside its walls, this is a wonderful piece of machinery that serves as the beating heart of a home, providing heat to all of your property’s buildings.

So, why choose the Portage & Main Ultimizer Wood Series outdoor boiler?

Let’s look at the reasons why Portage and Main is the very best outdoor boiler available today.

Legend

1st : First pass
2nd : Second pass
3rd : Third pass
4th : Fourth pass
A. Refractory brick lining & dry base design
B. Air from above & below
C. Full length quad-pass heat exchanger and upper baffle
D. Water – cooled rear baffle
E. Sectional, easy to repair design

A. Refractory Brick Lining

The Portage & Main Ultimizer is a refractory lined, dry base boiler. In the industry it has become known as an “updraft gasifier” because of its efficient burn. The Ultimizer is simple to use, easy to maintain and not fussy about the fuel it burns. It is very important to understand the “fire triangle” in order to fully appreciate the advantages of the Ultimizer design, and how it will save you fuel, money and time. To achieve a clean, efficient burn with complete combustion, an optimal balance of OXYGEN, HEAT & FUEL is required. The Portage & Main Ultimizer has been specifically designed to achieve this optimal balance.

Dry base design, zero ash line corrosion & no bridging 
The heat stored in the refractory lining helps ensure that a more complete combustion process occurs. I.e. fuel is reduced to charcoal in a 3-stage process.

STAGE 1: The fuel is heated to evaporate and drive out moisture. This starts at 212 degrees F

STAGE 2: It starts to break down on a chemical level at 500 degrees F. Volatile matter is vaporized. These vapors contain 50% to 60% of the heat value of the fuel, making it imperative for them to be burnt properly at a temperature in the range 1100 degrees F for maximum combustion efficiency. When all the volatile gases have been released, the remaining material is charcoal

STAGE 3: Charcoal burns at temperatures in excess of 1100 degrees F. Latent heat also helps in the re-ignition of the fire at the start of the next burn cycle. It also helps to dissipate moisture that is a result of the combustion process. The dry base boiler design gives a very hot burn. The water jacket sits above the brick line so it isn’t up against the fire, taking away the heat prematurely. This eliminates ash line corrosion and the fuel is completely burnt, resulting in considerably less ash.

B. Air from above & below

Exhaust gases make their 1st and 2nd pass at the top of the firebox where they move under and around a water-cooled baffle and into the heat exchanger. Gases then travel to the front of the boiler in a 3rd pass, make a 180 degree turn and move in a 4th pass to the back of the heat exchanger. In this way, all available heat is taken from exhaust gases before they exit the chimney. It gives up to 50% more heat transfer compared to other non water-cooled, non brick lined designs.

C. Full length quad-pass heat exchanger and upper baffle

The Ultimizer heat exchanger runs the full length of the boiler. It is completely surrounded by water which gives maximum heat transfer

D. Water-cooled rear baffle

The water-cooled baffle at the rear of the Ultimizer fire pot absorbs heat and traps combustion vapors. Turbulence is created when air is introduced from below and above the fire. This turbulence provides an optimal burning environment for the vapors, leading to a hotter and more efficient burn. Also, by trapping the vapors, they are thoroughly burnt before entering the high efficiency heat exchanger. This heat exchanger is totally surrounded by water for maximum heat transfer.

E. Sectional, easy to repair design

Not a throwaway design like other brands are. The Ultimizer weighs substantially more than other brand boilers. That’s due to the heavy weight, long lasting, quality materials that go into our design. It provides a long-term, sustainable solution to your heating needs. At the end of its long life, the water jacket can be replaced. Just remove the top half of the boiler and bolt on a new top section, no welding required and your trusty boiler is good to go again. This means a very sustainable warranty, resulting in savings for the customer of several thousand dollars by rebuilding rather than replacing the entire boiler.