What should I think about as a consumer?
Contact your municipality for a registration of building
You should contact the local building committee of your municipality to make a registration of building at least three weeks before a change or installation of a pellet boiler or stove. A building permit may also be required for your pellet storage, depending on how the storage will be built or placed.
Energy Advisory Service of the Municipality
Gives you answers to your questions about different heating alternatives, grants and how to proceed etc.
The Certified Chimney-Sweeper
Controls that changes and installations do not increase the fire risk e.g. that the chimney is hydrostaticaly tested before it is being used to control that it is not leeking etc. To ignore the suggestions and recommendations of the chimney sweeper can of course be highly dangerous, exept for the fact that the insurance cover deteriorates. According to the rule book, the chimney-sweeper makes two visits per year, but there are also houses where sweeping needs to be made up to three times per year. In 2005, a new rule was implemented and is a fire-protection control that all houses with some type of combustion appliance have to go through.
The Installer
Helps you with what type of boiler, burner or stove that fits your house. Remember that always ask for a written estimate on everything concerning the investment and installation.
Be smart!
Listen and first and foremost ask for help from experts regarding all changes and actions of your heating installation. For installation of pellet stoves, pellet burners and boilers, the opinions of an expert should be collected. Always talk to a chimney-sweeper, the environment - and building experts of your municipality and your installer.
To think about!
  • How should I store my pellets?
  • Do I have room?
  • To replace one cubic metre oil, approx. 3 cubic meter of pellets are needed so it is important that the house has a proper boiler room or a adjacent room if you have planned to have a bulk storage. Normally you need a storage of at least 7-8 cubic metres to receive 3 tons of pellets. (= carriage paid). As a start you can choose a week storage and later on invest in a bulk storage. Read more about pellet storages here >>
  • Provide your installation with a flue-gas thermometer. Here you can easilly see when the temperature is rising and it is time to clean the installation.
  • Have control over the draft in the chimney with a draft limiter.
  • The flue-gases from the boiler should be at least 160-170 degrees, approx.: 65-70 degrees one meter down inside the chimney from the roof to to avoid condensate in an older chimney. A newer combustion installation normally has very low flue-gases so look out for that. (Control by the installer should be made at installation.)
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  • At the time installation the installation should always be adjusted with a flue-gas instrument and not only with the help of the human eye. When the installation is in place and has been trimmed with a flue-gas instrument, ask for a print of the control measurement of the installer. There you should be able to read values as CO,O2, CO2, combustion efficiency, draft, flue-gas temperature etc.

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    Measurement values:
    CO2 : 11,5 -13,5 %
    CO :10 - 300 ppm
    NOx  80- 100ppm
    O2 : 6,5- 8,5 %
    hPa : -0,10 / -0,15
    Combustion efficiency (average) : 90-95%

    Combustion
    Combustion requires oxygen supply and coal (fuel = pellets 6-8mm). The oxygen is collected from the combustion air (the fan inside the burner takes its oxygen from the supply air valve in the boiler room) but there is also some oxygen in the biomass that can be used at combustion. It is important with the right fuel/air mixture to get the desired good combustion result.
    One good rule is not to use a higher effect than is necessarily needed at existing energy needs. If the effect ladder for example would be 10, 15 and 20 kW we should stay at 10 kW until the energy needs is enough at this setting. At this lower effect the flue-gases are cooled more effectively inside the boiler, this means a higher efficiency of the boiler. The operation time of the burner also gets longer and the standstill periods shorter. Thereby the standstill losses decrease (losses because the boiler is cooled by inleaking cold air during the standstill), something that also contributes to a improved system efficiency.

  • Provide your installation with shunt automatics for a better energy saving.

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    Exampel:
    ThermOmatic CBJ is an electronic shunt automatics for water born radiator - and floor heating systems. It consists of an engine with built-in micro processor based control central. The control central has three lights indicating when it opens and closes, when it has reached end position and at giver errors.
    It has room - and flowgiver whos sgnals are treated in the micro processor. The only settings that need to be made are selection of inside temperature and maximum supply line temperature.
  • The supply air valve insode the boiler room should have an area corresponding to the chimney.
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  • In Sweden today, there are products with a 6 year security insurance.
  • Remember that a newly-installed installation should have been inspected by the certified chimney-sweeper before it is put into operation.
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