The Boiler
Heat and hot water for the Harris Center are supplied by our new-and-improved OkoFEN pellet boiler, which was installed by Froling Energy in April 2014. This system replaced our 10-year-old boiler — which was the first wood pellet boiler installed in a public building in New Hampshire — and was made possible through an extraordinary friend of the Harris Center and a New Hampshire Public Utilities Commission rebate.
The Pellets
The wood pellets are made locally from compressed sawdust and wood shavings, and are bought in bulk. They’re stored in an external, 18-foot-high silo. A flexible auger automatically delivers the pellets to the boiler’s fuel hopper.
Energy Efficiency
The pellet boiler is easy to maintain, safe, usable year-round, and highly efficient. We burn an average of 23,000 pounds of pellets a year to heat our 10,000-ft2 building. One year of pellet burning results in approximately 125 pounds of ash that fit nicely into a 29-gallon trash can.
A 2016 life-cycle analysis commissioned by the Northern Forest Center found that using wood pellets reduces greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by more than half as compared to fossil fuels.
