Koetter Kilns

[barbender]

 Anyone here have any experience with Koetter Kilns? There is one for sale here locally, it's a self contained unit that looks to use hot water heat. It is set up with a hot water heater, I would tap it into my OWB. 

 I think they were rebranded into NOVA dry kilns.

 Anyways, anything anyone knows about these would be great to hear.

[K-Guy]

You are correct, Nova is the new brand name for them. I don't know if they just renamed the company or it changed hands. I would contact them to see about getting support from them if you buy it.

[YellowHammer]

I looked at them real hard, many years ago, they had some good and bad points, but seemed to be overall pretty nice.  They use a "hot air venturi" heating cycle, basically continuous flow in and out over a heat exchanger or burner, through an exhaust orifice that is sized with their fans to maintain proper flow and internal pressure.  With an OWB, that wouldn't be a problem, heat in, heat out, but I looked at it with propane burner for heat, and that was deal breaker expensive to keep the burner running.  I had heard they since developed a thermostat of some sort to relight the burner when necessary, I don't know how that would work with an OWB.

They operated at about 160F, which solves sterilization issues, and also, since there is no way for a DH style heat exchanger to get over loaded with too much condensate, because there isn't one, then you can dry maximin loads of super wet softwood or some hardwoods, right off the mill, like pine and poplar real fast. So high drying rate wood can be cycled fast and at full loads. That doesn't really help on some hardwoods, and the throughput would be the same as a low temp DH kiln for say oak or similar where they come up agains a maximum drying rate constraint of the lumber.

They did admit since the kilns operate higher temps, there was some loss of color in the wood when dried. 

Anyway, my info is way dated, I haven't talked to them in many years but were on my short list at one time. 

I would be interested to know how your deal turns out. 

 

[barbender]

Thanks YH, the info you just gave me now constitutes the majority of what I know about them outside of the for sale ad😊 The fact it is self contained is a bonus, and if I can run it off of my OWB and burn up the wood waste that accumulates around here that would be a win on several levels.