I wonder if they left all the historical markings. I guess the Nazi's made all sorts of structures that retain them but still. . .

If they could only extract energy using Godwin's Law! :)

Godwin could not win arguments without hobbling his opponents.

With the energy required to gather the wood chips I really don't see the burner as being greener than pipe delivered fuels like oil and natural gas.

@slowburn, Amazed by your comment, you must be deep in oil business and global warming denial. Wood chips are either left overs form wood production or thinning wood from the forest, both realized in a nearly closed CO2 process. Indeed transport might adds some negative points to it. Comparing with oil and natural gas, transported around the globe, only adding CO2 into the atmosphere, that's peanuts.

exodous:
I rather doubt any historical markings survived the sanctified scrubbing that has been done already, and continues to be done. Oh, maybe, "Achtung! Wash hands here!" or "Achtung! Throw garbage here!" survived. To be safe, one can dwell to the heart's content on say, the Roman conquest of Gaul... or
"I don't do history often, but when I do, The Peloponnesian Wars, are not Greek to me. Stay safe my friends."

Anyone interested in doing this kind of work should also look into adding phase change salt heat storage. Phase Change Salts are capable of storing a far larger amount of energy per unit volume than water and they absolutely will not "wear out", are cheap, stable, and relatively non-toxic. Water would still be the best & cheapest heat transfer media for initial heat gain and also for transporting the heat gained to storage and users. It is practical to produce domestic water & space heating as well as process heat flows. Phase Change Salt heat storage can compactly store enough heat to span most any cold & cloudy period to get to the next sunny heat gain period and at a price that fossil fuels can never compete with.

Ya, nice thing, thou not realy overwhelming. Esthetically questionable and technicaly nothing realy new. Still: For sure much better than just keeping that rotten concrete block.

@ Ramon Verhoeven Wood is being harvested in in the USofA to fuel electrical generation plants in Europe so clearly the transportation is significant. Besides leaving the wood chips on the forest floor in highly beneficial. In many places gathering wood is forbidden because the wood on the ground provides the nutrients for the growing trees.

@slowburn, partly wright but: I think you have a typical example of wrong economics. Are the US not capable to use their woodchips in making elektricity? Or might oil/gas be cheaper because of subsidies (read tax breaks/investment subsidies) for big oil ? If the real costs of coal/oil/gas would have to be paid, including the pollution factor, I think the US would use more of the woodchips. Europe has a carbon tax system that pushes to more greener energy and away from oil. Time for the US to get into this direction and take their responsibility towards global warming. Do you suggest bringing woodchips back into the forest, you cant be serious ? Here we leave a sufficient amount of woodchips/trees and dead trees/meterial behind in the forest. Woodchips/sawdust from industry is definitely not needed for that.