This section allows you to view all posts made by this member. Note that you can only see posts made in areas you currently have access to.

1

General Outdoor Furnace Discussion / Re: Need suggestions

« on: December 06, 2016, 04:06:31 PM »

Thanks for all the advice.  Unfortunately it is raining now that I'm off work and now it seems like I'm burning more wood.  We had one morning with frost, but basically in the lower 40s here during the days and upper 20s and 30s at night.  Burned a rick since Thursday night.  . Will try to get some accurate temps when it dries out a little.  Still leaning toward underground lines being junk, but it's a little too late this season to go replacing them now.

2

General Outdoor Furnace Discussion / Re: Need suggestions

« on: November 28, 2016, 06:39:29 AM »

Slimjim-what's a good way to measure the actual exit gas temperature?  I don't have anything that will measure that high of a temperature that I can think of.  I know when it's burning hard, there is a good 3-4 foot heat wave signature above the stack but no smoke.  The only time it smokes is when it first starts or when it is idling, unless I'm burning green wood.  As a side note, since I'm on a volunteer Fire Dept, last week I went down and got our thermal imaging camera to see if I could visually see any heat loss in he ground, but the ground was very dry and I couldn't see any temperature difference of the ground.  It was handy for seeing where I have insulation losses inside the house though.  Pretty neat how you can see every stud and roof truss through the drywall with that camera.  If it had a good thermometer on it, I would use it to measure stack temp, but it only shows a range on the side of degrees, not an actual temperature.

3

General Outdoor Furnace Discussion / Re: Need suggestions

« on: November 28, 2016, 06:28:19 AM »

Thats pretty cold well water, never really checked the temp of ours, I know the well is about 120’ deep. Thats gotta taste pretty good when its hotter than hell and humid.

I only wish it was that cold coming out of the faucet in the summer time!  We are not on well water though--that is the county water supply.  When we built the house, I had the meter upsized from a 3/4" residential to a 1" commercial due to the length of the run to the house from the water main at the highway (about 450').  The plumbers ran a 1 1/4" line from that meter to the house of pvc underground, but I'm guessing they didn't run it deep enough because in the winter that incoming water is so cold it's like ice water coming out.

4

General Outdoor Furnace Discussion / Re: Need suggestions

« on: November 27, 2016, 10:00:41 PM »

It has always had a huge drop when there is a demand on the dhw side.  I just attributed it to our incoming water to the house is always ice cold in the winter.  It's been that way since we built this house.  I always figured it was taking a lot of btus to heat that water up from 40 degrees up to about 150.  I've never flushed the heat exchanger, but I haven't noted that anything has changed either.  I've pretty much been dealing with this heat loss and wood usage since day one.  I've just been trying to troubleshoot and come up back at square one.

5

General Outdoor Furnace Discussion / Re: Need suggestions

« on: November 27, 2016, 08:42:59 PM »

Will do.  My concern is that the pipes are touching some in the trench and the supply may be heating up the return on the way back to the furnace, masking some of the heat loss since both probes are at the furnace.  I have tried a laser thermometer to check temps at the house, but that thing was so far off, I couldn't get any useful data.

6

General Outdoor Furnace Discussion / Re: Need suggestions

« on: November 27, 2016, 08:16:52 PM »

No, I was saying that the plate exchanger will drop the temp 40 degrees when there is a demand for hot water, as in supply on maverick shows 180, return shows 140 or even 130  sometimes, especially if house is calling for heat at same time.  One time when kids were showering, dishwasher was running and washing machine was going, I remember seeing it drop to 120 with a supply of 180.

7

General Outdoor Furnace Discussion / Re: Need suggestions

« on: November 27, 2016, 08:08:41 PM »

Hondaracer2004--holy smokes!  8 hours between cycles?  I'm not sure how often mine cycles, but I know it is a LOT more often than that.  I'm only heating 1800 sf.  Was hoping to heat my 1600 sf shop at some point, but with this wood consumption I'm not even going to try heating that old drafty building.  When I built "Woody" as my kids call it, I put a separate set of supply and return ports to put a future pump in for the shop.  My water capacity is around 200 gallons, give or take.  I used about 2/3 of a 500 gallon propane tank for the water jacket and 1/2 of a 250 gallon for the firebox.

8

General Outdoor Furnace Discussion / Re: Need suggestions

« on: November 27, 2016, 08:00:13 PM »

How much regular 1" pex do you have in the system?
Is the crawl space insulated? If not, is the pex-al-pex insulated?

In between the floor joists are insulated, but the block walls of the crawl space are not.  My memory may be off, but the more I think about it, I think I ordered 300' of pex-al-pex, not 350'.  I cut that length in half (one piece for supply, the other for return), laid it in the trench (lined with plastic) and spray-foamed it myself.  I know I ran short because the initial intent was to run pex-al-pex all the way to the heat exchanger, but it ran short about halfway across my crawl space, so I transitioned to 1" pex at that point because that was all that was available locally.  Nobody around here has ever heard of pex-al-pex.  I would estimate 25 feet of 1" pex from the supply side pex-al-pex connection to the heat exchangers, then another 25 feet back from the exchangers to the pex-al-pex again.  I know that flub-up added extra head loss due to decreased ID of the pipe I hadn't accounted for originally.  All pipes in crawl space have the foam pipe wrap around them (the stuff that comes in 4ft sticks and is 5/8" thick).  Hope this explanation makes sense and isn't too confusing.

9

General Outdoor Furnace Discussion / Need suggestions

« on: November 27, 2016, 06:43:56 PM »

I built my OWB in 2014 (can see the build if you search under homemade and look for post under my userID).  I have used it for the past two winters, and have fired it up for this season already.  I am at my wits end trying to figure out my wood consumption.  The OWB heats the house and DHW fine, but it seems like I am going through ridiculous amounts of wood to do it.  Here's my setup:  Approximately 175' of 1" pex-al-pex to the middle of the crawlspace where it transitions to 1" regular pex, goes to the 30 plate at the water heater, then to my coil, then back to the crawlspace where it transitions back to 1" pex-al-pex to head back to the boiler.  Total round trip is approximately 400'.  I spray foamed it in the trench.  I'm wondering if this is my problem?  I noticed last year that there was SOME snow melt by my boiler and near where the pipe enters the house, but I didn't think it was TOO significant.  Pipe averages about 30" deep for the majority of the trip through the yard.   My Maverick temp indications show 7 degrees difference round trip when nothing is calling for heat.  Both are strapped to the piping at the boiler (supply and return).  I don't have any in-line temp gauges.  I'm heating 1800 sf of decently insulated home (built in '04) and DHW.  We use a lot of hot water, and for some reason our incoming water line is extremely cold in the winter time.  I have seen it pull the return temp down 40 degrees when we are running both showers.  If the heat kicks on, it will drop it a little more.  This tells me I am not moving the water fast enough, but I figured a TACO 0013 would have been enough when I did my initial head loss calculations.  Things I have tried:  adjusting amount of air flow, adding fire brick to bottom of firebox, using seasoned wood only, using green wood only, using a mix of wood, thrown in a little coal, played with increasing and decreasing my differential setpoints for when the blower kicks on and off (currently set at 12 differential--168 on, 180 off.)  Nothing has made an appreciable change in wood consumption.  I also placed a scrap piece of 1/4" steel in front of the chimney in the firebox so the flames won't blow up the stack.  Instead, they hit the plate, roll up and around the tank, then go down and exhaust up the stack to conserve some of the heat.

When I load the furnace, in milder weather like now (typically upper 30s and lower 40s) I can fill it 2/3 full and it will last 11-12 hours.  Last night it dropped to upper 20s.  I loaded it 2/3 full at 7:30 and at 3:45 am my alarm was going off for low temp (out of wood).  There was a heavy frost on the ground this morning, but none of it was melted over the lines.  To get an idea of how much I am loading, I am putting about 10 pieces in, approximately 18-24" in length and anywhere from large splits to whole 6" round un-split logs.  When it gets to teens and especially single digits, I can fill this thing up full and get 8 hours of it.  My back can't take this much longer!  A rick (4x8 face cord) lasts me about 3 to 3 1/2 days in the middle of winter.

Is my furnace undersized?  Are my lines junk?  What am I doing wrong? 

10

General Outdoor Furnace Discussion / Re: BUILDING MY OWN OWB...NEED TIPS!!!

« on: December 16, 2014, 03:46:30 PM »

Here's a link to the one I built this year. I will try to update with final pictures soon:


http://outdoorwoodfurnaceinfo.com/forum/index.php?topic=4634.0

11

Plumbing / Re: Plumbing schematic

« on: November 11, 2014, 05:22:55 PM »

Yes, the pump is at the owb, so it is not shown in the drawing. I plan to install a wye after the pump at the boiler, but I've never heard of putting one on the domestic side.  Do you really catch much of anything with municipal water?

12

Plumbing / Re: Plumbing schematic

« on: November 10, 2014, 06:24:51 PM »

I did forget those! Thanks for the reminder!

13

Plumbing / Plumbing schematic

« on: November 10, 2014, 02:59:40 PM »

I had a local plumber come out to look at making all the connections (I hate plumbing, and can't justify buying the crimp tools to complete just one job.)  He said he understood what I was wanting to do, but was going to have difficulty explaining it to his employees, so I said I would throw together a rudimentary drawing showing the flowpath.  I told him that although it looks like a bunch of 90's in it, there really weren't, I was just trying to fit everything onto a page.  Does this drawing appear to be an adequate representation?  I am running both heat exchangers in series with individual isolation valves and by-passes around both heat exchangers, a thermostatic mixing valve on the outlet of the water heater and a boiler fill/make-up water line tying into the return to the boiler coming from the hot outlet of the plate heat exchanger.  Am I missing anything important?

14

Home Made / Re: New build plan, looking for suggestions

« on: November 08, 2014, 06:14:50 PM »

Haven't updated in a bit.  Really, I wanted to be finished with this project before now, but sometimes the best-laid plans don't work out the way we wanted.  Anyway, I had a trencher come out to run from the house to the boiler and from the boiler to my shop (for the electrical).  I opted to foam-in-trench, and hope it does the trick.  I just finished running the underground electrical from my shop today and will be making all of the connections/terminations tomorrow after church.  Here are a few pics of what I've been working on lately:









I have to throw one of the wifey on here since she was so gracious to help out on the line installation:



And I can't forget to thank the child labor that I utilized in back-filling the trench:

15

Home Made / Re: ranco probe well.

« on: October 10, 2014, 02:39:19 AM »

This is the one I got with my Ranco kit.

http://www.altheatsupply.com/stainless-steel-dry-well-1241.html