Outdoor Wood Furnace Info

All-Purpose OWF Discussions => Plumbing => Topic started by: MarkP on October 28, 2022, 07:38:47 AM

Title: Adding capacity
Post by: MarkP on October 28, 2022, 07:38:47 AM

I'm using a homemade boiler and this is year #5 with it.  All steel, and I'm heating my 1000 sq ft garage with 10' ceilings, and a 1680 sq ft house.  Both structures are well insulated.  I built both around 2003-4.  The boiler is 180 gallons, and uses 3+ cord to heat the garage from mid October to May 1.  I'm very pleased with it, and it produces almost no smoke at all.  In the last 2 years, I've added the house to the boiler.  How much can adding 50-100 gallons of capacity help?  I'm thinking adding a tank in my crawlspace, and insulating it very well.  My last stove was 340 gallons, and it seemed to work so much better with less wood. I know there can be other issues, but capacity was the first thing that comes to mind.  As of today, I have the temperature set point at 145 with a 15 degree differential.  I increase the temperature as the ambient temperature drops over the winter.

Thoughts???

Title: Re: Adding capacity
Post by: OTR on November 03, 2022, 02:57:20 PM

I've thought about doing something similar myself, but never gotten around to it.

I've read reports of being able to store massive amounts of heat this way, with people burning their boiler once every few days to heat their tanks, then using the heat from the tanks after that. I'm a little skeptical of their performance reports, and I'd think not running the boiler for a couple of days could be a problem unless you've got the boiler water loaded up with antifreeze... but I've never tried it, so I don't know anything for certain.