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[Dustin]

This is my first year heating with this unit that came with the house I purchased.  I'm heating appox 1600 sq ft ranch with basement that is fairly efficient.  I have the temp set at 165 on and 175 off.  I'm burning good oak and elm wood.  I fill it at 8 pm and by 430 am it is out of wood and water temp is around 125.  It has been cold in wi but would think it should be a little better than this.  I replaced the pump last week hoping this was the issue, replaced the thermostat in the house.  Checked water temp at plate exchanger and it only dropped a couple of degrees.  I have a plate exchanger which is connected to my exchanger on my forced air furnace.  Water in and out seems pretty close to the same temp.  Could I have a clogged plate exchanger, possibly some type of draft issue on the boiler?  I have reached out to the previous owners but don't expect much help.  Thanks

[Dan76]

 Something is drawing a lot of heat. I don't know how cold it is in your area but with good oak I am surprised it runs out that fast.  Is there anything other than the furnace drawing heat like hot water tank or floor heat?  Without seeing your setup I would guess that if the exchanger wasn't working your furnace would blow cold air and your boiler would hardly take any wood.  How far away is the furnace from the house and is the line insulated?

[userdk]

What kind of line do you have? If it can be water logged, it may be.

[Sluggo]

Are you heating up he basement also?  That would be 3200 sq ft and your stove is probably undersized.  If not then I'm guess you have an air leak somewhere on the stove...probably the damper.

[dana k]

This is my first year heating with a owb.  I have done a lot of experimenting with differential temps and draft settings.  A. Few things that I found were.

Temp on at 178 off  at 190.  Hotter water hotter air to house so furnace didn't run as long. Boiler seemed to like this range.

The draft fan on the back has an adjustable damper.  Found if I set it at 50 get about the best burn times on wood.  If I go much over 50 blow a lot of heat out stack and really burned up the wood.  If I went much under 50 the recovery times were longer so burned a lot also.

I'm burning elm oak walnut and maple.  Heating 1800sf plus basement.  Get about 14 hours burn time on full load of wood in stove.


Maybe look at damper setting if its adj.  Try a little higher temp settings. 

[userdk]

Where are you located in WI?

[Dustin]

I am located in southwest WI.  My boiler is about 50 ft. from the house.  It is hooked to the hot water heater but it only sends water through the plate excahnger when we use hot water which doesnt seem to be hooked up correctly.  The line is pex that is wrapped in layers with foil insulation covered with drain tile.  I am planning on going through the dampers this weekend to try and solve this mystery.  My wood pile cant keep this up for long.

[AirForcePOL]

Did you figure out what your issue was?

[BeaconWoods]

Does the snow melt off the ground above the lines between the boiler and the house?  If so, that would suggest poor insulation around the lines or that they are waterlogged.  I live in western Illinois - Quad Cities area.  We have / had a WD 8000 and get 24 hours out of it except in the coldest of weather.  I load it up around 7 p.m.  One of us does have to go out and pull the chunks forward around mid morning next day but it does fine til the evening fill unless it is super cold or we're using super low density wood.  I typically save that for the easier parts of the heating season.

What is the purpose of the plate exchanger in the system?  From reading your post I did not get a good mental picture how it is plumbed in.

Maybe if I can find a Saturday with nothing going on (does that ever happen?) my wife and I could drive up and take a look.  We've been doing this for a few years now.

[Dustin]

Well I'm back at it again.  Installed new lines this summer because my other lines where water logged and junk.  Installed rheum closed cell foam with 1 in. My distance is only 40 ft.  I figured this may of been the problem.  Fired it yesterday morning with good seasoned oak.  Filled it again before bed and now this morning it's almost empty and the furnace blower was running for long periods early this morning trying to get the house to temp.  Now I'm thinking I'm not getting the maximum heat off of my exchanger.  Any thoughts.

[Willydean]

I have seen this before on a 3000 series. What I found was the chimney/upper plate was stopped up, cleaned the chimney and flu working great now.

[shepherd boy]

You are just pulling a lot of heat. You have 1600 ft top and bottom =3200 + hot water . You are getting close to max sq. ft.  There is no suggestion as to how long a burn time you can expect running close to max. I've seen a 3000e do good on a 5000 sq ft house with 6" foam walls and 12" foam ceiling,12 + hours anytime, but I just saw a house 1500 sq ft that needed a a 5000sq ft furnace to get a decent burn time.
 How big is your blower in your furnace (cfm)? how big is your heat exchanger? You might be able to increase your heat exchange but that will put a heavier demand on the outdoor furnace.

[schoppy]

Not to throw more issues at you but normally when calculating heat load for insulated basements you only consider 1/2 the square footage for heat load in the basement. So if you have a 1600 sq. ft. home then add 800 sq. ft. for the basement plus DHW if you are doing that also. Seems like there must be other problems to me.

[Sluggo]

Lots of overthinking going on here...the stove is too small.

[shepherd boy]

I think your right.