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[woodman]

Is there any good way to add some cushion to a undersized boiler. The thing is, it's not undersized 90% of the time. I run into trouble when it drops to near zero at night and multiple morning showers require more btu's than I have left after 12-14 hours. I know the easy fix is to go top off the boiler at 9 or 10, but I am lazy. I usually get home around 5 and load up the boiler and I don't want to see it again till 7-8 the next morning. From 8am til 5pm my heat load is considerably less than it is from 5pm till 8am. I was thinking about adding some buffer tanks in the basement, but I don't know how much or how to do it. The thought was charging during the day when the boiler spends a fair amount of time at idle.

[juddspaintballs]

Add hot water storage.  You can get a big well pressure tank and insulate it, use a water heater, or even use a propane tank with some bungs welded in place. 

[fryedaddy]

Look up an article on building solar storage tanks.

Seams very simple and would be fairly cheap.

[mlappin]

Previous posters are on track, need more thermal storage. It sounds like once the morning showers are done it’d have ether rest of the day to catch back up?

I have a waste oil boiler in the shop that holds 450 gallons then my G400 holds another 250 gallons, in the shoulder seasons or back in December when it got so warm I let the wood boiler go out and just used the waste oil boiler in the evening to bring all 700 gallons up to 180 then shut it off. Would have heat and hot water all night in the house and till the next evening.

BTW, my waste oil boiler is homemade and is manual lite and once it cutouts at 180 its off till I reset it.

[dukethebeagle]

thats what i did.when u burn open her up and let her fly