Outdoor Wood Furnace Info
Outdoor Furnaces - Manufacturers with NON EPA-Certified Models Only => Shaver Furnace => Topic started by: ambonci on January 26, 2014, 07:23:16 AM
-
i have a shaver 165 with an electric hotwater heater. I have one thermostat set low for the electric and the other one set normal for use with OWB. after giving kids a bath doing dishes and wife showers my shower will be short due to lack of hotwater. anyone have and ideas? OWB is always up t temp. when hotwater isn't hot, inlet pipe to hotwater heater is warm but not hot hot. so im wondering if I have a issue with owb or with hwh. water heater 2 years old. would installing a plate exchanger help my situation? anyone have pictures of their hot water hook up?
Thanks
Adam
-
are you using a sidearm hx for the hot water now?
-
no I just have 2 pipes coming in from outside. one feed one return and one circulator on feed pipe. it was like that when we bought the house. I have been told that a heat exchanger will help.
-
ambonci, a picture or better description of how it is connected to your water heater will help immensely. The two ways owb are fed through water heaters to heat them is either with a sidearm heat exchanger or a plate heat exchanger. It doesn't sound like you have either of these.
-
ill get pic here in a little bit.
-
Unless the admins have done something about it you will probably be unable to post a pic without linking it to another host. Here is how I did it:
Here is how I was told to do it...and it worked for me:
"Use photobucket, load them onto there, then click the share button, then links, then click the (image url) one, copy it, and paste it inline on your post where you want it."
-
does Shaver have a domestic water coil in boiler like a Hardy? Otherwise you would have to have a hx of some sort to have any hot water at all produced by the boiler.
Is your electric water heater turned on? If so, maybe that's why you have any hot water at all.
-
You know what? I just remembered that my buddy had an in the water jacket coil in his shaver when it came from the factory. He through it out. Ambonci must be heating his hot water tank with one. Ambonci if the water coming back to the water heater from out at the stove isn't hot then you have a heat transfer problem. I am going to guess that your coil located in the boiler is covered in scale and lime build up causing the heat not to be able to transfer from the boiler to the water heater water. You will need to remove the piping either at the owb to the coil or inside the house out to the coil and flush the line with CLR.
-
I would bet Hondaracer is right. I did not use the OWB coil on my Shaver because my stove was too far away from the house for it to be effective. I ended up putting a plate HX and tempering valve in front of my electric demand heater. I turned off my electric one when I fired up my stove last fall and have never ran out of hot water. Over thanksgiving, we ran 10 showers back to back to back.... and never ran out, so that was the big test and the plate HX passed!
I tried to attach a picture but am having the same problem as everyone else. And I don't know how to use a photobucket! the same pic is posted elsewhere on this site, search on my username (wood nutt) and you can probably find it.
-
wood nutt I do have the coil same as you im sure. I tried posting pic of my setup with no luck. if you could email it to me? ambonci@hotmail.com. I was thinking of changing 1/2 coil with 3/4 but still unsure if that will cure the problem. HWH roughly 50-60 feet from house. thanks in advance. all recommendations welcome still.
-
wood nut I found your pictures.
-
I emailed you the photo with a brief explanation. Let me know if you have any questions.
-
Ambonci,
F in Law has a hardy with domestic coil built into boiler. 1/2" coil works great as long as its open.
F in Law has 80 gallon electric hwh, and just running the water out through coil in boiler and back into top of hwh was not enough for him. So, we put a T in the drain of water heater and put a small circulating pump on that, from there we T into the domestic water line running out to coil in boiler. The pump runs 24/7 circulating the domestic water in the loop. Plus, because we T into the water line going out to boiler, the new water coming into the hwh also flows though boiler coil, therefore preheating it as it fills hwh. Works perfect.
-
wood nutt I got your picture thank you. racnruss, one of my customers has two hardys at his place and he used to be a hardy dealer. he is also a plumber. I had him look at the system before and he thought I could use a bigger HWH really just a storge tank. I have pictures but cant post them and unfamiliar with photbucket. my feed line is in bottom of HWH with a circulator. I can email these pictures to anyone that would like to look at them. im not much of a plumber and I am having a tough time understanding the lingo I guess.
-
wood nutt if I were to keep the coil make it 3/4 pipe and still install plate exchanger to solve my issue? my heat is on separate pipes if that means anything.
-
Ambonci, If I were you I would dump the idea of the coil in the boiler. I think that they probably work OK but not the greatest. If you have good water(which I am guessing you don't since I think your coil is covered in lime scale) I would go with a plate heat exchanger preheats the water before it dumps it into the water heater. If you have bad water I would use a side arm heat exchanger. If you are hell bent on using the coil in the boiler I would flush it out with CLR. How long have you had the boiler? Is this a new problem or has it been like this ever since you put it in?
-
Based on the new posts, still sounds like your copper coil inside your OWB that heats your domestic water is either partially plugged and you are not getting good flow and/or too much build up that you are not getting a good heat exchange into your domestic hot water flow. It might be time to disconnect your domestic water line to see what kind of flow you are getting thru it and if it is partially to mostly plugged, that is probably least difficult. I am guessing your OWB is not adding enough heat to your electric water heater and the electric water heater cannot keep up with the demand by itself. If you have good flow thru your domestic line thru your OWB coil, next would be to look at your copper coil inside the OWB and that involves unsealing the plate on the back of your OWB and pulling the coil out. As mentioned, there is probably some type of build up, probably scale, insulating your copper from allowing a good heat exchange to your domestic hot water flow. Cleaning the build up off would then be necessary.
If you put a HX inside the house off your heating line from the OWB, I would probably abandon or eliminate the domestic loop to the boiler and not have to maintain that entire 2nd loop and keep the domestic water system inside the house.
A late thought, does your OWB have a 2nd set of boiler water inlets/outlets that are capped? If you are willing to install new 3/4 lines, maybe you should install a 2nd loop of boiler lines and then put a new HX in the house. that still keeps all of your domestic hot water lines in the house. Just a thought?
-
Pretty sure going to 3/4 in copper coil in the boiler is less efficient than 1/2" because a 1/2" copper pipe has more surface area per gallon of water than 3/4 pipe.
So, if the 1/2 is clean, don't waste time and money changing it. Make sure coil is clean and pump is working and it should work fine without having to redo all the plumbing or buy any other heat exchangers.
However, many options are available if you want to change things around and some good suggestions already made.
-
Rancruss is right about the 3/4 coil. If the returning water from the boiler is not hot enough you need more surface area contacting the dhw which means that you need a longer 1/2 coil. The 1/2 is good because it doesn't restrict flow which would reduce water pressure but still has a good amount of surface area to make contact with the boiler water. 3/4 pipe would allow less surface area because more water would be insulated in the middle of the 3/4 pipe as it flows.
-
Is the pump multi speed and it is flowing too much water thru the coil, not allowing it to get sufficiently warm before leaving the OWB? :o
-
if you have 1/2 pipe in the boiler it is likely flowing between 2 and 3 gpm from house pressure.
my home built water to water exchanger has a 1/2 coil 50 feet long wrapped up in it and the water at the tap is always hot (as long as there is wood in the stove)
not sure how long your coil is but i know 50 feet is plenty (perhap more than you really need?)
-
I am pretty sure that the way his is set up the domestic cold water flows through the owb before dumping into the water heater. Correct me if I am wrong ambonci. In this case I believe that he isn't getting good heat transfer because of build up in the coil.
-
I am pretty sure that the way his is set up the domestic cold water flows through the owb before dumping into the water heater. Correct me if I am wrong ambonci. In this case I believe that he isn't getting good heat transfer because of build up in the coil.
i would tend to agree, as house pressure in 1/2 pipe is likely between 2 and 3 gpm and when the factory put in a coil they would take that into consideration (i hope) it must have worked good at one time?
-
i have been at this house for 3 winters. it was here when we bought the house. I have never put in any additives. no one ever told me but I have since been reading and trying to figure things out. I have played with boiler in many phases. I have loading times and all that stuff down now I want to fine tune the system a bit I guess. the circulator on the OWB is multispeed and is set on med. since we lived here it seems like hot water has never lasted long. when we put in new HWH I had to disassemble circulator at HWH because of buildup inside. hondaracer im not sure on how its hooked up. I think I have a build up issue more and more bc my house only 1500 sq ft I can have OWB up to temp all day and house set at 76 and it will never get past 72 if real cold out. that maybe normal and I may be asking to much from OWB but I would think it should heat it. I guess im gonna have to disassemble boiler in spring.
-
Wow, how is your owb hooked up into the boiler system in the house? What are your temps coming in from the owb and headed back to the owb? Also what are your water temps on the boiler system in the house side?
-
I too have had problems with hot water during the winter months here in Oklahoma. I have a shaver 165 and only a 50 gal. hot water tank installed like their directions show you. The warmer months are fine but during the winter months we can only run two showers(back to back) and the third has to be fast :D before running out of dhw. My stove has aprox 70 ft of pipe to the hot water tank and is well insulated(that high dollar insulated pex in the loom). Heat works great and I even tried the hot water on demand but the dishwater supply takes too long to heat up and through country boy experimentation I don't think that the 50 ft coil in my shaver is suficiant to heat the water on demand. It just dosen't stay in the coil long enough. I think a 100-150 ft coil in there would have worked better. :thumbup: I've tried pump on every speed , location, etc. I have an ETC on the stove and the hot water tank and temp gauges inline with the pipe. I've considered buying a larger hot water tank but hey get really expensive over 50-80 gallons. I'm going to try a plate heat exchanger and rig the pump to run 24/7(at least during the winter months) to see how that works. I have three daughters at home now and go through hot water like kids with candy my shower is always last. If anyone has tried a plate type exchanger on demand please chime in. thanks and good luck!
-
Doug, Personally I use a side arm which is just hooked up inline with my heat exchanger for the house. I plumb it through the sidearm first then to the water to air hx. I have a tube in shell side arm and actually found out this year that I had it installed wrong. I would get about 20 gallons out of my 55 gallon hw heater before the temp started to drop. Well I found out that with the short shell in tube design side arm that you actually have to mount it at the bottom of the tank so that it fills the whole tank with hot water, not just the top. Long sidearms don't have this issue since they run the whole height of the tank. I installed a pump on mine that circulates water through the sidearm on the dhw side until it reaches 140 degrees and then shuts off. I never run out of how water. I went with the sidearm hx because I have hard water. If you don't have hard water I would go with a plate heat exchanger and you will have endless hot water.
-
Thanks for the help
-
I would just throw a flat plate inline if your pump on the furnace runs 24/7. If not then you need to flush that coil out.
-
That coil is on the back of the tank and I bet its getting the cold water return in that cavity. Those return lines are not far enough into the tank itself, so the cold water returns and goes directly all around your copper coil.
-
Doug,
What water temp. are you running in your outdoor wood furnace. What temp. do you have your thermostat on on the DHW? I ran mine about four years now with no problems. Its pretty hard to take three showers back to back on a regular water heater and have hot water!
Greg Steinacher
618-401-0726
www.midwestoutdoorfurnace.com (http://www.midwestoutdoorfurnace.com)