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[BenGrove]

Hey, my dad and I are researching these OWF pretty extensively and he asked a good question that I hope you all can help me with.
Say I go on vacation during winter break and I'm not at home to keep my furnace going, could the water in the tank potentially freeze and crack while there is no fire going?
This may seem like a dumb question, but I'm new to this stuff.  Any wisdom is greatly appreciated!

[jerkash]

It may not crack the OWF but it will bust pumps and water lines

[mlappin]

Hey, my dad and I are researching these OWF pretty extensively and he asked a good question that I hope you all can help me with.
Say I go on vacation during winter break and I'm not at home to keep my furnace going, could the water in the tank potentially freeze and crack while there is no fire going?
This may seem like a dumb question, but I'm new to this stuff.  Any wisdom is greatly appreciated!

1: You'll want to have a family member or good friend stop by and fill it as often as required.

2: will cost more but you can add antifreeze to your system.

3: I magine a way could be set up to have your domestic hot water heater bleed some heat back into the boiler loop to keep it from freezing.

[hondaracer2oo4]

First question is this going into a FHA or FHW system in the house? If it is forced hot water then the indoor boiler will just heat the owb backwards through the plate exchanger. If you have forced hot air things wont work like that well in reverse. Some people place one of those little oil filled electric radiators or even a small electric space heater inside of the firebox and let it run. It will keep the water jacket warm, just plug up the air intake and the flue.

[Marktk]

A friend of mine does use the forced air to back heat when the boiler is out.  Seems ex
pensive to me. I have no back up so my wife and i will not take a winter vacation. Orget a helper to fill while gone

[cantoo]

There are dual burner owb's out there. A guy at work has CB one and thinks it's great. His princess doesn't like to get her hands dirty so if he's away it just switches over to propain.

[slimjim]

He may as well burn propane year round if he does that, Wood fireboxes are huge compared to a gas or oil fired unit and they require 3 totally different drafts, the draft in a wood boiler is considerably higher and will suck the heat from an oil or gas fired unit right out the chimney, that whole thing is another marketing scam that makes you think you can choose propane as a backup fuel, use some common sense wood boilers are for wood and gas boilers are for gas, if you want a backup oil or gas system then put it in as an add on.