Outdoor Wood Furnace Info
All-Purpose OWF Discussions => Plumbing => Topic started by: kc on November 14, 2012, 08:06:06 PM
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As I am working on a design for my upcoming system a new need has popped up which is heating a sun room. My wife is keeping some of her animals there and is running an electric heater 24/7 which to me screams it needs to be part of the new system. The room is 14'x19' with about 10' ceilings. With all of the windows it is not well insulated and I have calculated needing around 16k BTU heating capacity. My question is what would be the best type of heat exchanger to install? I would hope for something relatively small in size and maybe something hung up out of the way on a wall or from the ceiling. Is a unit heater like for a garage the best bet? I have noted there are "kick space" heaters which are smaller in size but I don't know if there are any that could handle that capacity. Would baseboard be worth considering? Any insight would be appreciated...
kc
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Baseboard heaters put out about 590 btu per foot so you would need about 30 feet. If I were doing it, I would probably just get a small or medium sized squirrel cage blower and a 6x12 or 12x12 heat exchanger and build a box around them.
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Prices may not be the lowest here, but a good place to get some ideas is centralboiler.com There you can view/print their full accessories catalog. They have several different models and sizes. For example, there is a 50k btu heat exchanger which you can get a cabinet for complete with fan. Looks like a floor model. Others hang. There are wall mounts of several sizes, some just convection. I'm heating greenhouses with 140k btu heat exchangers installed into my existing oil-fired furnaces using fan relays. Works great!! Note that having a higher btu rating than needed is not a bad thing, just means it will heat the area quicker. Just my thoughts. Definitely worth hooking it up to the boiler though. Electric heaters are ridiculously expensive to run.
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sun rooms are meant to sit in and enjoy...if it were mine i would consider the baseboards. they are likley more costly and take longer to hook up but they would be quiet
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Another option would be to find a cast iron radiator. One should heat the room nice and won't make any noise and will be more comfortable than forced air.
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The fella I bought my stove from (my neighbor) has 6-8 cast iron radiators in his home shop.
It works awesome and his shop stays toasty.
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Interesting thoughts guys. I never even thought of a cast iron radiator but that could be a possiblity. I like the idea of "quiet" heat that base board or a radiator would provide. Seeing your ideas I just did a quick google search and ran into a question "which is better: base board heaters or cast iron radiators?". Interesting answer - a combination of both. They claim there are base board heaters that are made of cast iron rather than steel. I'll have to keep researching for specifics. I really appreciate the ideas!
kc
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you can find some pretty nice looking cast iron rads, and if the wife is (as most are) interested in designing the room, i bet she sould come up with some unique ways to decorate around one of these newer rads. good luck with your project