Outdoor Wood Furnace Info
All-Purpose OWF Discussions => General Outdoor Furnace Discussion => Topic started by: DaveWertz on January 22, 2013, 11:16:46 PM
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Hey guys. Well just want to start by saying I bought my grandparents house and it came with a hardy h4 2004 model. Well there is all replacement window and not sure how well the house is insulated as it is pretty old but good shape and faily updated. Anyhow. My gram always complained about it getting nippy (62-65) on single digit days. And now I am finding that out with the thermostat set at 75 it is 65 in the house. Where the piping comes from the OWB it goes straight down into 6" diameter pipe and channeled into the house. The piping used for the OWB is i would say 1" white piping and no insulation wraped around it. Just comes into the house from the 6" pipe and right into the copper piping. Would it make sense to try to crame insulation down threw the 6" pipe to insulate the sending and return pipes or should I pull them from the stove and wrap them? Im new to this so be nice ;D The stove is about 15' from the house and is on concrete. I should be able to heat this house to problem with this stove and at a temp the girlfriend won't gripe about.
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Posted this in the other thread as well.
Having the same issues as you 1860's house hot water baseboard, set at 68-70 staying at 65-66 for the most part. I bumped my boiler temp up to 190 and restricted some on the zones going to rooms we were not using and that helped some. My main problem in the rate the house is using heat, the old oil burner can't keep up either need to get more than 3in of insulation in the attic, mostly single story house.
Not say you aren't loosing heat from the pipes but it may not be the main problem. May not be the best, but what you said of pulling them out and wraping or replacing with prewarped pipes would be the easiest solution.
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How much wood are you guys going thru if your house never stops calling for heat. If you are not going thru any more than you would when the house is satisfied, you have a design flaw in your house side (not enough radiators, too low water temp). If your going thru alot more wood, and your house still isnt warm, your home heat loss is greater than can be supplied thru your supply line (prob 1" pex) or too small gpm pump.
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Yes. There is much more info needed and the above questions need to be considered.
If those are bare lines and simply ran through a 6" tile. Your loosing a lot right there. It's only 15' but willieg on here has some calculations that would help with this.
The thing about this stuff is, you have to start correcting the obvious issues first and then start working through the system. If you got a section of insulated 5 wrap, pull the tile off that comes with it, and slide that insulated package through you're exsisting tile. It's simply not possible to make a home made wrap even slightly comparable to a quality wrap. I've not seem a home made package yet that I would use.
Pump size could be off if your not seeing a major increase in wood use in 0 weather.
Feel free to call if you want to discuss the details of the system
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Here is a few pics I took of my piping setup. Notice there is only foam wrapped around the piping. Probably don't help much. The piping is PEX 3/4" white piping and a TACO 007F3 and Wilo pumps.
[attachment deleted by admin for space issues]
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Do you have 2 sets of line going to the boiler for heat or is one for hotwater? Its hard to tell from the pictures looks like you have 2 sets of pipes in 2 seperate tiles. Would need alot more info but that pump my not be enough for the load.
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The one line in the top two pics that goes out by itself is for the water return from the water softner system. Then three lines that bring water in from the stove and yes this is my hot water supply also. Then I believe the other two lines are part of the return lines back to the stove. I couldn't imagine that the tiles would cause heat loss because the lines are not exposed directly to the cold and I put my hand up in as far as I could and it was really warm, and being wrapped in foam has to help allot also. I mean is this setup not sufice enough or is there something I can do to make it better. Im still learning and fixing other parts of the house so pockets are a little stingy. Im wrapping all my copper pipe this weekend and see if that helps and possible wrapping the PEX pipe that is in the house just for giggles. Its cheap enough to do so why not, right.
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And the taco pump is brand new so I know it isnt weak or anything like that.
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007 with 3/4" lines is a bad combo, you might be able to use the 007 with 1" lines but your restricted pretty bad. You can push nearly double the btu through 1" vs 3/4"
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You know of any sites I can buy piping? And would you happen to know pricing for 1"
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I try to help forum members out and give them discounts and such if you want. My number is in my sig.
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Thats great I will definetly call you for pricing. Where in the U.S are you from? I work 3rd shift and would be able to call this weekend as it might be to late during the week when I wake up for work. Again, Thanks.
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Yea, feel free to call this weekend, we'll discuss your overall set up and make sure your getting the most out of it.
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I would insulate the pipe or buy some insulated pipe, I insulate all the pipes I only want heat getting released in my baseboard and heat exchanger.
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Yup, I was gonna reccomend putting frost king on all inside pipes, it's better than nothing. Unless he's trying to heat the space where the pipes are too
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I'm kind of surprised no one told him to check his temps on the lines at the boiler and in the house. That would be a sure sign if you are losing a lot of heat in the pipe. If the run is only 15' I wouldn't think there would be much loss unless they are going through some water in the big pipe.
Also if only a 15' run I would go to my nearest Lowes or HD and buy me some 1" pipe and start there.
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15' of un-insulated would lose quite a bit of btu's.
Every little bit counts, if you gain a few here, a few there, and get it all as good as you can, you can definitely improve things
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He's actually very lucky, he can remove the cover on the regular insulated pipe and slide the pex and insulated part through his exsisting pipe.
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Well I went and bought some polyurathane pipe wrap (glorified foam) and wrapped my copper pipes. I let things go for about 3hrs and noticed a 4 degree difference in my house!!! Don't know if I got lucky or what but my blower hasnt kicked on for awhile so it hasnt called for heat in a bit either. Think I am going to try to insulate the PEX next. I think one of my major problems is there is not enough registers in my home I.E. One per room. Doesn't seem if I went to 1" pipe that it would help much because of the lack of baseboard registers. Just my guess though.
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See, every little bit counts. The underground will be another step
But 1" will def move far more btu's
Twice as much water will flow through a 1" line vs 3/4".. Or there about, it's bigger and flows a lot easier
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Most of the copper pipe is 3/4" do you think stepping up to 1" PEX would still push more water threw a 3/4" copper pipe? I think the stove needs a good cleaning inside to. My gram failed to shut it completley down in the summer to fully clean it. Im not joking when I say this but there was 1" of soot that I literally pulled off in sheet like chunks off the sides. The bottom I got what I could without getting inside but in the bottom corners there is still a good bit and some liquid creosot also. Looked like tar. I just stirred that around to see if it would burn off. Im sure none of that helps in heating either.
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Well we don't want to mess with the copper.
You can get underground pex in 3/4", but its hardly any price difference. If it were all 1" yes it would be better, but having part of it 1" would take "some" resistance out of the system.