Outdoor Wood Furnace Info
All-Purpose OWF Discussions => General Outdoor Furnace Discussion => Topic started by: Hammersquash on September 14, 2014, 06:31:28 AM
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In southwestern Ontario we hit a balmy 4 degrees Celsius last night. There is high teens forecasted for the next few weeks so I thought I would take advantage of the back end of this cold front to test fire my stove. This way I would have a month to straighten out the bugs.
I only had to make a few connections to finished the deal up and after a leak check with 15 psi air pressure and some soapy water at all my compression fittings I was satisfied there would be no puddles in my house.
I have to admit the juxtaposition of anxiety and excitement while over-viewing my somewhat completed project was a very strange feeling. After spending the summer splitting wood, gathering plumbing pieces and most importantly learning new skills I was apprehensive that my hard work would not come to fruition.
Filling the boiler from my basement at one of the bleed ports became my first challenge. I feel a bit embarrassed to say I did not account for the weight of the water in the boiler once it reached a level to overcome water pressure in my domestic water system. I was a bit perplexed when it stopped filling after 15 min but came up with a remedy pretty quickly to close off supply and return valves at the boiler and tap in to the fill port below the pump. Luckily for me physics has not changed since highschool.
With the blower on I was surprised how quickly I was able to get the fire started. In essence some newspaper, discarded stakes from my concrete pad experience and a few pieces of straggler wood chunks and kaboom. Raging fire.
It took about 30 min to heat the water jacket from 50dF to 170dF. Once the water jacket was hot I plugged in the pump and went to my manifold to check flow and temps. DHW is a bit too hot and the house was so warm last night we had to open the windows. I do not have my thermostat figured out yet so I just switched it over to fan for now. I installed a mixing valve between the plate exchanger and cold water in line so after a quick adjustment all is good.
To make sure no one was going to get scalded I jumped in the shower to get a feel for how hot my DHW is. I am happy to report I literally stood under the hot water for 30 min grinning my face off that the hot water coming out of the shower head was born from my own two hands. Not the propane guy, not the electricity guy and not the oil guy. I told my kids to take as long as a shower as they want (I was the hot water nazi) in the shower whenever the boiler is running.
So here is a formal thank-you to everyone on the board. Scouring old posts and reading new posts has given me enough knowledge to complete this entire project without any help. I would not have been able to do this if it wasn't for this message board.
Now for another hot shower!
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NICE, Well Done!!!!
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That's awesome Hammer :post:
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another happy fellow Ontarioian :thumbup:
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Nice! love that first shower with no propane.
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Congrats Hammer. I know how you feel as your post was exactly how I was feeling last year. All the work done and almost afraid to start the thing expecting something to go wrong and take the wind from your sails. Don't get too wrinkly in the shower! :o