Outdoor Wood Furnace Info
Outdoor Furnaces - Manufacturers WITH EPA-Certified Models => Portage & Main => Topic started by: Watt2323 on December 20, 2016, 05:55:10 AM
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It has been -5 at night here in Indiana and I have been getting 16 hour burn times with my BL-3444. I have been keeping my garage at 60 as well as my shop and the house is a constant 68. Love this time of year, didn't even mind going out yesterday at 12 degrees and loading it.
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Always seems nicer to load the boiler when it's below zero.
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Burning tons of rounds here yet, dropped another 4 ash trees this afternoon and topped em out. I lost count of how many I’ve done this fall, need to get em all dragged out of the woods so I can run em thru the processor.
Was -13 here the other morning, house was a toasty 73 and the shop didn’t take long to get to 65.
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Beven cold here in southeast michigan for the past week or so. Burning 1/2 firebox of poplar/pine/locut/oak mix every 12 hours. House is at 70, garage at 60 and shop at 60. So far so good....lost track of how much wood I've went through since mid October.
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Well so much for the cold days of January in Indiana. What crazy weather we are having.
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Second winter with a CB 1450. Works great for heat, but my propane backup still comes on for hot water. I figured it was a temperature sensor issue, but I just traced all the pipes the installer had setup and realize now that they left it such that it does not serve the hot water. Looks simple to fix with another pump, a check valve, and some pipes. I've mocked up all the fixes in a Visio diagram. I'd love to have a diagram that could do some animations so I could run through all of the fluid flow scenarios.
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Can you post some pics of how the pipes are connected? You shouldn't need check valves.
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I use propane as well not very much but I figured it was because there are 5 people in my home taking showers relatively close together and the exchanger cant keep up?
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I use propane as well not very much but I figured it was because there are 5 people in my home taking showers relatively close together and the exchanger cant keep up?
You using a side arm or plate exchanger? if a plate exchanger when was the last time it was cleaned?
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how do you clean a plate exchanger?
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Most of us use CLR. They do make commercial flat plate products out there too. Either you remove the flat plate from the system and soak it in clr then flush it or flush it when it's off. The way I do it and some of us have done is to have hose bib connections between the flat plate and a quarter turn valve. We turn the quarter turn valve off to isolate the flat plate from the system then I use a little drill pump that I hook up to the hose bib and run the clr through it for 30 mins.
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My setup is a little crazy. I think a diagram will be better than pictures which I need more time to finish. Basically the wood boiler is a an always on loop off a low loss header for radiant floor and then heat exchanger to a loop out to the boiler. So it keeps the low loss header hot and prevents propane that monitors the header from coming on. This is perfect because it means if the boiler runs out of wood the propane supplies the boiler heat and thus I never installed the thermostatic valve that came with the boiler. My boiler stays an even 150F without wood and then the 175F-185F cycle with wood. Should keep the temperature swing triggered condensation to a minimum. Though its a little wasteful if I fail to use the boiler for an extended period of time. The problem is that it is essentially a completely separate loop from the hot water tank to the propane boiler. Little to no flow goes between those two loops. Its an indirect heated water tank with a mixer for domestic hot water so no concerns having it just be 185F when wood is in the wood boiler, so I'd like to just have always on loop to it when the wood boiler is on but I've got a few other similar loops in mind for other purposes. For example the house also has a geothermal forced air system. The installer put a heat exchanger into the duct work, but they gave up on figuring out how to give it wood heat. I've mapped out how to do it, but then its yet another loop to get to flow in the right direction at the right time (i.e. pump only on when a zone demands forced air). My diagram with too many loops makes me think some check valves are a good idea to ensure that some of the pump scenarios still flow the directions I intend. I'll figure it out eventually and share a diagram or too.
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My setup is a little crazy. I think a diagram will be better than pictures which I need more time to finish. Basically the wood boiler is a an always on loop off a low loss header for radiant floor and then heat exchanger to a loop out to the boiler. So it keeps the low loss header hot and prevents propane that monitors the header from coming on. This is perfect because it means if the boiler runs out of wood the propane supplies the boiler heat and thus I never installed the thermostatic valve that came with the boiler. My boiler stays an even 150F without wood and then the 175F-185F cycle with wood. Should keep the temperature swing triggered condensation to a minimum. Though its a little wasteful if I fail to use the boiler for an extended period of time. The problem is that it is essentially a completely separate loop from the hot water tank to the propane boiler. Little to no flow goes between those two loops. Its an indirect heated water tank with a mixer for domestic hot water so no concerns having it just be 185F when wood is in the wood boiler, so I'd like to just have always on loop to it when the wood boiler is on but I've got a few other similar loops in mind for other purposes. For example the house also has a geothermal forced air system. The installer put a heat exchanger into the duct work, but they gave up on figuring out how to give it wood heat. I've mapped out how to do it, but then its yet another loop to get to flow in the right direction at the right time (i.e. pump only on when a zone demands forced air). My diagram with too many loops makes me think some check valves are a good idea to ensure that some of the pump scenarios still flow the directions I intend. I'll figure it out eventually and share a diagram or too.
Sounds like you need to use primary/secondary plumbing to supply all of the different loops that you want to. If the water temp needs to be consistent for all of them you can use parallel primary/secondary. Here's a link to a very complete overview of boiler plumbing http://www.slideshare.net/cooppower/siegenthaler-presentation-small
slide 40 shows a parallel primary/secondary plumbing example.
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Sounds like you need to use primary/secondary plumbing to supply all of the different loops that you want to. If the water temp needs to be consistent for all of them you can use parallel primary/secondary. Here's a link to a very complete overview of boiler plumbing http://www.slideshare.net/cooppower/siegenthaler-presentation-small
slide 40 shows a parallel primary/secondary plumbing example.
This is fantastic. I figured much of this by drawing my own diagrams for thought experiments, but I had not deduced these hydraulic separation concepts. This is going to help me solve this.
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how do you clean a plate exchanger?
(http://i160.photobucket.com/albums/t167/Marty_Lappin/HeatmasterSS/Screen%20Shot%202016-02-25%20at%2011.16.46%20PM_zpsa0dzgbwf.png)
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I use propane as well not very much but I figured it was because there are 5 people in my home taking showers relatively close together and the exchanger cant keep up?
You using a side arm or plate exchanger? if a plate exchanger when was the last time it was cleaned?
I am using a side arm, its only one year old
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I use propane as well not very much but I figured it was because there are 5 people in my home taking showers relatively close together and the exchanger cant keep up?
You using a side arm or plate exchanger? if a plate exchanger when was the last time it was cleaned?
I am using a side arm, its only one year old
Yah, a sidearm will be hard pressed to keep up with 5 people especially when doing laundry or dishes. Something else to consider though, you might have hot water left in the water heater but since cold water enters the bottom it trips the gas valve and starts burning, I used to just turn ours clear off. However if like on a Friday night when we go out to eat, if the wife had a brain fart and ran a load of laundry or two then we both took back to back showers the last person might have the hot water turned up almost all the way when done.
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When I installed the side arm it would be very hot but after the second person showering it was going cold .I put this valve in at the top run 1/4 open ,problem solved . Also I had to remove the anti drain back valve in the top of the tank below the out let
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I see 2 issues with your setup.
First issue, no way to purge the air in the top of your side arm.
Second issue, you should be using the port for the relief valve instead of the hot water port in order to heat the entire tank.