Welcome, Guest. Please login or register.
Did you miss your activation email?
Show Posts
This section allows you to view all posts made by this member. Note that you can only see posts made in areas you currently have access to.
Pages: [1]
1
General Outdoor Furnace Discussion / Re: New home with an OWB questions
« on: January 24, 2017, 07:27:26 PM »I would advise against using anti-freeze in the system, it can be very corrosive. I use water from my furnace to feed back into my owb to keep it from freezing.
Would using an electric boiler to do the same thing make any sense here? Ideally id not want to continue to heat the entire loop but rather just feed some warm water back to the boiler to keep it from freezing vs keeping the entire loop at temp. I am planning on having a few different groups out to look and give me some quotes on what they would recommend. I'm just trying to get a few ideas ahead of time about how this type of system would be managed. Neither the inspection or appraisal raised any red flags about the setup but I guess we'll see when I have some experts out. I know I'll be stacking wood this spring though!
2
General Outdoor Furnace Discussion / New home with an OWB questions
« on: January 23, 2017, 01:43:24 PM »
So, I'm pretty new to the boiler setup and have some general questions.
There's an Aqua-Therm 345 attached to the back of a shop with an small insulated setup with lines running underground and into a utility room and then a valve system inside that can be switched back and forth between an 18kw electric boiler. The previous owner left maybe a cord of cut wood and a cord of uncut wood. The temps at the beginning of January were about -18F at night around here in Minnesota. The home has about 2600 square feet of radiant slab heating with a couple hundred being a single car attached garage. For the first week I burned through pretty much all of the wood that was cut. There's a valve inside that adjusts how much water circulates directly back to the boiler and was used to adjust the temperature in the house but there was no thermostat tie in for the home when using the outdoor wood boiler so there's no real control over what temperature water goes into the slab other than the aquastat on the OWB. There's no mixing anywhere. Since I was basically running out of wood, I switched the system over to the electric boiler which now with the temps being up between 20F to 35F I've been hovering at about $45 a week in electric which so far as I can tell is less than I would spend on wood right now. When the electric boiler kicks on it usually stays on for about 10 hours before it kicks off and then the house usually overshoots by about 2 degrees and doesn't kick back on again for over 24 hours. With the electric on I'm still feeding the OWB a bit to keep it alive.
I guess I'm not 100% sure what I want out of the system but after reading around a bit I feel like there's a few pieces missing and I'm curious how other people have set up or would set up a similar system. With no antifreeze in the system, I can't really leave for any period of time. I'm stuck debating whether it makes more sense to try to get antifreeze into the OWB or to have some setup where the electric boiler could feed some warm water back to the wood boiler to keep it from freezing. At the same time I feel like I burn through more wood than I would if the house was capable of controlling circulation into the floors. Right now when I load up the OWB there is an aquastat but the boiler continues to pump through the house whether the house needs it or not. I would fill it at 6am and by 5pm I'd be lighting a new fire and the house would usually be warmer than I really needed it.
Would you tie both systems together so that the electrical system would be capable of backing up the wood system? Should I be looking for something to control the temperature and flow of water into the floors?
At the same time I'm planning to put in a heatpump a/c and furnace this summer and I'm not sure if it would be better to tie the systems to it instead in terms of emergency back up. I also ran into an issue with the thermostat one night where I tried to use the indoor wood stove and confused the entire system. Is it worth looking into getting a temperature sensor in the slab itself?
There's an Aqua-Therm 345 attached to the back of a shop with an small insulated setup with lines running underground and into a utility room and then a valve system inside that can be switched back and forth between an 18kw electric boiler. The previous owner left maybe a cord of cut wood and a cord of uncut wood. The temps at the beginning of January were about -18F at night around here in Minnesota. The home has about 2600 square feet of radiant slab heating with a couple hundred being a single car attached garage. For the first week I burned through pretty much all of the wood that was cut. There's a valve inside that adjusts how much water circulates directly back to the boiler and was used to adjust the temperature in the house but there was no thermostat tie in for the home when using the outdoor wood boiler so there's no real control over what temperature water goes into the slab other than the aquastat on the OWB. There's no mixing anywhere. Since I was basically running out of wood, I switched the system over to the electric boiler which now with the temps being up between 20F to 35F I've been hovering at about $45 a week in electric which so far as I can tell is less than I would spend on wood right now. When the electric boiler kicks on it usually stays on for about 10 hours before it kicks off and then the house usually overshoots by about 2 degrees and doesn't kick back on again for over 24 hours. With the electric on I'm still feeding the OWB a bit to keep it alive.
I guess I'm not 100% sure what I want out of the system but after reading around a bit I feel like there's a few pieces missing and I'm curious how other people have set up or would set up a similar system. With no antifreeze in the system, I can't really leave for any period of time. I'm stuck debating whether it makes more sense to try to get antifreeze into the OWB or to have some setup where the electric boiler could feed some warm water back to the wood boiler to keep it from freezing. At the same time I feel like I burn through more wood than I would if the house was capable of controlling circulation into the floors. Right now when I load up the OWB there is an aquastat but the boiler continues to pump through the house whether the house needs it or not. I would fill it at 6am and by 5pm I'd be lighting a new fire and the house would usually be warmer than I really needed it.
Would you tie both systems together so that the electrical system would be capable of backing up the wood system? Should I be looking for something to control the temperature and flow of water into the floors?
At the same time I'm planning to put in a heatpump a/c and furnace this summer and I'm not sure if it would be better to tie the systems to it instead in terms of emergency back up. I also ran into an issue with the thermostat one night where I tried to use the indoor wood stove and confused the entire system. Is it worth looking into getting a temperature sensor in the slab itself?
Pages: [1]