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[dukethebeagle]

just a quick overview.my boiler is a 160 gallon homebuilt.heat is piped into the house and transfered via an exchanger in a wood furnace.
when  there is a demand for heat the fan starts and and heat is distributed via duct.
 my question is---
          do you all run your thermostats at a constant say 72 or
           fluctuate the temps say-72 when were home 68 when we leave or at night.
      which way is easier to keep boiler temps up and use less wood
 

[mlappin]

The wife and I like a cool house when sleeping so we have our programmable set to drop to 67 at night, about an hour or so before we normally get up it's set to bring the temp back up to 71.

It all depends on your house as well, a very well insulated house with at least double pane windows shouldn't place a huge load on the boiler while an older house with wood single pane windows and little to no insulation may take a LONG time to bring back up a couple of degrees. Depends on how many hours your running at a lower temp as well, if your only running at a lower temp for a few hours it very well may take more wood to bring the temp back up than you save.

When I first installed my home built boiler setting the thermostat lower at night would guarantee it take half the day to get those 4-5 degrees back in the morning. But since then we've added a foot of insulation to the attics, blue board, house wrap, new siding and replaced the tired old single pane windows with vinyl double pane windows, is no problem to bring the temp up in the mornings now.

[DaveWertz]

If your house is like mine you wont need to change your T-stat, the house cools down on its own 

[mlappin]

If your house is like mine you wont need to change your T-stat, the house cools down on its own 

Thats what ours used to do, on a really cold windy day the fan wouldn't shut off if it could even keep up.

House wrap makes a huge difference, fan board helps a lot as well. Ditto on double panes.

Since doing that we run the thermostat lower since at it's previous setting it felt too warm. Have it set to drop the temperature an hour earlier at night and set to bring it back up an hour later in the am.

Ours is set up with two fans as we used the old ducting for the HE that the old wood furnace used. Have a spring loaded damper in the duct work between the gas furnace and the HE so one can't back feed the other but both can run in an extremely high heat demand. Like a few weeks ago with the -40 wind chill.