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[hondaracer2oo4]

I have been running my Hardy H4 for 4 winters now and I would never be able to heat my house for the 1200 or so that it costs me in wood so it is great. But like almost everyone on here we are tied to these things every 12 hours for loading. I would really like to be able to leave for a weekend and be able to just burn a little oil and have the system run as normal without having to do anything drastic to keep the  boiler from freezing or the lines from freezing etc etc. So my current set up is

1980s lay down style oil furnace in the basement(200k btu)
Hardy H4 owb
Two 1 inch pex lines each way into the house
1 24x24 water to air hx
1 sidearm hx for the dhw

The set up works great for just owb operation but if I try to run the oil furnace it takes a long time to heat up the water in the water to air hx in order to get any decent heat out of the ducts in the house and is very inefficient. What I think would work very well would be to remove the old oil furnace out of the basement and pick up on craigslist for a reasonable price a (175k btu I think) oil boiler. For one thing it would only take up a small area of my basement where as the old oil furnace is HUUUUGE. It would have a plate exchanger on it where the water from the owb would flow through that and then to the dhw and then to the water to air hx. It would keep the two systems separate but if you went away for the weekend you would simply turn on the oil boiler and leave. Once the water dropped down to what ever temp you had the aquastat set to on the oil boiler it would kick on and start heating the water in the owb and keeping it at temperature just like if you had the fire still going. Anyone else out there have this set up?

[slimjim]

There are better ways of doing what you are looking to do, gas fired wall hung boiler, separate loop for the water to air exchanger, lots of different solutions, installing an oil boiler just to heat the wood boiler seems a bit overkill.

[hondaracer2oo4]

Slim,

 I dont want to just use it to heat the OWB but I wont to have a reliable back up to the owb and I wont to get rid of the old small pinto that is my forced hot air furnace out of the basement. I don't have gas in the house and I am not much interested in having a propane tank installed and plumbed into the house. I already have an oil tank plumbed up so why wouldnt I use that? Any other ideas? I would like to be able to go away for a weekend in the winter and just let the wood run out and have something reliably take over. Whenever I run my oil furnace it has to run a lot to heat up the water in the water to air hx everytime it fires up before I get any decent heat coming out of my vents in the house.

[slimjim]

Do you have the ability to run some heat loops at the same time?  Could you perhaps run some radiant under your first floor from the basement, here I could see the benefits of a good boiler added on but just to heat the water to air exchanger seems a bit overkill. Have you ever tried slowing your blower down?
Aren't you here in the Northeast, perhaps I could stop by for a cold adult beverage and have a look, regardless, if you do get an oil boiler you would be well of to get a good one, my neighbor just down the road imports Biasi oil and wood fired units from Italy, they make a very good product.

[hondaracer2oo4]

Slim, I am here in Canterbury New Hampshire. Small town just north of Concord. You would always be welcome around here! I do have the ability to run radiant loops but I don't think it would be the best move. The house is 220 year old timber frame colonial and insulating the underside of the floor would be difficult at best. I have my blower running on low or medium I believe already. I used to run it on high but that just made the house uncomfortable with the temp swings. What would slowing down the fan speed help with? Like I said, the oil furnace is old and really should be replaced since a lot of the tin around it is starting to loosen up from rusty screws etc and it takes up half of the 1/3 basement that I have. I felt like putting in an oil boiler would clean up some room, I could have a tin guy come in and loop the FHA togeather with a mout for the blower and I would be able to have a more reliable back up for heat if I wanted to go away for a weekend.

[slimjim]

I know where Canterbury, NH is and I should be going through there the first part of next week on my way to VT. PM me your contact info if you want me to stop by and have a look.