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[birchbark]

I posted awhile back about heating our horse water during the winter with my OWB, but didn't get many idea's.  My boiler is about 8 feet at most from the 150 gallon water bucket.  Up till now I have been keeping the frost off of it with a 1500 watt heater, but I know theres got to be a better (cheaper) way by using the boiler.  In the winter I will need to control the temp to keep the ice off of it, but still not warm it up so much that it will harm the horses.  I thought about installing an aquastat and solnoid to run water through a side arm, but the issue I have with that is the water line freezing between heating cycles.  I suppose that I could insulate the heck out of the line, but does anyone have other ideas?

birchbark

[oldchenowth]

Could you make a copper coil in the smoke stack and circulate it? either by pump or like a still.  It might kepp the water from freezing but still cool enough to drink.  Just thinking out loud, I'm not even sure it would work.

[fireboss]

 was thinking about this, running a 1/2'' pex from the owb to the water tub!put the pex under the water on the bottom. you can maybe tap into your return line on owb with a tee or run it with a small pump

[Hydronix]

Can you design a gravity type setup. 3/8" pipe would keep the velocity high enough to keep from freezing and also not give off so many btu that the water gets too hot. it would be a trial and error test. I would use all pex, just incase it does freeze, it won't burst and it will also keep the transfer down. Cheap too, no pumps necessary, and if it does need a pump a cheap recirc pump with timer or aquastat or both would work then use 1/2". The pipes just have to have grade, not pitch to work. We have done this with towel warmers, a 2nd floor bedroom and a 40 gallon electric water heater that works very good. no pumps at all. just a balancing valve on the bedroom. Insulate pipes of course.

[MattyNH]

Seems like there would be a lot of money invested to keep water unfrozen by hooking it up to the OWB..Hot water freezes faster than cold water..Why not figure out something that will keep water flowing..Flowing water doesn't freeze..After all the water is moving...

[birchbark]

MattyNH

Through out the winter months, I have a 1500 watt heater setup on a timer to run for 1 hour, then off for 2, that has it running for 8 hours every 24 hours.  Right now I pay 9.8 cents per kilowatt hour, so to make it easy, round it up to 10.  That puts the price for a 24 hour period at $1.20, so with me having to run the heater for 5 months straight, the price is now $180.  There is also about 1 month before winter and after that I have to plug the heater in overnight, so again to make things easy, lets round if off to an even $200 per winter.  To me that seems like an nice oppurtunity to save alot money over the years just to keep ice off a 150 gallon water bucket.

As for cost of doing this, I agree that the investment in getting this done would have to pay for itself within a couple years at most.

But if you have an idea about keeping the water running, I would appreciate you sharing it.

birchbark

[Hydronix]

The only way to do it without electricity is convection. Expense is little. A roll of 3/8 pex is 20 bucks. The hardest thing is finding the correct velocity. Since he is just trying to keep it from freezing there is not a big temp change. Even if he gets it up to 40 degrees. By using pex he doesn't risk bursting. The standby losses alone from the owb would do the job, if there was an easy way to harness it.