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[dirtdigger]

I'm getting too old to remember anything anymore, how do I tell how large of plate exchanger I have now, I can't remember what the plate count was or btu rating its at and I can't read the tag on it anymore, even with a magnifying glass.   

[slimjim]

What are the measurements?

[dirtdigger]

I measured it, its roughly a foot long, seven inches high and about 4.5 inches wide for the measurements on the plate portion itself, not including the piping that comes out the top.     

[slimjim]

1 inch or 1 1/4 inch ports?

[dirtdigger]

I'll have to check it in tomorrow, I don't recall.     

[dirtdigger]

One inch pipe on the plate heat exchanger and I reduced it down to one inch pex for my line from the furnace.   

[slimjim]

The 7 inches part has me a bit intrigued, 50 plate is as large as I have seen with 1 inch ports, but they are not typically that deep

[dirtdigger]

Too long ago to remember for sure but I was thinking something like 80 plate and thinking in that 300k neighborhood???

[RSI]

The 7 inches part has me a bit intrigued, 50 plate is as large as I have seen with 1 inch ports, but they are not typically that deep

I can get up to 100 plate with 1" ports. Sounds like it is somewhere in the 60-80 plate range.

BTU ratings on plates doesn't really mean much. It will be completely different depending on the type system you are using it for. If you are heating domestic water that enters the plate at 50 degrees, the same plate hx will transfer many times the BTUs that it would running in a baseboard heat system there the secondary side it not much lower temp than the OWB side.

[dirtdigger]

My shop has infloor heat in both the office and main shop, the shop is put in an old barn that was remodeled, the entire floor is setup on a  slope from one end to the other to make it work and be able to enter the main door, then there is a full service pit in the main shop that's 50 feet long and six feet deep, also on with a sloped floor from one end to the other.     

I wanted antifreeze in the entire building, including the office/break room attached to the shop, so it was decided to install a hot water heater, to be used as a holding tank, not to heat anything, but we put in the plate heat exchanger and have a pump set up off the thermostat on one of the heating elements to start and stop the pump to maintain the temp in the tank.     We also pressurized the tank and system in the building to try to equalize all the zones so they could pump and circulate equally and in order to do that we used the plate heat exchanger to isolate the furnace which isn't pressurized to the shop which is.   

Last winter was the first winter we heated the shop, but we've been heating the office/break room for a couple years, along with the house for quite a few years.    Then along comes last winter's bitter extended cold and my furnace couldn't keep up and keep everything warm, so after a couple months of going through the whole equation, it was finally discovered that the blower motor wasn't the correct one for the furnace, which has just been solved.     

My main question was this, is my plate heat exchanger large enough to do the job of heating the shop and office, total footage of the shop is about 2700 feet but the main shop has 21 foot ceilings, all fully insulated, but the kicker comes into play when I talk about shock cooling the shop when I open up the large door on the end of the building that's 20 feet high by 34 feet wide and its a one piece hydraulic door that opens up, then we bring in equipment to the tune of 30-70,000 lbs to warm up and work on during the winter's off season.       

[slimjim]

That's an awful lot of space to reheat quickly, square footage for heating is typically figured with 8 foot ceilings, therefor you are actually heating almost 3 times your floor space, 3 times 2700=8100 feet

[dirtdigger]

slimjim, so is my plate heat exchanger large enough to do the job, or do I need to do something different before the heating season kicks in full swing?   

All the local "experts" tell me I only need 60,000 btu's to heat the shop, ceiling height means nothing in the equation, which I'm finding very hard to believe and swallow, so we did as they said and insulated it better for the coming winter and got my wood boiler back up to par, supposedly/hopefully.   

[slimjim]

60,000 BTU, what the heck are they smoking? You should be fine with the exchanger, I would be a bit concerned about flow so eliminate any close 90's

[Steinacher Sales]

dirtdigger,

I'm thinking like Slim its way to small. I'd say you need 200,000 btu or more. Just saying. Don't undersize yourself or when you open that big door it will take a long time to recover.

Greg Steinacher
618-401-0726
www.midwestoutdoorfurnace.com

[dirtdigger]

While on the subject of in floor heating, I'm also told that about 25 btu's per square foot of floor space from my in floor heat, is this accurate?  If so what else do I do to add supplemental heat, a forced air radiator/blower or an added heat source of something else entirely?