boiler questions

[torence 20]

thank you very much task swap i will try and snap some pics of it tom. if i get a chance. i would also like to see some pics of your setup as well if you dont mind sharing

 

[torence 20]

this is a picture i got from a google search looks identical to what i have only diff. is mine has 3 ports on the top of the unit a 1/2 inch in the front and the back and a 1.5 inch in the center the one in the pic only has one on the top and mine also has the one in the front what the aquastat is hooked to and mine also has 2 ports in the back of it at the bottom of the water jacket i would assume one is supply and the other return.... the water jacket is a cylindrical shape so the return water has to go in at the bottom of one side and up the side over the top and all the way back down the other side out the supply... thats my guess idk if thats correct

 

[fixit1960]

fix it what kind of system do you run, how many gallons? did you have to buy a certain kind of circ pump to run the antifreeze? are you heating your house also with it? did you do a heat exchanger in the plenum? sorry i have so many questions for you. where in iowa are you lol ill come look for myself jk lol

It's a Heatmor 400. Bought it and I installed it in 1997/98. It's big. Takes up to a 52" long piece of wood. I heat a 2 story 1800 sq ft farm hose and a 45x54 shop. The shop has 13' side walls so it's a big area. Separate pumps (standard pumps) for the house and garage. It's the only heat source for the garage. House has a newer (1993) high efficiency furnace. But I really hate it when it kicks on. I believe I had 150 gallons of coolant total. When I filled it. I tested it that fall and it tested about -20 degrees. Since then I add about 1 to 4 gallons a year and most always put in antifreeze. Never have changed it just test PH and add corrosion inhibiter.

Garage has a large 30x30" heat exchanger mounted about 12 ft up on one end wall of the shop. I mounted an old furnace blower to the exchanger and ducted it together. Mounted it on a wooden frame. Hoisted it up and secured it up on the wall. Control it with a simple wall thermostat. 3 large ceiling fans in center of shop to push air back down. I did wire in the high limit safety override to shut off draft fans and override shop blower to pull excess heat out of the system if it hit the high limits.

I added the heat exchanger in the plenum of my furnace and use a separate thermostat on the wall in house to control main furnace blower. I have the normal furnace stat at about 60. I have the add on exchanger on my hot water heater also with a tempering valve in the outlet of the hot water line to mix to prevent scalding.

Everything has been pretty trouble free. 1 aquastat and a couple draft fans. This year I replaced the blower adapters. I took a little extra care when I installed it and I think it's paid off over the last 17 years. It has saved me large amounts of propane!

Located in Southeast Iowa. Right on the river about 30 miles south (and west ) of Davenport. Actually our weather is a little more moderate than just north of Interstate 80 for some reason, but I"m not complaining.

Hope this info helps you with your install. Anymore questions, just ask.. or stop by, just send me a PM
Oh just to let you know, I burn scrap pallet wood for the most part. I only supplement with big wood when it gets below 0 or the wind is fierce. That's a whole nother story. This post is long enough...

 

[torence 20]

thanks again fixit that alot of good info. yea i burn alot of pallet wood myself. i built a pallet processor that makes cutting them up very very easy

 

[Dogsout]

To answer your 1st question, NO, I light mine once a year in the fall and it has a fire in it until I give up in the spring.
2nd question; My system holds about 180 gallons of water so when I installed it way back when I added 50% antifreeze, In the event something happen and it went cold it would not freeze and destroy my system.

Keep in mind that straight water will conduct heat much better the a 50-50 mix with antifreeze. Mine is straight distilled water with no antifreeze mixed in. JMO but I say just make the commitment to keep it fired and a big plus is with the better exchange rate it will save you on wood in the long haul.

 

[taskswap]

this is a picture i got from a google search looks identical to what i have only diff. is mine has 3 ports on the top of the unit a 1/2 inch in the front and the back and a 1.5 inch in the center the one in the pic only has one on the top and mine also has the one in the front what the aquastat is hooked to and mine also has 2 ports in the back of it at the bottom of the water jacket i would assume one is supply and the other return.... the water jacket is a cylindrical shape so the return water has to go in at the bottom of one side and up the side over the top and all the way back down the other side out the supply... thats my guess idk if thats correct

OK, that's not exactly my model but similar. Here are some pics of mine from when I got it:

I'm a little concerned about your plumbing plan. If you zoom into the one on the right of my pics you can clearly see the two bottom ports on the rear and the large port on top in the center. That's almost exactly the same as your description of yours and although ours are different shapes, I'm guessing the designs aren't that far apart...

In the same pic, you can also faintly see the internal weld lines from the water jacket - it's a horse-shoe that runs over the top of the boiler. Well, if yours is like mine... the bottom rear ports are NOT supply and return. BOTH bottom ports are return here. There's no internal connection across the bottom of the horse-shoe so one side would always have stagnant water in it. You have to "tee" the ports together externally and feed them both return water equally. Then the top port is the supply output to the house - since it's at the top, in the middle, a single port is sufficient here.

The other, smaller, ports on top are usually for an aquastat (brass dry-well with a lip machined into it for a drywell-mounted aquastat), a pressure gauge, and a T&P relief valve. Different models have slightly different combinations - my three top ports are drywell, T&P, and supply, and I have a front port for the pressure gauge. In the pic above you can see the aquastat mounted on the front and the pressure gauge on the top. Some of it is personal (installer) preference, although the T&P valve is always supposed to be on one of the top ports. (Also note that most code jurisdictions require you to plumb the output of that valve over the top of the boiler and down to "no more than 1" above" the floor. A tiny detail that I nearly missed, just passing it on. It seems a little silly but it's to keep from spraying superheated water/steam all over electronics, other things, or you if that T&P trips off...)

 

[torence 20]

i like the idea of the peace of mind that it offers but i do hear what your saying, im thinking since mine has a big port rite at the top im going to make mine an open to atmosphere system and just build a float type of device to tell me when i need to add water

 

[taskswap]

Keep in mind that straight water will conduct heat much better the a 50-50 mix with antifreeze. Mine is straight distilled water with no antifreeze mixed in. JMO but I say just make the commitment to keep it fired and a big plus is with the better exchange rate it will save you on wood in the long haul.

WAY better, actually. Car racers (and aircraft builders) deal with this a lot, and sometimes go as far as to drain and fill with whatever is appropriate - straight water in the summer, and some calculated mix in the winter.

There's an important point here. There are TWO additives usually used in boiler systems - antifreeze and corrosion inhibitors. You only need antifreeze if you have an OWB and lines that might freeze. You only need corrosion inhibitors if you have an OPEN LOOP system. Closed loop systems run at 10+ psi (I set mine at the same 12psi my oil guy set my oil boiler at) and between the pressure, constant cooking, and air separation systems, over time the water gets de-oxygenated. That eliminates the need for a corrosion inhibitor so you're back to just deciding if your lines might freeze. One easy way to avoid that if you DO put something outside is to add an additional temperature sensor in the drywell or taped to the outside of one of your lines. Wire that to a relay to force your circulator "on" and run water through your basement. Even a 50F basement plus the motion of the water is enough to keep a line from freezing unless the circumstances are really extreme.

 

[torence 20]

ok task swap thats what i will do then, i have exaclty the same unit that you do same set up only diff is my panels are blue

 

[torence 20]

so your system is a closed system correct? i like the idea of an open system that in case of an over fire it will just boil over and no chance of a giant pipe bomb

 

[taskswap]

so your system is a closed system correct? i like the idea of an open system that in case of an over fire it will just boil over and no chance of a giant pipe bomb

Yeah, it's closed. Your concern is valid - but it is with any boiler - even hot water heaters are the same thing. The solution is simple and reliable - you just need a T&P valve in the system. I actually have two, because there's another on my oil boiler. And in fact, I have a THIRD safety layer, and I've even tested it accidentally! I have all the plumbing around my boiler in copper because PEX was so ugly being all curved and hard to work with. But even though I have an IWB, I still used PEX to run the line from my wood boiler over to where the oil boiler is - they're not next to each other (no usable flue there).

Long story short, one night I overheated the system accidentally (left the ash door open - tsk, tsk) and before the T&P even had a chance to blow, I blew a PEX line. The system was at 220F and about 18psi, and my T&P was rated for 230F and 24psi. That rating was specifically chosen because the boiler was pressure-tested to 30psi (also it's identical to what's on my oil boiler). So the PEX lines blow way before the T&P would trip - and THAT is way before the boiler becomes a bomb. Now I have my high-limit set at 185F and it's never even come close again.

Your worry isn't bogus, but it's manageable the same way a gas tank in a car is dangerous... but manageable... And open systems have to deal with corrosion and other issues that closed systems don't. They both have trade-offs, but I'm very happy with the simplicity and efficiency of my setup and I don't regret it - or worry about it...

 

[torence 20]

well that is certainly logical and sounds like in the long run would be better. since i have no other boiler system im connecting it to i will only have the water that this unit will hold im guessing 30 gallons or so im not sure if i can pull enough heat out of 30 gallons of water with a good fire going of course once the 30 gal is at the set temp the draft blower should shut down thus killing the inferno im sure it will still burn and get hot but not hot enough that i cant extract the heat faster then the fire is is putting it back in the water....if that makes and sense at all ha ha my brain is fried for the nite, this site is great and terrible at the same time there are so many ways and things you can do with a boiler system and ways you can plumb them and its all under one roof at this site wich also is the bad part lol ive read so much i confuse my self to the point its almost counter productive

 

[taskswap]

Yeah, I'm fried too. Last post for a while.

I can't find a pic of this, but if you want the final safety feature you add a "heat dump loop". Tarm has all kinds of plumbing diagrams online that you can Google - nice of them to share even with non-Tarm buyers. They show a lot of combinations, but you're usually addressing TWO things here - regular overheating, and power loss that takes out your circulator and stops you from getting the heat out any other way. And it's a good idea in these boilers with smaller water jackets because they overheat more easily - less thermal mass to absorb any carry-over from the coals.

But I can describe it simply enough. You "tee" your supply and return lines. One leg goes where you'd expect - to and from the zones. The other leg goes to one or two 8' baseboard radiators that you just stick in your ceiling above your boiler. You angle them slightly - a couple of inches over the total run length is fine - and gravity + "heat rises" does the rest for you. To finish the job, you put a 24VAC zone valve on it, but you flip the valve actuator over so it's NORMALLY OPEN instead of NORMALLY CLOSED. That goes to a snap disc (also a "backwards" one - a normally CLOSED snap disc - just have to use the right search keyword, they're only a few bucks) set at like 10F above your high limit (let's say 195F or 200F).

So here's how this works. When all's well, your boiler is at like 175F let's say. The snap disc is closed here so 24VAC goes to the zone valve. So the zone valve is active - which means it's CLOSED. That means this whole loop is cut off and does nothing.

If your boiler overheats, the snap disc opens. That cuts power to the zone valve, so it opens. Now water can get into the loop and since it's such an easy path, it does. With no other help, hot water just naturally flows through this loop, radiates, and "dumps" heat. I think Tarm recommends sizing it for 10% of your boiler's output, so if you figure a 120kBTU/hr boiler you need to be able to "dump" 12kBTU/hr.

Slant/Fin's Fine-Line 30's have a spec sheet here:
http://www.homedepot.com/catalog/pdfImages/14/14f5de39-a8bc-4eb7-a5d9-af33769a77fc.pdf

At 200F they're rated for 700BTU/hr per foot. So you technically need 17' if you go with my math above. I went with three 8' units that I got off Craigslist. I haven't tested this, and I'm not an HVAC guy... but this is all culled from a lot of consistent recommendations from various boiler manufacturers so I figured it was a good idea.

There is one really important side benefit here. I don't know that I actually need this for OVERHEAT situations. But since I need power to run my circulators... even though I have a generator it's not an automatic one. If I'm not home, a loss of power could produce an overheat too. The nice thing about the above setup is that it solves this issue too. If there's a power loss, the zone valve will lose power exactly the same way it would if the overheat snap disc gets triggered. If you use the AltHeatSupply draft fan damper solenoid kit, that loses power too and shuts down the boiler. And the "dump zone" deals with the remaining 10% of heat the boiler has left over, keeping it safe.

Defense in depth.

 

[NSMaple1]

ive got an indoor unit in my basement now thats forced hot air but im tired of the mess in my house and i think that using the indoor air for the combustion process it makes my home more drafty as its over 100 yrs old. either way its going to keep the mess out of my house and cut how many times i have to handle the wood in half so i am looking forward to that

I wouldn't bet on lowering your wood handling overall, moving from an indoor unit to an OWB - I would anticipate a rather large increase in wood consumption. How much wood do you expect to be burning in a year? Does this old boiler you have, have tubes in it, or is it just a water jacketed fire box type?

 

[torence 20]

task swap im really liking that idea thats a great fail safe, nsmaple it is a water jacketed unit and i will handle the wood alot less since i have built pallets to hold my wood, i go to where i cut at witch is less then a mile from home i have a loader tractor i use. i cut the wood, dump it in my old wood truck with the loader come home grab an empty pallet/crate with the tractor take it to the splitter then i drop my tailgate and back up to the slitter so i can use my tailgate as my table/shelf btw my splitter is an iron and oak 20 ton fast cycle i grab a round half it put the other half on my tail gate, split it and throw it in the wheel barrow....repeat, and a cpl feet on the other side of the wheel barrow sits the tractor with the crate about 3 ft off the ground so my wonderful helper doesnt have to bend over constantly or walk very far when the crate is full i go stack it on one of the other full ones and then grab an empty. when i build this shed im going to have a walk door for feeding purposes and i will also put a roll up door in it big enough that i can set two maybe three pallets in it at a time so when i go out i can go thru the walk door and the shed will be insulated very well so it should be pretty cozy in there and load the owb in comfort. the way i have been doing it for years is some what the same except i didnt have a loader tractor nor had i built the crates i just drove in fence posts and stacked the wood in rows from one end to the other so the gathering splitting process was the same minus more labor of having to muscle the wood in the truck "i did build a truck crane with an elec winch and tongs for the big nut busters" and had to bend over alot more stacking until the row got to a decent height but then when i needed wood in the house i would grab the wheel barrow fill it with wood wheel it over and dump it in my concrete stairwell with steel scuddle doors covering it once full i would then go inside and open the basement door and take the wood back to the wood rack by the burner and stack it then from the rack it would go into the burner so im cuttting out at handling the wood 3 times from stack to wheel barrow, wheel barrow to stairwell, from stairwell to rack. that will save me at least 1 whole hour. there is no downside to my pland and im using a jensen add on currently and its set up damn near the same as my boiler now only its getting to the point where its wore out and its very very unefficent the way it is rite now....maybe this is a pipe dream but i cannot see one downside to my thought process here....you guys have been very helpful and i appreciate all the comments and am open to constructive critisism if there is an angle i havent thought of i wanna hear about it!

 

[NSMaple1]

Your wood handling using pallets/crates/FEL and keeping the wood outside would no doubt reduce the amount of times you have to touch a split. I use pallets & FEL also - very nice to be able to do that. But my point is, you will be burning a LOT more wood - so, again, how much are you expecting to have to do up each year?

This is just honest opinion/feedback, hopefully you can pull some good out of it - I also think, without knowing very much really about the boiler you have lined up aside from what you have said about it, and with also reading you mention wanting longer times between loads, that you will be disappointed in the results with it. It will require constant feeding, because of the poor heat transfer of a simple water jacket, and the firebox volume will not give you much fuel at once. OWB guys get longer burn times - that is because of their realtively huge fireboxes. (Usually at the expense of increased wood consumption). Plus all your standby heat loss will be into the shed rather than the house - which will be good for the wood in there, but not for the house. I went 17 years running a water jacket indoor boiler that sounds about the same size & basic construction as yours (cylinder fire box, no tubes), I was a slave to it the whole time, and it barely kept the house warm without having to use oil too.

The basic concept is good (indoor boiler in insulated outbuilding with wood supply), but the boiler you have I think will leave you coming up short. Some things to think about to try to improve the situation, are making the building big enough to hold your entire winters wood, and a boiler with better heat transfer (usually requires tubes). Then another level up, would be if you could add water storage to it (typically used propane tanks), preferably in the house basement (so the boiler could burn wide open all the time it's burning and excess heat gets captured for use later), then another level up yet again would be a gassification boiler.

Then the most important part of all when using a boiler of any kind that is not in the building it is heating - make very sure you do the underground piping very good. That usually involves piping with closed cell foam insulation.

 

[torence 20]

ns maple i appreciate your input and i do agree with some of what your saying and i would love a gassification owb but i dont have 12k to buy one at the moment and i have also thought of adding additional water storage if i can find an lp tank for a decent price or at the very least a 40 gal hot water heater as i have access to them i also plan on insulating the hell out of the boiler itself and i know im not going to get as good of a system as a central boiler persay but like i said the unit i have not is worn out and the plenum/heat exchanger i guess you would call it. it has the handle you pull and it slides a shroud tword the front of the unit so the smoke goes to the back and up the flu instead of dumping into the room. well anyway that whole piece is burnt out might as well not be there so about 90% of my heat goes up the chimney as it is and have to burn it wide open to get good heat out of it i planned on pulling it out next summer and rebuilding it out of 1/4 or 3/8 plate but then i came across this boiler set up

 

[torence 20]

here is the boiler

 

[NSMaple1]

You don't have to spend $12k to get a gasifier. Decent indoor ones start in the $5k range new. With some time spent looking, there are very capable used ones out there too. There are also very nice reasonably priced gasifying hot air furnaces you could replace your current one with - if you can handle wood in the basement again. You would undoubtedly burn way less of it than you are now.

 

[torence 20]

im really dead set on getting my operation out of my house and if i was going to buy a good outdoor boiler ive been told the central boiler is the only way to go there are alot of ppl around here that swear by them. but thats just what im told