Burnin' Wood ( and other fuels...)

[kide]

Charlie:
Got heat yet?? we'll help

 

[digger]

130 degrees and risin as of right now.

I was till 12:30 this morning filling and purging the lines and let it circulate all night, just to make sure there were no leaks.

I went ahead and turned off the LP to the furnace, so we're heatin with wood! FINALLY

 

[digger]

I fired it this morning and thought I would watch it heat up.
We'll that dint work, LOL
So I decided to put an engine heater on the Tahoe.

Still wasn't rising very fast, so I put a new heater on the forklift, just to pass some more time.
Then got all the lines insulated, Still not risin fast enough.
SOOOOOO, I kicked on the front fan along with the back fan and then it started rising pretty well.
So I guess better add one of those fancy idiot lights in the other part of the shop so i don't have to go outside to see if it's kickin or not.

 

[kide]

Forklift to load it??

Ours, which we estimate at around 250-275 gallons including the furnace, buried lines and heat exchanger, takes about 2 1/2 hours to raise from 50 to 160 degrees, with the circulating pump running, but the blower in the house not running..I gotta believe that yours would take quite a bit longer..

I've got a red light I can see from the house on top of the doghouse that's on when the aquastat is calling for heat. I'm working on a timer that'll set off an alarm when the draft fan has been running for a set period of time (like 45 minutes, which when the system is up to temp means it's time for more wood).

It does take a while to learn the quirks of these systems, like keeping the water temp lower when the weather is warmer.....

Keep us posted!!

 

[digger]

Not yet, but as soon as I get a loader put on a Cub, that will happen. Aaron is drawing up a quick attach setup for loaders and it will have a log lifter/loader/dumper on it to make lift really easy on us.

I do use the forklift to bring wood in though.

And I put in a Charlie(idiot)light to see when it's kickin.

I had it set at 150 and the heat coming out of the registers was to hot to hold your hand there for very long, so I dropped the stove temp down to 130, and it's still to freakin hot coming out of the registers, LOL

I loaded it up last night about 9 and checked it this morning and still had half the wood left, and that's with the stove uninsulated!
I'm liking this wood heat thing.

 

[aschumacher]

Charlie, I like your 'in operation' light inside the barn. Got a hole in the barn wall to see it from the house??

}

 

[kide]

Charlie:
Must be a difference in how we're measuring temperature... I've got a screw in thermometer on the front with a probe that measure actual water temp and the aquastat on the back is flat mounted to the tank and calibrated to the front. I've checked 'em with an infrared point and shoot, but what's really weird about that is you can point at the plastic and get one temp, move up two inched to a brass fitting and get an entire different reading, so I go by contact type thermometers If I set ours at 130, the blower in the house air circulator would be running almost constantly. During colder weather, I bump our water temp up to about 175. When it gets realllllly cold, we shut it down and go looking for Matt..

I still miss having the wood burner going in the basement - it was nice on a cold night to come in from clearing the drive, open up the door on the furnace and just set and look at the fire - ain't gonna happen with the big guy outside..

 

[digger]

Allen S.
That is looking from the living area to the back part of the building leading into where the stove is.
Behind that door is where the forklift and vehicles are parked.
You don't think I'd go outside to take a picture do ya!

 

[aschmidt]

Well charlie the plans went from an idea to actual reality for the loader quick attach. Just wait to see what comes from this guys....

 

[rpalmer]

Aaron Schmidt

S W E E T !

 

[digger]

Ok, I've got one for your wood burner guys.
When we moved in here, I installed a tankless water heater so it would be quick and painless, since all we had at the time was a 3 gal. electric with no gas lines close. LOL

I was wondering why couldn't I hook up a sidearm heat exchanger before the tankless and basically cut down on the juice used to heat the water.

The hotter coming in, would mean the less the tankless would have to work. And i wouldn't have to buy a water heater to use a standard type side arm.

 

[kide]

Charlie:
Check page 7 of the Central Boiler Catalog for the plate type heat exchangers. My Son-in-law uses one of these in series with the hot water heater to preheat. A more complete installation uses a tempering valve setup to avoid overheating the domestic hot water....my cousin has his set up that way.. I think the way you've got it drawn would work - it'll use thermal siphon circulation. We've got a water loop in our inside (Johnson 9900) furnace and the original pressure relief valve in the water heater was replaced with one that was temperature and pressure sensitive.. IIRC you were supposed to put a tee on the top of the water heater where the original valve was, screw the new valve into the top of the tee and bring the water from the sidearm in the side connection (the tee was stood on it's side).. I'll see if I can dig up the instructions on that - I never hooked it up, since I'd have had to plumb the blowoff to dump outside and never got it done..

 

[dtanner]

Aaron Schmidt - Xtreme Motorworks
i do like your quick attach fork lift. Charlie with the big furnace could use that. I would put a thumb on it and load the furnace. Kool later Don T

 

[jbaker]

Charlie I heat my domestic hot with a side arm i built for use with the boiler water and it looks like your picture. the way it works is the water in the tank races in a cirlce due to as kendal said thermal siphon. I had to install a mixing valve on the out line because it will get to the same temp as the boiler water (this way i control the dischare water temp). for this to work though you would need some type of tank, by just running it through a side arm you wont exchange much heat before entering the tankless I will try to post some pics later

 

[jbaker]

this set up works so well that i turn the propane to the water heater off when I light the boiler and we have six people using hot water and never run out

 

[rpatton]

Charlie , did you try hooking that up yet? I don`t see why it wouldn`t work I`m just not sure if it would heat fast enough while you running a lot of hot water ,How about adding a pre heat tank like maybe finding a used hot water tank that someone replaced and went to gas or something?
I went to an outdoor wood boiler this year also and am heating both my house and 44'x44' shop + hot water . so far so good I wish I would have done it years ago .

 

[digger]

Rich P.
Nope, not yet.
It's been a zoo around here lately, LOL
I probably won't mess with it this winter.
I'm liking this wood heat thing though.
I'm heating right at 5,000 Sq. Ft. and I've only used just over a cord of wood since the end of November.

I thought about buying a Central Boiler unit, BUT, to get a unit from them that would produce close to the same heat would have been around 14K.
So it was a no brainer to go with the one from Aaron.

 

[kide]

Tough day/weekend ......
If you go back in this thread a ways, you'll see the outside woodburner I put in back in '07 - really a labor of love in more than one way...Sandy wanted to get the wood burning out of the house.

I pulled it out and put it on a trailer today, it's headed to a new home... Didn't make sense anymore and I at least got some money out of it. I had more than one reason - cutting wood has a much lower priority these days is one, but the main reason is/was ya gotta keep them running all the way through the cold season or fill them with antifreeze (+- 300 gallons in my case) which also lowers the efficiency of the unit about 15%... I drained it three times and dumped $50.00 worth of corrosion inhibitor each time.

Ahhh well, life moves on....

 

[jchamberlin]

Gerry: I can't speak to all the loss you're feeling, but I can relate to giving up wood heating because it doesn't make sense anymore.

My house was also built in 1979 (4,000 sq ft) and included a wood stove as well as a heat pump. We bought the house in 1998, and I LOVED the wood heater. I tried to use it like the wood stove my parents used to heat their house in central New York State: light it at the beginning of the season and don't let it die out until the end. The trouble was that in eastern North Carolina, you only need the kind of BTUs a wood stove puts out three to five times a year --if the winter is a cold one. I finally had to let the fire die out when the whole family complained about the 95 deg heat INSIDE the house with all the windows open.

The trouble with starting a fire in that stove, and the one that replaced it, was that it took at least one load to build the coals to produce the heat that only became apparent on the second (and sometimes the third) load. So one had to start the fire late the night before, and get up at 4:00 AM to stoke it to produce the heat my wife is looking for at 7:00 AM; or start the fire at 5:00 AM, reload at 7:00 AM, and rush home after work to have the heat the family wants in the evening. Nobody but myself seemed to be able to reliably start or maintain the fire, although my wife had a few successes and one of sons could start bonfires inside its walls.

Then I my heart went out on me.

Then all my help left me. (My three strong sons all moved out of the house before I fully recovered.)

Then the heat pump went out.

With the new heat pump working as efficiently as it does, I only need a fire MAYBE once or twice a year. I still keep it though. I'm just not as keen on the wood scrounging as I used to be. Plus I'm still recovering from the second surgery to repair the electrical problems in my heart. I won't go on to discuss the problems I have with my back; suffice to say, I have to treat it well or I can be immobilized.

Long story short (oops, too late), I've resigned myself to giving up wood. I certainly enjoyed it while I had it, and there is nothing else like it. But the maintenance and upkeep is a killer.

 

[rodsmith]

JEREMIAH,
Had never thought but women and wood burning can be a lot alike!
MAINTENCE and UPKEEP can be a KILLER on either.

ROD