Orlan EKO 40

Any chance it could go in the house? This would dramatically reduce your cost to redo the plumbing...

I have a lpg. mod con boiler I can't wait till I dont have to use it anymore. LPG. is .93 litre over $4.00 a gal. It will cost well over 2 grand for a modcon. Fix up your underground it will save you money in the long run.

Huff

If all else is in place, I think I would just dig up my pipe and re-do that. If you're melting snow, it's not the fact that it's in the ground, it's the fact it was put in the ground the wrong way. Add some storage while you're at it and you should be golden for minimal cost.

Read the sticky. You should be able to reuse your pex lines even if they are inside some crappy insulation. I reused my Pex. The guy running the mini-backhoe was careful so the expense was only the foaming contractor and the dirt work. Unless you're just sick of running the boiler, by far your least expensive option is getting a guy with a gentle touch on a small backhoe or mini-excavator. Geez do I feel your pain. I presume you've read my story in the underground sticky. If not read it.

Tennman you still kicken huh. I though of you the other day when I saw some cheap under ground pipe some store was trying to sell the other day. O.P. will spend 14-15 bucks a foot for new stuff but worth it. I guess you can foam it if ya can dig around it without ripping it. You are 90 % done wit the boiler. Don't stop now. Do it one more time the right way and when it's done the night mare is done. Might move the boiler a bit closer to the house. I'm 120' and wish I would of went just 15' closer. Save digging and 225 bucks of pipe. You have a great boiler Go for it.

Just stating my opinion that a properly installed & insulated pipe will not melt snow, which you said it was doing - I don't think I was the only one that mentioned that. No insults intended, I have no idea exactly how it was installed or who did it. But melting snow is not a sign of a good installation, and that was all you gave to us to assess with. Why then would you be considering redo-ing the underground piping and re-using the pipe (all from your input) if there was not an existing installation issue?

My Eko 25 is in the basement w/storage, never had a problem with smell.

Don't go to propane, I have a condensing propane boiler and it isn't as great as it seems. At $3.98/gal it is no bargin!

If you are tired of dealing with firewood, well that I can understand. Hope you can overcome your Gasser issues.

I used time saver pipe inside 6" SDR pipe as a conduit to my boiler room. This was a huge mistake. I also melted snow. My guess was 20-30% of heat was lost in the 70' run.

I dug it up this past fall and re-insulated the pipe as many here have done from the start. I should have known better.

If that's your weak link, then fix it. I'm in my 3rd season, and don't mind the trip out to the boiler room to light or feed a fire. I keep a flying magazine at hand to pass the 10 minute light- gasifying time. We burned maybe 100 gallons of oil in the past 12 months. The oil company thinks I'm shopping to beat their price.

Hey ihookem... yup this is one of my favorite hang out spots. Being a Texas Longhorn everytime I see your handle I wanna say Hookem Horns! But I guess you're probably a fisherman.

Rich, I just recently posted some data on the Underground sticky of my temp loss data. I have a AZEL sensor in the boiler room with the thermocouples attached to the brass pex fittings. And another AZEL in the house on the entrance and exit HX fittings. So I have real data on the pex round trip. I'm losing maybe .5degF between the boiler exit and where I attach to the pex. But for computing transit losses I've got it pretty well nailed. The only corrupting factor in the round trip loss is what I lose in the root cellar and a large black iron manifold where I lose a bunch of radiant energy. But it's under my TV room so I sorta have radiant floor heat there.

Bottomline, even with about 30' not well insulated in the root cellar my round trip temp loss is about .005 degF/ft. If you have a 110 ft run I'm going to make some guesses. 220' underground + 20' to the boiler + ~10' in the boiler room = ~250' round trip. Your system properly insulated should lose about 1.25=1.5 degF round trip. If you're way up north where your ground is much colder than mine maybe that goes to 2 degF round trip. So if you can measure exit temp precisely while you know your system is idling and return you will know what's going on. Key is to do the measurement when there is little demand from the house so the return temps stabilize.

Again if your burnt out using wood that's one thing, but your snow melt indicates a huge energy leak.

Too bad. When you read the sticky you'll see lots of similar stories to yours of users that used the wrapped stuff. If you choose to foam I'd reuse the pex you have. Just cut it out of the wrapped mess and throw everything away except the pex.

Unfortunately the S&R lines are the first things people skimp on , all too often DIY'ers find out the hard way. If the S&R temps are only seeing a couple degrees Delta T then the pump could be way oversized. To maximize efficiency a Delta T of 20 degrees should be maintained , if not , there isn't enough BTU's transferring to the radiation. Simply by slowing the pump down you will see a higher DT. Just because you have a low temp loss over a run doesn't always mean its efficient.

I don't think I've ever heard anyone say "I don't mind burning wood" to heat. If you don't enjoy it, I mean...really enjoy it, you might want to consider cutting your losses.

Wood heating is, and always will be, a part time job (or very involved hobby) for those who cut, split and stack their own wood. If you don't take a fair amount of pleasure in being outside processing the wood and feeding that boiler every day during the winter you will likely be better off selling your EKO and investing in a high efficiency fossil fuel powered heating system.

Put that beast up on Craigslist for $4,000 and see what happens. If you don't like heating with wood now, you're not going to like it next year. Even with a new run of pex in the ground.

ALASKAPF185 said:

Unfortunately the S&R lines are the first things people skimp on , all too often DIY'ers find out the hard way. If the S&R temps are only seeing a couple degrees Delta T then the pump could be way oversized. To maximize efficiency a Delta T of 20 degrees should be maintained , if not , there isn't enough BTU's transferring to the radiation. Simply by slowing the pump down you will see a higher DT. Just because you have a low temp loss over a run doesn't always mean its efficient.

Click to expand...

I am venturing a guess here, but I think Tennman was referring to the S&R runs under constant circulation (possibly to prevent freezing or other variables I'm not aware of) without a call for heat, to determine the performance of the underground lines themselves. If you had a ΔT of 20 without a call for heat...something 'taint right.

I don't think it matters if there is a call for heat or not, if concerned about undergrornd losses. Measure the supply line where it enters the ground, measure where it comes out, and if there is more than a couple of degrees difference (or so), there are issues.

But, there should be a 20 degree difference between the supply right before the load, and the return right after - I guess these are two different issues and this one doesn't really have anything to do with underground issues.

These measurements can be misleading, the pump speed can exacerbate the loss if its undersized or show almost no loss if its oversized. The only way to measure accurately is with an infrared camera. Pumps unfortunately are one of those very important details that are often overlooked because of the knowledge and extra calculations needed to size accurately. When in doubt go bigger is what many do, and this is a mistake.

Yes DaBack and Maple, you are both correct. My .005degF/ft loss number is conservative since it includes root cellar losses in my house. My in-house AZEL sensor is at the HX not where the pex comes thru the foundation. So it's cheating, but conservative cheating to measure the round trip in the boiler barn. So I check the round trip loss during periods of low house demand when the circ pump is running but not the blower much. Like today. Mid-50's. I'm seeing a loss of 1.6 DegF in the barn after the +400ft round trip. But the blower is only coming on every 10-15 minutes today. Someday I will move that in-house sensor to the foundation wall to get exact one way transit loss which is the proper way to measure underground only losses. But at the moment I'm more interested in measuring HX temp drop when the blower is running, which is about 20 deg.