"For the first month or so last winter I was firing it 1 time per day trying to heat the tank to 220 or 230 degrees and get through 24 hrs."
I've got a quick, and hopefully not a dumb one - I don't see an aquastat or temp probe in the top of the boiler, so wondering how the over heat/dump zone is controlled? And what do you have for back up heat?
I'm hoping to have some Varm pics to share this time next year. Planning to take the first big step & bring home some tanks this weekend, then it will be game on. That is a fine looking install, I must say.
EDIT: That was all in reply to coldfeet1, BTW...
Think the valve on bottom pipe is a NC for overtemp.
And one last thing about tank size. I wanted 1000 gallons but I'm glad I only did 500. The reason is the more water you have, the tougher it is to heat up to temp.
The dump zone has an electric solenoid. As long as there is power, the valve and flow to the dump zone is closed off. As soon as the power drops the solenoid releases and opens the valve and flow to the dump zone.
OK - so I guess that means your dump zone is set up only to handle excess heat in a power outage. It isn't set up to handle excess heat if your system/tanks overheat when things are cooking under power? Or is it tied to a circuit that shuts the fan off in an overheat?
Not to mention that with the loading unit the system pictured would flow a fair amount by gravity, an elevated tank would do even better.It's very unlikely that you will over heat a boiler with storage that has power unless your circulater fails. most boilers start shutting the air down at 190 F. There are a lot of btu's between 190 and 212 in 500 gallons of water.
If it is a closed system you can probably go a lot higher than 212 before you run into trouble. If your used to the
boiler you wouldn't put enough wood in it to get it that high anyhow.
How much trouble are you having heating it up? What is your Sqft? Our new house will be 1300 Sqft. My plan is 2 1000L (264 Gal) tanks, and either a 750L (200 Gal. with hot water tank in it) or the 1000L Teknik Tank with solar coil. So I would be at 730-800 gals. Brian
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