Empyre Elite 100.

I have a 100 heating about 4000' including domestic hot water. No problems keeping up. I will admit, it's very well insulated - about R 50-60 in attic. Cold nights last year (-10 F & windy) it would last just under 8 hrs. Without the wind (I'm wide open to NW winds) it went over 8. Normal nights, say 5-10 F, I'd get 10-12 hour burns. I think the 200 is overkill for a 2600' house & garage.

I do not have storage, yet. I absolutely plan on installing it as I can already see all kinds of operational benefits.
Yes, it is simple to operate. Yes, I get ember build up when it's warmer out & have to clean more often. But I don't see that as a surprise without storage. That is part of the reason I'll put in storage.

Mine is in a dedicated boiler house & wood shed unattached from the house. I like the additional safety factor, cleanliness, and less wood handling.

Welcome ME Boatbuilder!

If you have a picture or two of your shed and install I would appreciate seeing them!
How much wood do you burn each year?

The high limit of my boiler is 180, I have 170 at my manifold, supply in my slab is 120 and return 80. Main floor 140 and 130.
I load the boiler at 9 pm, I put the manifold pump on a timer to shut off at 3am, main floor I turned the thermo down to 67 and basement slab at 80.
At 6am the slab supply and return is 80, and the boiler temp was 180.
I thought the heated slab would carry the load overnight, at 18 deg outside tonight, but it won't.
At least the boiler is staying up to temp.
Now what do I do install ? Gallons of storage

I'm not sure I understand. Sounds like you turned the heat off to the slab (manifold pump off at 3am, slab turned down to 80?), but your boiler was still hot? So why turn things down so much? I must have missed something, sorry.

I am trying to use the slab to store thermal mass for overnight , I was only getting a 5-6 hour burn. We thought the boiler may be drawing heat out of the house during the night, (hence the manifold timer,)in the morning the fire is out and boiler temp was down around 120 so one fire to heat the boiler back up and then reload within a couple hours to get manifold temp back up to 170.
My heat loss is 40k and boiler output is 60k, so I'm alright there.

I have 1500 sf in slab and 1700 sf in I floor joist

Heat your slab up more to get you threw the night ?

Have you throughly heated up your slab? If it is not totally up to temp when you shut the heat off to it, it will suck the heat out of the water that's in it. A heat-soaked slab should coast through a night with not a lot of heat needed to maintain, I would think. Getting a slab heat-soaked might take a couple of days of heating. Is the slab well insulated underneath & on the edges?

The max temp I'm putting in it is 130, how much will 4 " of concrete take?

I'm out of this one now - I don't have a slab so have no experience to speak from. But I don't think I'd go any higher. The thing is it takes time to get a slab totally warm, and not necessarily hotter water.

This a question for boiler man. He heats his slab with his attack boiler.

And a lot of wood, I just hate to have to turn the propane boiler on yet

maple1 said:

I'm out of this one now - I don't have a slab so have no experience to speak from. But I don't think I'd go any higher. The thing is it takes time to get a slab totally warm, and not necessarily hotter water.

Click to expand...

I would say you're right on the money, exactly right.

Woodfarmer1 said:

The max temp I'm putting in it is 130, how much will 4 " of concrete take?

Click to expand...

I'm running the basement slab for storage. It does a lot for you but there is a lot going on, other factors.

I'm running a fixed, reset, basement slab water temp of 130 F. I would not go over that but running it longer, more time, makes a big difference. I poured 1200 sf of 4", 4000 psi, wire reinforced, fully floating on 2" EPS foam, and thermal breaked at the edges.There were zero cracks in the slab, but now that I'm heating it I can see a few hairline micro cracks that travel 2 to 3 ft and stop because of the steel wire mats. The cracks are few and hard to find, but were zero before the heat. I would say I'm maxing out what the slab can both absorb and emit for heat. I could bump the slab water temp up, but the next move would be tank storage.

It really depends on if you are battling the load or battling the heat loss. You may go higher on the slab temp but the downside is cracking of the slab. If you are losing too much from the slab before it gets upstairs, higher water temp will not help you there. You can moderate the house temp with the slab but another complementary method may be indicated.

I just scanned the basement slab with the IR gun and the sweep temps ranges from 83 to 96 F with 1' spacing of the PEX. Basement air temp running 73 F. The slab, all heat, was just off for ~ 9 hrs and is coming up from setback with a fire for the last hour.

Air temp in the house regularly swings from 70 to 62 F, but that's the atomic clock on the window sill, in the window 6" from the glass. IR scan of all the solid surfaces, entire house, is 64 to 67 F, just now, coming up from no heat overnight. Outside air is 27 F at 10:00 AM.

A lot depends on the heat loss, which is very low for my house, R 40 walls, R 50 ceilings, Andersen 400 windows, 2" EPS foam wrapping the exterior of the foundation.. Radiant heat is very slow, but penetrating. When the heat has been running, there are really no high or low spots, the heat penetrates and spreads out, but it takes time. Radiant stores the heat in the mass of the house, not the air, but most of the materials are insulators and it takes time while the mass of the house, the heat is travelling from warm > cool to warm > warm through insulators.

The basement slab moderates the house temp, but there is a delay getting the heat upstairs. It is weeks or months of daily firings to equalize the high and low spots in the slab. If I scan the slab in January it will read 85 to 95 F.

I would recommend both slab storage and tank, each does a little, but a lot depends on how much heat is lost from the basement before it gets upstairs.

Sorry I did not read the entire thread

I'm not sure why you let it shut off. It takes days to get my garage slab up to temp if I let it get cold. I set the thermostat in the garage @ 15*C, and allow it to cycle just as the house does. Set it and forget it.

Is the slab well insulated underneath & on the edges?

Great info Dan thanks, I'm just new to the boiler this year so it will be a steep learning curve.

I shut it off at 3am because I was only getting a 5-6 hour burn and then waking to a cooled down boiler from 120-140 degrees, the empyre shuts off the circ pump below 140 to prevent condensation and then it takes a full burn to get it up to 180 before it turns the pump on to send it into the house.



I have 4" of ship lap styrofoam sm under 4" of concrete with an IFC foundation, 25' walkout on one end, which is also IFC, the only thing we didn't do was a thermal break under the 9' patio door where the concert floor was poured right out over the frost wall, oops. It will know have to wait until next spring to dig it up and insulate

Is this a new boiler, or just new to you? The Elite has gone thru some changes, not sure if that would be any issue here or not.

Have you measured your actual floor temps as dan mentioned doing above?

If you haven't burned steady & long enough to heat all that concrete up to temp, it will act more like a big ice cube instead of a radiator. That will take a while, and can take all the heat the boiler can put out until it gets there.

The boiler is used, four years old.
I haven't taken a floor reading

I would let the slab take every bit of heat it needs. It will take loads(in the boiler) to bring that mass up to temperature. And until you get it up there the boiler is fighting for it's life to due so. It was the same when I used oil.

I'm running the same boiler as you. It is presently -8*C with a windchill of -15. I filled the boiler about 3/4 last night with a 50/50 mix of maple and spruce. Went down this morning(7 am) to a bed of coals about a1' (yep one foot) thick. Stirred them up, put in two 4" maple rounds, and two 5-6" spruce and left for the day. It is now 7 pm and I have not opened the boiler yet as it continues to cycle from 165-180. When I notice it dropping to 160 on the low side, I'll put in tonight's load.

I'd get on top of this as soon as possible. You've got a decent unit there that should be able to heat you very capably. Read up on the changes that have been done to the Empire. Being four years old, it might be missing some improvements that were made to it. They've been talked about on here before, just have to do some searching. May be an issue, may not be.

But another larger secondary issue that might come sneaking up on you, maybe in a very bad way but hopefully not, is keeping all that cold water running into the boiler. Do you know if it has return temp protection? I'm not sure if that was in the improvements made or not, or if it had it from the get go. If it doesn't, it is getting a steady diet of cold return water that will make big condensation inside and possibly lead to boiler rot. The return water entering back into the boiler should be kept above 140°f. So the longer this situation goes on, the worse things could possibly get. If you do have return temp protection, just keep burning steady until your slab gets up to temp. Other Empire owners can help you out with specific questions, there's some good ones on here right in this thread. I'd try to get a decent temp gun to help with the analyzing. And pics help also.

Punch in Empyre Elite to the search box.
It will lead you to some grewat reading.
Why did the previous owner sell it?
Have the tubes been cleaned out with the Flue Active Tool?

https://www.hearth.com/talk/threads/keep-it-clean.105710/#post-1375435

https://www.hearth.com/talk/threads/empyre-elite-owb.91560/page-2#post-1408313

https://www.hearth.com/talk/threads/empyre-elite-100-pounding-out-the-heat.102653/


Start there, then ask away.

previous owner saidd the boiler interferred with his expensive cnc lathe equipment, i have used the rotary tool from empyre. Temp at burn.

30 plate heat exchanger in shop(not heated yet, 2000sf.) this circ pump will shut off and not restart until the boiler is up to about 160, it is plugged into the back of the boiler.

supply enters the bottom pipe attached is the munchkin aquastat, top valves are supply and return from the mucnchkin, to the right is the return from the main manifold.

The hot water then goes to a 20 plate exchanger for my dhw, then thru the top pipe to the munchkin valves.

then the two pipes at the ceiling the one on the right is supply, goes clockwise thru the cast iron and supplies the upper floor then the basement slab to expansion tank and then the pump that sends the water back out in insulated pex to the boiler in shop 40' feet away, burried 5' down.

main floor supply being pulled through seven runs by a grundfos pump and the mixing valve above. The one on the right is for the main floor and the one on the left is the basement slab.

Lastly pressure guage, expansion tank and Wilo sending the return back out to boiler. That is all i know gentlemen

Does your system have the Optimizer on the back of the boiler to ensure that the return water temp to the boiler never gets below 140*?

it can be partially seen to the left hand side of the picture in post #18 of this thread.

https://www.hearth.com/talk/threads/the-time-has-come.90243/#post-1178600