Heat Calc, BTU question

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gradwell

New Member
Hearth Supporter
Mar 26, 2008
40
western pa
Just had a heat calc. done for new construction. I have two sets of BTU requirement numbers. The first one is 131,000 BTU. I think this was the supply requirement. The other number was a bit higher and I cant remember the term used for it and I forgot the info at my office. My question is, which one of these numbers do i use to select unit size? As you will quickly learn, I am quite clueless with this stuff and will have many more questions during install. I am concerned as I have to hire someone to install the entire radiant system and boiler. While they are savy with boilers, wood boilers are unheard of in my area and I am worried about the additional knowledge necessary for a successfull install. Primarilly power outages, dump zone etc. Though concerned, I am bound and determined to use wood. Knocked over the trees where my house will go last fall and started cutting and splitting the wood this week. 5 cords cherry split so far. Now just have to decide, Tarm or EKO. Any additional advice appreciated. Otherwise, I will be asking my next question shortly. Thanks for your help
 
My experience is with Tarm , they give good diagrams for piping and have good tech support. They probably could answer alot of your questions . Any heating installer will be able to pipe a wood boiler.
 
Well, when I ran my numbers I came up with the "actual" load, which included the amounts of BB in each room I would need to satisify the load, BUT...That assumed, as always when doing a heat loss, that you are going to have supply water temps at a stable level at all times, i.e. 180 deg., and figuring the heat needed at a certain point, like 70 deg. inside temp at 0 deg. outside temp. But with wood, at least IMHO, your supply temps will vary, depending on the state of the fire, how quickly the system respends to a call for heat, etc. That is why I calculated my load on 160 deg. water, which added approx. 10K BTU to the load, that way I should be safe
 
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