Please brag about your storage

I have unpressurized storage , I suppose I should look at what the tank is but we have been 70's the last couple of days . The last time I made a fire was 2 days ago . I like my storage supplies me with my DHW year around . Soon to be heating my hot tub I hope . But like you it keeps getting pushed back .

I have 500 gals. of preasurized storage. Heating house DHW and 200 gal. hot tub. Been doing one burn a day to keep things heated. Not using much for the house it is mostly for the outside hot tub abd DHW. Depending on what the weather does after this weekend I may keep burning. Once the temps are in the 70-80's even with one burn it adds too much heat to the house so I switch to the propane. Looks like we are going to use 7 cords and 100 gal. of propane for the heating year.

Good luck Birdman.

I'm finishing what will likely be my last burn of the year. Storage lets me skip burning for two or three days and still have the house, DHW, and hot tub at temperature. This burn should take me into next week for DHW, and then maybe I'll be able to hook up the solar hot water panels.

Storage makes the EKO more efficient as well. I heated a 3500 square foot house, DHW, and a 550 gallon hot tub (outside) with less than 4 1/2 cords this year, and a lot of the wood was punky poplar and white pine.

I never really stop burning, the days between burns just widens as we move into the off season. With the basement ceiling insulated for the radiant floors I find that even burning in the summer doesn't add any heat to the house. I don't keep very good track of how much wood I use, but with a lack of insulation in the house it is quite a bit. My summer project is to insulate the crap out of my 60 year old house and not have to use as much wood next year! There seems to be an endless stream of projects I could do around heat, but the important thing is that my system will already heat my house and DHW year round without burning any fossil fuels. The rest of my tinkering is just to make it more efficient!

I have 720 gallons pressure storage, custom made tank with domestic loop. This is my first year burning although I couldn't imagine heating without storage, Randy

With 345 gallons of unpressurized storage, we have been going every day or two between small firings, mostly for DHW.
I kicked on the heat pump this morning and will say thank you to wood burning until next autumn.
For $20 a month, I am now officially a couch potato for the summer!

I have an STSS 822 gallon atmospheric tank which I think is awesome. I have had it running since 2003 with no problems. I made up my own copper coils and the Tarm uses two 200 foot coils in parallel. My return temperature matches the tank temperature so I believe it's close to 100% effective at heat transfer. I have tried something different this year by double loading the stove I can put in additional heat without the overhead of pre-heating the stove. I typically get 35 degrees per burn (oak) and with a 1/2 load added after 2 1/2 hours, I can get close to 60 degrees increase in a single burn. That lasts for 2 days in temperatures of 30 or above and these days close to 4 days. It wouldn't be possible without the thermal storage. I'd like to add a couple inches of insulation to hold those BTU's better.

nofossil said:

I'm finishing what will likely be my last burn of the year. Storage lets me skip burning for two or three days and still have the house, DHW, and hot tub at temperature. This burn should take me into next week for DHW, and then maybe I'll be able to hook up the solar hot water panels.

Storage makes the EKO more efficient as well. I heated a 3500 square foot house, DHW, and a 550 gallon hot tub (outside) with less than 4 1/2 cords this year, and a lot of the wood was punky poplar and white pine.

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Wow that is amazing efficiency, I assume you have your house very well insulated?

patch53 said:

nofossil said:

I'm finishing what will likely be my last burn of the year. Storage lets me skip burning for two or three days and still have the house, DHW, and hot tub at temperature. This burn should take me into next week for DHW, and then maybe I'll be able to hook up the solar hot water panels.

Storage makes the EKO more efficient as well. I heated a 3500 square foot house, DHW, and a 550 gallon hot tub (outside) with less than 4 1/2 cords this year, and a lot of the wood was punky poplar and white pine.

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Wow that is amazing efficiency, I assume you have your house very well insulated?

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The walls are pretty good - 5 1/2" fiberglass and 1" polyiso foam. The attic is cellulose and it's settled to only about 12". Lots of glass - three double doors to the outside and a slew of south facing windows. The windows are decent double pane, but the doors are starting to leak pretty badly. We keep the thermostats on the two main floors at 72 and the basement at 68.

We used to use about 700 gallons of oil per year with the thermostats set lower than they are now (and without the hot tub).

I saw the thread title, was psyched to comply, then read the OP and noticed it was interested in "pressurized storage". What are us unpressurized guys, the poor stepkids around here or something? It serves the same purpose, I had a fire yesterday morning and I'm not sure when my next one will be. During the summer we get 100% of our domestic hot water with around one fire a week.

So there!

Rory said:

I saw the thread title, was psyched to comply, then read the OP and noticed it was interested in "pressurized storage". What are us unpressurized guys, the poor stepkids around here or something? It serves the same purpose, I had a fire yesterday morning and I'm not sure when my next one will be. During the summer we get 100% of our domestic hot water with around one fire a week.

So there!

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Now Rory, just don't start to mention numbers of gallons or he will get discouraged and never get his wittle tanky put in.

About ten days of burning in the last two months, passive and active solar, no water storage-all masonry.

nofossil that sounds like an impossible amount of wood for that much house, DHW, and an outside hot tub????? 4 1/2 cords of rotten white pine and poplar ? in Vermont? I let most of my white pine and poplar rot in the woods that comes down because a large split of white pine weighs like 2 pounds when dry and its not worth the effort it burns like paper.I'm not calling you a liar but maybe you need to remeasure your wood pile. I would think the hot tub alone would take at least 2 cords of hardwood to heat all winter outside. I used to burn 4 cds of seasoned hardwood in an osburn wood stove just to heat a well insulated 1500 sq foot house. Unless your house can heat itself with passive solar I just do not see how that is possible with junk wood no less

Nofossil has his total system running at the efficiency that I want to achieve someday. As far as storage, this is the best time of year for storage. Yesterday I considered turning on the air conditioner and today the house needs a small amount of heat. With the storage, I will still heat without turning on the fossil fuel and I can burn the boiler full tilt. I have NG so it probably wouldn't cost that much to just fire up the house furnace but its so easy to just build a fire and reload a couple times to recharge the storage and then live off it for awhile. Boiler plus storage is priceless.

To Benjamin - my storage is unpressurized. I'm convinced that pressurized is the way to go if you can do it, but unpressurized still works a whole lot better than no storage.

To Loggie - my wood isn't ALL punky poplar and white pine. It's about half junk and half decent hardwood. The hardwood is a mix of buckthorn, birch, apple, and hickory. At this point I'm getting firewood by cutting out invasive species (buckthorn) and diseased / damaged / dead / undesirable trees. One important consideration: ALL my wood this year was at least two years seasoned in covered piles, oriented east-west for maximum sun exposure, with 9 feet between piles for maximum airflow. Really dry.

No doubt on the cord measurement - I'm pretty fanatical when it comes to measurements ;-)

1000 gallons of pressurized storage... lets us go 24 hours or more between fires on even the coldest days, and around 5 days between firings for DHW during the summer. This season was pretty good for wood usage... approximately 5.8 cords from the beginning of october through the end of march to heat 4100 sq feet of an updated 200 year old farmhouse with something like 35 total windows and doors, and all the domestic hot water for a family of 4. I estimate DHW counted for somewhere between 1.5 and 2 cords of the overall total usage for this last heating season. Not too shabby. The wood was mostly hickory, beech, oak... nothing higher than 20% moisture content. I figure next year I'll be at or below 5 cords with the Froling hooked up to the storage... providing I get the same mix of wood as last year... which is highly unlikely.

There have only been a handful of things I've spent money on in my life that I've never second guessed the investment... and thermal storage is one of them. It's truly some of the best time and money I have ever spent.

cheers

How long of a burn to get that 1000 gallons of storage up to temp Piker?

Nofossil, most of us believe you. Your site is very impressive. I'm still trying to figure out if your double mixing valve arrangement makes more sense than what I was thinking of doing, which is using a mixing valve to mix cold and tempered water for the cold water (now 80-90) going to the bathroom(s). Four, five, six mixing valves, the possibilities are endless.

No doubt if I had a steel gassifier, an existing indirect water heater, and the ability to get some propane tanks, pressurized would be the way I'd go to make use of the high temp output. My system is a retrofit cobble job involving a fire brick secondary combustion chamber and an old cast iron sectional boiler core in an open system shared with drainback solar. My storage is masonry to maximize the low temp solar output, like radiantec's sand bed system. The best thing I can say is that it's simple and it works.

I'm hoping to put in a better designed and DHW integrated "sand bed" for my little brother sometime before winter. That will combine solar panels and an old (don't laugh) Aquatherm, slightly modified of course.

Pressurised storage sure makes a nice system with a boiler and DHW, but add solar, radiant heat or a condensing heat source and it might be simpler, cheaper, more efficient to use some other storage method.

I can't wait to see the next post,probably will be something like this,
I have 10,000sq ft of old farmhouse which I can see out between the boards with 87 windows[single pane] which I walk around in shorts all day when it's 20 below out ,an outdoor Olympic swimming pool which I keep 85 deg all winter, 5 women in the house who take hot showers all day and I'm 20 miles from the artic circle and my WONDERBURN BOILER ONLY USED 2 CORDS OF ROTTEN WHITE PINE ALL 10 MONTHS OF WINTER ! NOW I know someone out there can beat this. seriously you guys must be burning wood containing uranium and really have a nuclear reaction going on inside your boilers. I am embarrassed to say that my 1250 switzer heating 3500 sq ft of log home plus the 2000sq ft basement and all DHW burned 12 honest cords of mixed hardwood stored inside last winter with keeping the house 68 degrees.I have talked to a garn guy from this forum who I will spare the embarrassment of naming who told me he used 20cd a year heating a pool and home burning all year.So I was feeling pretty good about my wood use until I read here. I think if you guys are even close with your wood use I will for next year weld the doors shut on my switzer and use it for storage for one of these wonderboilers and heat my house by rolling up the Sunday paper and a hand full of Popsicle sticks for my once a week fire.I will stack my Popsicle sticks on a east to west direction to get southern exposure so they are properly dry. I really feel gulty about killing all those trees every year to feed my old wood waster.Can anyone recommend a dealer where I can buy one of these newfangled Wonderboilers....... I can't wait.

What makes pressurized storage better? It seems it's bulky and costly to ship. It requires a much larger expansion tank. It's heavy to move around. The typical insulation is low in R-value. Is it cost that makes it better?

Well loggie for what its worth I really dont exactly know what I used but guessing between 6- 8 . My winter never really ends I just go into shoulder season and burn a few times a month instead of every day . If I had to guess how many cord and years do I have ahead I have no clue I have one continues pile I put new stuff on one end take old stuff off the other . Some years I gain some years I fall behind . I do know I am now about half of what I use to use per year to heat with . I have a tarm solo 60 and 1200 non pressurized storage and heat about 3500 sg ft that includes the basement . Oh and by the way some of my wood to would have been better off to let in the woods , but then again some is really nice .

IkarumBa said:

What makes pressurized storage better? It seems it's bulky and costly to ship. It requires a much larger expansion tank. It's heavy to move around. The typical insulation is low in R-value. Is it cost that makes it better?

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There are a few threads around that addresses this in detail. The short answer is that pressurized storage makes it much easier to attain and maintain stratification, avoids the cost and heat transfer loss (delta T) of a heat exchanger, and eliminates evaporative loss. Because there's no need to ever access the tank, it can be insulated more completely.

The improved stratification and heat transfer means that you get more effective storage with a smaller tank.

There are a few threads around that addresses this in detail. The short answer is that pressurized storage makes it much easier to attain and maintain stratification, avoids the cost and heat transfer loss (delta T) of a heat exchanger, and eliminates evaporative loss. Because there's no need to ever access the tank, it can be insulated more completely.

The improved stratification and heat transfer means that you get more effective storage with a smaller tank.

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I will give you that pressurized storage can be operated at somewhat higher temperatures.
I would question whether stratification is any better. Heat transfer might not be 100% with a hx but this is not lost energy, it might require a circulator to operate to a few minutes more to compensate.

Evaporative loss is an issue if you do not seal a tank properly. An unpressurized tank with a cover that is easily removed allows simple retrofitting of solar or other hardware heat exchangers and modular service if ever required.

A well designed unpressurized tank will perform quite well. Yes, you need heat exchangers (sometimes), but you usually use one somewhere with a pressure system for DHW.

Yes, they are not as cheap as a used gas tank, but if you are a professional installer and actually have to bill for the time to get a pressure tank into a building (or build something around it) and tie multiple tanks together with black iron pipe or even big PEX and insulate it with spray foam, I think an honest tally would be closer than one might want to think.

Unpressurized tanks are not for every installation, but they perform with excellent stratification and can usually go in anywhere. We can get a tank into a basement through a 25" square opening--for tank and heat exchangers. All in about ten minutes, usually without swearing or damage to stairs, walls or people.

I think where most people feel the need for pressure systems is with big heat load installations that cannot tolerate a very large temperature swing in really cold weather.
More moderate heat loads and better designed systems work beautifully with non-pressurized storage.


Any storage is better than none!