Wood boiler piping

  • Active since 1995, Hearth.com is THE place on the internet for free information and advice about wood stoves, pellet stoves and other energy saving equipment.

    We strive to provide opinions, articles, discussions and history related to Hearth Products and in a more general sense, energy issues.

    We promote the EFFICIENT, RESPONSIBLE, CLEAN and SAFE use of all fuels, whether renewable or fossil.
Status
Not open for further replies.
To keep the oil burner from firing, just use an aqua-stat to break the TT terminals on the oil burner. these are probalby jumpered on you boiler now. Just use an open on rise aquastat, set it to what ever temp your wood boiler circ will turn on at and it will turn off you oil burner accordingly. Or if you use a relay like a TACO SR501 to control the circ from your wood boiler there is an extra set on NO/COM/NC contacts in the relay that will do the same.
 
I appreciate all the feedback. The electrical controls for the oil boiler are not an issue for me. The logic of when and why to make it happen is a challenge for me since heating is a science in itself. If I have to use some controls to make the oil boiler take over if there is a call for DHW, then that's what I'll do. I have a heat manager installed already monitoring DHW so I'll tweak it if need be. But not piping the wood boiler in would definatley be my biggest loss. That's the conclusiom I have come to thanks to this forum.
This year whatever it takes to save a buck. Next year more to save more bucks. Payoff is the key. Not afraid of work. Afraid of working for the arabs.
Please keep the ideas and watchouts coming. I want to be economical, not stupid.
 
in hot water said:
Will the 140- 160F setting keep the coil hot enough to produce sufficient DHW? I suppose with an indirect tank, in your case it would just extend the recovery time? I doubt that 140- 160F would provide enough DHW with a tankless coil in the OB, when running on oil only. It's something you could try before you make any changes. Lower the OB to that range for day or so and see how the HW performs.
Remember not to run the oil too cool or you will soot up and maybe start to condense.
hr
For the complete story, I should have added that the lower settings are only used for the heating season. The OB almost never needs to run because the WB is keeping it hot enough. I don't used the WB for DHW alone, so the OB setting goes up once the heating season is over.
Beeper, My return before the expansion tank was done just because the piping in my system was easier - it probably can go either way (the hydronics pros can weigh in on that one). There is no return mixing valve needed with an EB - the dual pump design takes care of that completely.
 
WWFW, Your right I forgot about the pump setup. More savings. Just power outage and over temp dump zones. Thanks again.
Turning the oil boiler temps down as a test is a great Idea. I will do that this week.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.