How Often You Firing?

About every 3 days now with mostly 30's & 40's & 720 gallon storage, Randy

Singed Eyebrows said:

About every 3 days now with mostly 30's & 40's & 720 gallon storage, Randy

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That's awesome! Still makes me think about eventually putting in a wood boiler and storage for my home.

Down from twice a day, to once a day.

We are having a cold spring. I am still firing once a day. I could probably go two but my baseboards require 160* and up...

with 806 gallons of storage I can go for 3 days. When storage gets down to 117F top probe I'll start a fire. Bottom probe is at 98F. sweetheat

sparke said:

We are having a cold spring. I am still firing once a day. I could probably go two but my baseboards require 160* and up...

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Why do your baseboards require 160*??

Still once a day, but a not a full fire box. Coming very close to every 2 days.

March 11th was the last, and that was to warm the place up for company coming. Passive and active solar are great for fall and to a lesser extent spring.

Two times a day, small fires, no storage.

every 5 or so days , just the shop right now at 62 F

Every other day for 31/2 hours ..temps 32-40F......Garn 1500 gal. mostly all dry hardwood.

Every 2 or 3 days - depends on outside conditions and whether I 'top off' storage. I've always said that storage is generally more about convenience than efficiency. This is a time when there's a big convenience benefit.

Why do your baseboards require 160*??

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Baseboards installed as part of a fossil fuel burning boiler are usually sized for the room using 180* water. This results in a certain length of fin tube. To utilize cooler temps. one needs to add to the length of the fin tubes to provide the same btu's. Depending on room size and configuration this could be an issue. The flip side to this are low temperature emitters that are available. He may have extended his BB length to allow 160* water.


Will

Blizzard said:

As much as I love the wood stove, I will be thrilled when I can finally get a boiler installed. Firing every two to three days sounds like a dream. Unfortunately thats a few years down the road. <_<

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You are obviously developing a plan for a boiler, and using the archive information contained in this forum. That, along with being an experienced wood burner, will give you an excellent probability of ending up with a great system. Good luck with it!

nrford said:

sparke said:

We are having a cold spring. I am still firing once a day. I could probably go two but my baseboards require 160* and up...

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Why do your baseboards require 160*??

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I think in all cases where someone says their baseboard needs 160-180, they're talking about the typical, mainstream heating on colder days (let's say 35* and under). But in the shoulder season, even 160-180 BB can work well with lower temps. I run without storage, and use various combinations of right-sized fires, and shutting the boiler down for extended periods. Yesterday we had no fire during the day, but evening temps began dropping fairly quickly from 40 to 30. So I built a very small fire, and fed a couple of splits every hour or so. This resulted in mainly 150-155* water going to the BB, which worked perfectly to maintain the right temp in the house. So, although my BB runs primarily at 160+, it does spend some time heating with less than 160 water, in the appropriate conditions.

willworkforwood said:

I think in all cases where someone says their baseboard needs 160-180, they're talking about the typical, mainstream heating on colder days (let's say 35* and under). But in the shoulder season, even 160-180 BB can work well with lower temps. I run without storage, and use various combinations of right-sized fires, and shutting the boiler down for extended periods. Yesterday we had no fire during the day, but evening temps began dropping fairly quickly from 40 to 30. So I built a very small fire, and fed a couple of splits every hour or so. This resulted in mainly 150-155* water going to the BB, which worked perfectly to maintain the right temp in the house. So, although my BB runs primarily at 160+, it does spend some time heating with less than 160 water, in the appropriate conditions.

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As long as you don't mind spinning your pumps a little more often, this works just fine.

joecool85 said:

willworkforwood said:

I think in all cases where someone says their baseboard needs 160-180, they're talking about the typical, mainstream heating on colder days (let's say 35* and under). But in the shoulder season, even 160-180 BB can work well with lower temps. I run without storage, and use various combinations of right-sized fires, and shutting the boiler down for extended periods. Yesterday we had no fire during the day, but evening temps began dropping fairly quickly from 40 to 30. So I built a very small fire, and fed a couple of splits every hour or so. This resulted in mainly 150-155* water going to the BB, which worked perfectly to maintain the right temp in the house. So, although my BB runs primarily at 160+, it does spend some time heating with less than 160 water, in the appropriate conditions.

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As long as you don't mind spinning your pumps a little more often, this works just fine.

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That's a really good observation. And, I've actually been giving a lot of thought to replacing my Taco 007 zone circ with a Grundfos Alpha. The way we run the boiler with lots of small fires causes the zone circ to run a lot, because the water temp is much more consistent than with a fossil burner spiking it up quickly, and then letting it get fairly low before firing up again. So, instead of a pile of really hot water for a fairly short time, we circulate consistent, lower-temp water more frequently. This works really well for us in every respect except pump run time. There seems to be lots of pluses with the Alpha, and only the purchase price being on the minus side. Sorry if this discussion is getting too far away from the OP.