Are you using or planning storage?
If so is it going to be near boiler or in house?
What will distance be from boiler to storage?
gg
If so is it going to be near boiler or in house?
What will distance be from boiler to storage?
gg
Am I making a mistake with this mixing valve
- Thread starter infinitymike
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infinitymike said:
I don't believe that is the proper Danfoss. There is no bottom rating as far as I know. Mine will have 58 degrees on one side and 140 minimum on the mixed side depending on how far open the ball valve on the hot side is open.
gg
Here is a picture of my Danfoss. I am not saying it is the only way or the best but you can see it. My circulator is on the supply side because the Danfoss tech said it would aid in air elimination. I have considered moving it to reduce water temp in circulator, but the pumps and equipment supply shop says it will not hurt it.
https://www.hearth.com/econtent/index.php/forums/viewthread/67361/
gg
https://www.hearth.com/econtent/index.php/forums/viewthread/67361/
gg
Gasifier said:
It's a little to late the pex was run on Saturday. Right now my guy is in the basement setting up the primary loop.
He is getting a little frustrated that I keep coming to him with random thoughts.
He has actually told me I'm not helping him with all of these different ideas.
I do trust him. He has a very hard personality. I will let him think it through for a while.
Again its not like I have my wife and kids on the operating table and the surgeon is confused on which way to hook up the heart valve.
It will all work out.. Its only time and money both of which I am losing day by day. I can always make more money as for the time ...oh well.
goosegunner said:
Right now I am not using storage. But I've told him I want to plan for it.
When I go with storage it will be in the basement next to the OB about 60-70 feet from the WG.
But who knows maybe I will put the storage in the garage next to the WG and build a room to completely isolate the boiler and storage.
Right on. I didn't know if it was going to be boxed in by construction or not. I had the luxury of digging a 70 foot trench last summer. Yours would be much easier. Sounds easy to work with.infinitymike said:
Gasifier
Minister of Fire
infinitymike said:
I hear ya Mike. Well, if you are going to just hook it up the way he is going to do it because here is there now. I would suggest this. Ask him if he would put in two ball valves and a section of pipe between them in the return line before it goes back into your boiler. With a "t" somewhere on the supply line with a ball valve on that and a short section of pipe after it comes out of the boiler. Then you could add in your boiler protection valve when you do get it. If you don't have it for today's install. You need some type of boiler protection. I asked the question before my install related to skipping it. Thankfully, they made it very clear that I should not. Then I made sure I did it. Good luck man. You will be heating with wood in no time. Now all you need is colder weather to give that baby the heat demand it needs! Keep us posted on how it goes. :lol: Include some pictures, or I will have to give you a hard time. :lol:
Here is a link to the newer style Danfoss.
http://www.newhorizoncorp.com/PDF/DanfossVTC_Datasheet.pdf
gg
http://www.newhorizoncorp.com/PDF/DanfossVTC_Datasheet.pdf
gg
stee6043
Minister of Fire
infinitymike said:
Yikes. I feel like we are constantly raining on your parade, Mike!
If a guy I was paying to do work on my home ever told me to "butt out" it would be the last thing he told me while he was being paid by me. I'd pay him for what he's done so far and politely request that he not finish the install. But that's just me.
I guess on the bright side we can agree that having undersized piping WITH a Danfoss valve is better than having undersized piping without.
maple1
Minister of Fire
Only suggestion I have to add, is put lots of valves in to make later changes as easy as possible.
Good luck.
Good luck.
jebatty
Minister of Fire
InfinityMike -- not much discussion on flow, head loss, etc. You said 70' between the OB and the WG with 4 elbows. Assuming equivalent pipe length of 150', and assuming 8 gpm which is about what 1" pipe will do (= 80,000 btuh at deltaT= 20F), that's about 8.5 feet of head. If there is no other pump head, a Grundfos 15-58 on M would do that, a Taco 007 would not. Be sure you or your contractor does a head loss calculation at your desired flow rate and then selects the correct circulator to handle your WG output. 80,000 btuh should be OK on average output of the WG E100, which means you will need to move about 8 gpm.
stee6043 said:
He's not that bad or even rude. I can cut him a little slack. I've know him for about 6 years and he's done a lot of work on other projects (not my house, customer projects)
and he does work for another general contractor that I sub only the framing from. So I know his personality. He's just grumpy!
Any way what I plan on doing is increasing from 1" to 1.25" at the WG side and put in the Danfoss. I plan on going with storage one day. When that happens I will pipe from the WG to the Storage with 1.5" and then from the storage to my primary loop with 1.25" which will just bypass the 1" pex I have run now.
NO RAIN ON THIS PARADE BABY! keep bring the info.
ADAPT, IMPROVISE, AND OVERCOME.
ewdudley
Minister of Fire
I'm seeing one inch PEX at a pressure drop of about 14 feet H2O head at 8 gpm on a 150 foot circuit. Six gpm would me more realistic, but still workable if the house can pull enough deltaT.jebatty said:
jebatty said:
He did do the calc's and originally he thought he was going to need a Taco 0011 or a 0010 but now he said all we need is a 007.
The 1" pipe is suppling the primary loop that is in the basement next to the OB
infinitymike said:
I think my Danfoss looks like Goosegunners. They might have changed the look a little recently because new online searches show a slightly different looking one. I bought mine directly from the EKO distributer New Horizon Danfoss for $150 a couple years ago and it was actually a 1 1/2" which he said to bush down to 1 1/4". He told me at the time he recommended 1 1/2 for everyone for capacity reasons but it looks like they only have 1" and 1 1/4" listed now for $183 & $195. Cozyheat who is a sponsor here is also great to deal with and they have it for $175 Danfoss 1 1/4" . My 1st winter was in Jan 2009 with the EKO just heating my shed and I only used 1" and the Danfoss was a mixing valve bought locally made for radiant loops. Of course one of the guys at the store said "it should work". I only ran it from Early January through March but I was in a jam and going through 2 30# propane bottles every 2 days and had 2 to 3 1500W heaters under my camper with makeshift perimeter insulation. I later talked to a rep at Danfoss who confirmed the 1" valve I had was not for boiler protection and only had about 1/10 of the capacity needed. I ended up taking out all of my 1" piping and re-doing it that summer. What might have saved me a little was my homemade heater was right next to the boiler and any amount of distance to the loads would make a big difference I would think. It sounds like your installer is out of his league with this wood boiler and doesn't want to listen to any advice.
jebatty
Minister of Fire
ewdudley said:
You're correct. I used 1" steel pipe, PEX is less than an inch. About 14 feet at 8 gpm for 1" and about 9.15 feet for 1.5" at 8 gpm. I would not plan for less than 8 gpm to the primary loop if it was me. A 15-58 on H would move a little more than 8 gpm at 9.15 feet of head; a 007 definitely would not move 8 gpm; an 008 will do a little better than 8 gpm, a 0010 would move about 9 gpm; and an 0011 is overkill and probably not the right choice, IMO. The 15-58 3-speed could be a good choice because of the flexibility of running on M (less wattage) at something less than 8 gpm if that also works well for the WG.
The E100 is rated at 100,000 btuh; planning for 80,000 btuh on a burn cycle to storage and letting the WG burn out would be in line based on my experience.
jebatty said:
Ok guys, what should I be asking of my installer?
How did he figure the pump?
What is the heat loss of the house per hour?
What is the load the house needs?
Or totally different questions?
ewdudley
Minister of Fire
I don't recall that we know the characteristics of your heating load, so we can only speculate. It depends on your heating load, and on your system deltaT.infinitymike said:
We know that with a 007 your 1.0" PEX circuit should be good for easily 5 or 6 gpm.
btu_per_hour = gpm * deltaT * 500
My heating system happens to be able to pull a 40 degF deltaT fairly easily with its old cast iron radiators, so I set it up with a 100 ft loop of nominal 0.75" PEX (0.66" ID actual), which is good for at least 4 gpm with a 007:
btu_per_hour = 4 * 40 * 500 = 80000
It's not much heat, but it's enough for me.
Your installer knows all of this as it relates to your system, and has decided that five or six gpm driven by a 007 will give you enough heat for your load, and I'd bet he got it right, even if he only eye-balled your situation and relied on his experience.
Unfortunately there's not much you can do about the gpm since at some point around 7 gpm the load curve gets really steep for 150 ft of 1.0" PEX, and throwing more power at it won't get you much more flow.
To review his design you need to have some idea of what your load is and what deltaT you system can pull.
[Edit:
I've been assuming we're talking about the 70 ft out-and-back run to transfer heat to the house. The size of your pipe going to storage is a different matter. I've been assuming your storage will go in the garage near the WG when that happens.
]
jebatty
Minister of Fire
As the politicians say, all good questions. You are planning for storage. To me that means you want the ability to let your WG burn full out, one or more loads of wood, and then burn out. You will use your storage to buffer (accept the excess) WG output when your system does not need all the btuh's, and you want to store btu's for later drawdown and not always burn the WG, perhaps have several hours to overnight (or longer) of btu's available between firings. You also may want DHW, relying on the stored btu's, especially in the non-heating season, to provide that, and only have occasional firings of the WG. Lastly, you would aim for minimal to no idling with the WG during its burn times.
A question you didn't ask is how high a temperature of water do you want to be able to achieve in storage, and related to that is what is the temperature demand of your system. The lower either of these are, the easier it is to plumb and choose a circulator to meet your needs, and the opposite is also true, that the higher either of these are the more critical plumbing and circulator choices become. As to storage, the higher the temperature of water you can store, the longer the times between firing the WG, unless you also need high temperature water to meet your system needs.
If this fits you, then I believe your key calculations are all about insuring that when the WG is firing, your pipes and circulator can move the WG output to system and storage so that WG idling is minimal and preferably not at all.
My earlier comments were based on delta-T = 20F; that is, the temperature difference between supply water from the WG is 20F higher than the return water. The WG likely requires 140F minimum return water, and likely has maximum output of 185-190F. At maximum 185F, and maximum return water (such as from storage) of 165F, 8 gpm's will move 80,000 btuh, which over a burn cycle probably will handle the WG E100 satisfactorily. But, if you want to bring your storage up to 175F with WG output at 185F, then you will need to move 16 gpm's to move 80,000 btuh, and if your goal would be storage at 180F, well you can see what is happening.
Don't despair. My Tarm Solo 40, rated at 140,000 btuh, has maximum output of about 190F. I can bring my 1000 gal of storage, top to bottom to 190F +/- with no Tarm idling. But you can be sure that as storage temp approaches maximum I'm no longer in high burn on the Tarm, but rather, with experience, have loaded the Tarm so that as storage temp gets less than delta-T=20F, the Tarm wood load is burning down, btu output is falling, and I don't need to move gpm's for full output any longer. Kind of like letting the car coast to a stop as it approaches a stop sign. This can be easier that it might appear, depending on your situation. That can be another discussion.
Bottom line, IMO, plan for minimum WG to storage/primary loop at 8 gpm's, higher would be better if delta-T will be less than 20F on a regular basis.
A question you didn't ask is how high a temperature of water do you want to be able to achieve in storage, and related to that is what is the temperature demand of your system. The lower either of these are, the easier it is to plumb and choose a circulator to meet your needs, and the opposite is also true, that the higher either of these are the more critical plumbing and circulator choices become. As to storage, the higher the temperature of water you can store, the longer the times between firing the WG, unless you also need high temperature water to meet your system needs.
If this fits you, then I believe your key calculations are all about insuring that when the WG is firing, your pipes and circulator can move the WG output to system and storage so that WG idling is minimal and preferably not at all.
My earlier comments were based on delta-T = 20F; that is, the temperature difference between supply water from the WG is 20F higher than the return water. The WG likely requires 140F minimum return water, and likely has maximum output of 185-190F. At maximum 185F, and maximum return water (such as from storage) of 165F, 8 gpm's will move 80,000 btuh, which over a burn cycle probably will handle the WG E100 satisfactorily. But, if you want to bring your storage up to 175F with WG output at 185F, then you will need to move 16 gpm's to move 80,000 btuh, and if your goal would be storage at 180F, well you can see what is happening.
Don't despair. My Tarm Solo 40, rated at 140,000 btuh, has maximum output of about 190F. I can bring my 1000 gal of storage, top to bottom to 190F +/- with no Tarm idling. But you can be sure that as storage temp approaches maximum I'm no longer in high burn on the Tarm, but rather, with experience, have loaded the Tarm so that as storage temp gets less than delta-T=20F, the Tarm wood load is burning down, btu output is falling, and I don't need to move gpm's for full output any longer. Kind of like letting the car coast to a stop as it approaches a stop sign. This can be easier that it might appear, depending on your situation. That can be another discussion.
Bottom line, IMO, plan for minimum WG to storage/primary loop at 8 gpm's, higher would be better if delta-T will be less than 20F on a regular basis.
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