If I add more volume of water to my system (125 gallons) will this give me an extra hour or so of btu's if it is not acting as a seperate storage zone ?
thanks,
Joe
thanks,
Joe
musclecar joe said:If I add more volume of water to my system (125 gallons) will this give me an extra hour or so of btu's if it is not acting as a seperate storage zone ?
thanks,
Joe
maplewood said:When I started my 150 without any storage, I found I could overheat easily. Inexperience on fire size was a big reason, but no storage at all was also part of the problem.
I had a spare 60 gallon water heater, so I put that in my loop, and found it helped quite a bit. That extra buffer of volume, as small as it is, slows down my temperature swings, and I'm learning about fire size vs. expected heat load.
I'm more convinced that when I can add about 1000 gallons of pressurized storage to my system I'll see what I've read about dozens of times on this site - I'll have hot, fast, efficient fires, that heat the storage about 10-15 degrees per load.
I'm hoping to find four 250 gallon tanks that I can put in series, mounted vertically, with an insulated framed box around them. (They'll be in my wood room in the basement, next to the boiler, and will have firewood stacked against their box frame.) I keep an eye out on kijiji, at my local propane dealer, and at my junk dealer for used tanks.
I think your storage tank will be a help.
Tennman said:I was hoping someone else would step up for you musclecar and discuss the physics. What you've described is not storing anything. I'll call it thermal inertia (I just invented that to illustrate what's happening). If you put a heavier flywheel on your truck it will smooth accelerations and momentarily help you going up a hill. But when you want to accelerate that same mass fights you when you try to spin it up. You're not placing excess energy anywhere. Some hybrid cars (maybe all hybrids) instead of throwing energy away via heat thru brakes use electric motors that become generators to slow the car and take that kinetic energy of the car and "move" it to a battery. That's taking energy that would otherwise be thrown away and put somewhere. In our case here.... a thermal battery (big tank) sitting somewhere out of the main loop waiting to collect energy the house can't use at that moment allowing the boiler to burn at peak efficiency. What you're asking is similar to putting 500 lbs in your trunk... will help getting up a hill after coasting, but nothing is free and you're car will work harder towards the top of the hill, i.e. no energy saving... in fact we all know efficiency will go down. Same for you because you've just added a tank with surface area that will "leak" heat which is energy. I can see where adding this buffer may smooth burns, like the flywheel analogy, but bottomline you ain't sticking excess energy anywhere. Sorry. Creating the separate circulation loop to create a true storage device of 125 gallons probably is of little value (too small a battery).... BUT you could. I've read of at least 500 gals on the small systems here. I'm an odd ball here.... still trying to decide if I want storage.
Now my main reason for responding.... what kind of car?
Tennman said:Well... wouldn't ya know it. An expert replies while I was writing. So Piker please explain when adding a buffer is beneficial since that was his original question and I chimed in since the discussion really didn't seem to address his original question of adding water to the main loop. Any disagreement feel free to correct. If there is any benefit I'm not aware of I'd like to know about it because that's a whole lot easier than adding another circulation loop. Glad you joined in.
Tennman said:I was hoping someone else would step up for you musclecar and discuss the physics. What you've described is not storing anything. I'll call it thermal inertia (I just invented that to illustrate what's happening). If you put a heavier flywheel on your truck it will smooth accelerations and momentarily help you going up a hill. But when you want to accelerate that same mass fights you when you try to spin it up. You're not placing excess energy anywhere. Some hybrid cars (maybe all hybrids) instead of throwing energy away via heat thru brakes use electric motors that become generators to slow the car and take that kinetic energy of the car and "move" it to a battery. That's taking energy that would otherwise be thrown away and put somewhere. In our case here.... a thermal battery (big tank) sitting somewhere out of the main loop waiting to collect energy the house can't use at that moment allowing the boiler to burn at peak efficiency. What you're asking is similar to putting 500 lbs in your trunk... will help getting up a hill after coasting, but nothing is free and you're car will work harder towards the top of the hill, i.e. no energy saving... in fact we all know efficiency will go down. Same for you because you've just added a tank with surface area that will "leak" heat which is energy. I can see where adding this buffer may smooth burns, like the flywheel analogy, but bottomline you ain't sticking excess energy anywhere. Sorry. Creating the separate circulation loop to create a true storage device of 125 gallons probably is of little value (too small a battery).... BUT you could. I've read of at least 500 gals on the small systems here. I'm an odd ball here.... still trying to decide if I want storage.
Now my main reason for responding.... what kind of car?
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