New install questions

[Dune]

My wife just turned the thermostat "all the way up to 66" Her words. I guess I finaly got her trained. Anyway, burned a rebuilt parlor stove last year. Very hot, not very airtight. Swicthing to a tempwood with an internal add-on iron pipe manifold this year. This is a prototype. If I had found this site sooner, I 'd probably be doing it differently. My plan is to pipe in series on the return side of the o.f.b. I have a single zone with monoflo tees and .5 inch baseboard. I set up the stove for an aquastat relay, to control my ONE circulator, in paralell with the o.f.b. aquastat. An extra relief valve completes the install. An electrical engineer aprove the wiring plan as long as both aquastats are powered by the same circuit breaker (in case the circ moter shorts internaly while both aquastats happen to be calling). Anyone care to comment ? Love this site, learned a lot already, thankyou!

 

[Nofossil]

My wife just turned the thermostat "all the way up to 66" Her words. I guess I finaly got her trained. Anyway, burned a rebuilt parlor stove last year. Very hot, not very airtight. Swicthing to a tempwood with an internal add-on iron pipe manifold this year. This is a prototype. If I had found this site sooner, I 'd probably be doing it differently. My plan is to pipe in series on the return side of the o.f.b. I have a single zone with monoflo tees and .5 inch baseboard. I set up the stove for an aquastat relay, to control my ONE circulator, in paralell with the o.f.b. aquastat. An extra relief valve completes the install. An electrical engineer aprove the wiring plan as long as both aquastats are powered by the same circuit breaker (in case the circ moter shorts internaly while both aquastats happen to be calling). Anyone care to comment ? Love this site, learned a lot already, thankyou!

Welcome to the forum and to the boiler room. Point of clarification - ofb is oil fired boiler?

 

[Dune]

Yes. Thank you for the rsponse. I wish I could upload a schematic of my proposed piping system, but can't. It is very simple though. Any one think it will work? Or did I not give enough information in the first post? Thankyou.

 

[Nofossil]

What you're proposing is the simplest approach, I think.

If you wanted a tiny bit more complexity in exchange for a bit better performance, you could add a circ for the wood and plumb the wood and ofb in parallel, so that they're connected to the same supply and return points.

If you do this, a few things to consider:

1) each circ is dedicated to its heat source and controlled by its own aquastat
2) both circs need to have check valves

This approach has the advantage that you can run either heat source without heating up the other. With shutoff valves, you can also isolate either heat source without affecting the other.

You can run both heat sources together, but if one aquastat is set higher than the other, you might get a situation where both circs run after the cooler heat source shuts down. Not a calamity.

As long as the wood is generating heat, the oil will sit there ice cold. Nice.

At some point you might want to add a sidearm HX to heat your hot water. Cool idea (thanks, Eric) - do a search and you'll find a picture and diagram.

 

[Dune]

Thank you, It is starting to make sense now. I thought I would need a lot more fittings and electronics, but after staring at the existing boiler, I see that it is just a few more parts to go parallel instead of series, and eliminates some other problems as well. As far as the side arm goes, I had already designed a similar system, using a flat plate heat ex. and a small hot water recirc pump, but the sidearm with thermo-syphoning is what I will try first. By the way, how do you upload schematics? Do you have a CAD program? Thank you for your input.

 

[Nofossil]

By the way, how do you upload schematics? Do you have a CAD program? Thank you for your input.

You have to export whatever you want to upload as an image, or do a screen capture to get an image. This forum doesn't allow non-image uploads as far as I can tell.

As far as the design, I think Mark Twain once said "I would have written you a shorter letter if I had more time". Design is like that - it takes time to figure out how to make things simple.

 

[Eric Johnson]

I think jpegs are about all you can upload. Maybe gifs, too.

 

[ISeeDeadBTUs]

My wife just turned the thermostat "all the way up to 66" Her words. I guess I finaly got her trained.

Dude! I am somewhat jealous, as I have only trained mine that 67 is 'all the way'. But not as jealous as Eric :roll: Can you believe his wife thinks stas go North of 70????

 

[Dune]

Hello guys , thanks for your responses. Spent a while designing parallel piping system, finally figured it out. Now I am not sure if I want to go that way though. Because I don't have storage, if the wood fire goes out in the early am, I think it would use a lot more oil to reheat the o.f.b. Storage for this winter is not an option. Or maybe I should go with parallel and just suffer a little in the morning till I can get a tank and a radiant zone installed. Any thoughts? Thanks.

 

[Nofossil]

Hello guys , thanks for your responses. Spent a while designing parallel piping system, finally figured it out. Now I am not sure if I want to go that way though. Because I don't have storage, if the wood fire goes out in the early am, I think it would use a lot more oil to reheat the o.f.b. Storage for this winter is not an option. Or maybe I should go with parallel and just suffer a little in the morning till I can get a tank and a radiant zone installed. Any thoughts? Thanks.

There might be an argument in favor of using the mass of the OFB for heat storage, but I doubt that it would help much. With the two in series, you'll be wasting wood heat up the oil flue and oil heat up the wood flue. Just my $.02....

 

[Dune]

What I mean is that if the oil burner is going to share the job of heating the house, would not it use more oil to heat it up (the oil fired boiler) than if it had been kept warm by the wood? I realize some heat will go up the flue, but wood is free to me, oil cost me my hard earned cash.

 

[Nofossil]

What I mean is that if the oil burner is going to share the job of heating the house, would not it use more oil to heat it up (the oil fired boiler) than if it had been kept warm by the wood? I realize some heat will go up the flue, but wood is free to me, oil cost me my hard earned cash.

Don't know how much water is in the system, but just having the water warm is a good start. The boiler itself doesn't take much - a 500 pound iron boiler takes the same amount of energy to heat it as about 7 gallons of water. If you're worried about not wasting heat from your oil, then you don't want to be circulating oil-heated water through your wood boiler.

At the end of the day, whatever is easiest is probably best for now.

 

[Dune]

Thanks, At this point I am probably over-thinking this. I think I'll buy another circulator tomorow and go with the parallel setup. I really appreciate your advice and that of the other fellows as well. When I get it running I will report back.