Newbie - questions

[z28clone]

-Ok, I've been trolling this site for nearly 4months. I've learned alot thanks to you guys. I currently heat a 1800cuft ranch with propane about 800-900 gal/year. I heat my 24x40 pole barn with a wood stove. We are getting a 13,200 gallon in ground swimming pool installed this spring. My wife would like to get an electric pool heater hooked up. My thought was if we buy a heater, might as well spend a little more get a wood boiler to do the house as well. That's what has led me to this site. I haven't locked in on a boiler brand yet, but have researched about 17 of them and read the horror stories as well. Definitely want a big door, and I like the water storage idea. Is it better to get a boiler with a large water jacket like a Taylor to CB or get a smaller water jacket and add unpressurized storage? When you add unpressurized storage, should it use a HX or just incorporate it in the piping with the water jacket water? How small of a water jacket is too small for this? Which setup would work best for a pool?
-I bought a nice chipper and thought the only way I can get free trees from people is if I told them I would take care of brush. I chipped wood for half a day and got a full truck load of chips. Some dry, some green. I've been experimenting with how good wood chips burn with my wood stove. This weekend I did a few scenarios, but it seems that the best instance with the least amount of smoke was either (throwing in a Walmart bag full of chips or lightly shoveling in chips) on top of a few new wood chunks in the stove (to act as a bridge). It burns hot like kindling, but you have to tend to the fire alot. Definitely would like to take advantage of using cord wood and chips to heat. Anyone with experience burning wood chips in an ordinary wood boiler?
-I've also done some reading on the EPA proposal headed this way, here is how I interpret it: It is not outlawing OWBs like most companies are marketing. It is only telling companies to start developing/implementing a newer technology over the next 5 years.
Any tips would help.

 

[Clarkbug]

Welcome to Hearth!

Only thing I can say for sure is that if you are going to heat a pool, you DEFINITELY need a heat exchanger for that load. Dont run it through your storage directly. Bad things will eventually occur. Note that a solar pool cover works well, and uses less wood in the summer months

Unless your chipper is a tow-behind commercial unit, you will have a hard time getting enough chips. And then you have to deal with chip storage, feeding, etc. There are chip boilers, and some that can handle multiple fuels, but for the size you need I think you are in an either/or situation. There might be some European models that do both well, but no OWBs that I can think of.

 

[goosegunner]

I had one year with a Taylor 450 heating my pool. Don't waste your time. The btu ratings on most OWB's are a joke. They can't not continuously come close to heating a pool. The pool would cool the Taylor down and it would struggle to get back to temp I would usually have to shut off pool exchanger to let the Taylor catch up. Then on reloads it would smoke like an old steam train.

My Econoburn 200 with 1000 gallons of storage works great for heating our pool. Just remember heating a pool is high demand. I can heat my 2800 square foot house for 3 hours at -15 F with what it takes to raise my 15,500 gallon pool 1 degree. The 1000 gallons of storage gives a nice buffer from the high demand pool. When reloading, no smoke. You have to look at the stack for the heat ripples to see that it is burning. I burn the not so nice pieces of wood for pool heat because you do need to be around for reloading anyway. It will really chew through some wood in the spring when bringing it up to temp quick.

gg

 

[timbrjackrussel]

I had one year with a Taylor 450 heating my pool. Don't waste your time. The btu ratings on most OWB's are a joke. They can't not continuously come close to heating a pool. The pool would cool the Taylor down and it would struggle to get back to temp I would usually have to shut off pool exchanger to let the Taylor catch up. Then on reloads it would smoke like an old steam train.

My Econoburn 200 with 1000 gallons of storage works great for heating our pool. Just remember heating a pool is high demand. I can heat my 2800 square foot house for 3 hours at -15 F with what it takes to raise my 15,500 gallon pool 1 degree. The 1000 gallons of storage gives a nice buffer from the high demand pool. When reloading, no smoke. You have to look at the stack for the heat ripples to see that it is burning. I burn the not so nice pieces of wood for pool heat because you do need to be around for reloading anyway. It will really chew through some wood in the spring when bringing it up to temp quick.

gg

You could look into solar for the pool.

 

[maple1]

We are getting a 13,200 gallon in ground swimming pool installed this spring. My wife would like to get an electric pool heater hooked up.

That sounds like huge power bills, yikes.

How far apart are the pole barn/house/pool? A gasifier/storage setup in the pole barn or addition to it might be worthwhile. Goosegunners arrangement sounds good. I wouldn't do an OWB - I would put an indoor gasifier in an outbuilding (with storage & the winters wood) way before that.

 

[The Weimar]

Hi Clone, I hate to be a bad-mouther, but you mentioned CB.....Don't do it. Bad customer service from CB themselves and even a worse warranty, if you should ever need it. Plenty of other options out there with lots of good reviews.

the Weimar

 

[z28clone]

My barn is only 15ft from the house. My plan is to take out the wood burner and install an indoor gasser (Maybe a BioMass 60). Make an unpressurized 1000 gal storage vessel. Use wood chips and cord wood. Run 1-1/4" piping to the storage, house, and pool. I only like the big door on the CB. I have read the horror stories on the CB and do not plan to buy one. im trying to figure out how to plumb the system. Where do i need valves, expansion tanks,etc.

 

[maple1]

Is there a particular reason you want to go with unpressurized storage? The Biomass is a closed boiler, and I suspect your house system is also - if your storage is pressurized the install should be more straightforward & needing less heat exchangers. You will need one for the pool I think in any event, that should be the only one if everything else is pressurized. There is a sort of trade off, in that pressurized needs more expansion room.

 

[z28clone]

I have a propane furnace and will need a water to air HX. A water to water HX for the pool. I was thinking about an unpressurized vessel that would be fairly easy to custom build with wood and a liner. A HX would be needed to heat the storage from the boiler, but instead of a HX to retrieve the heat from the storage, I thought I could just pump the actual water out of the storage to heat the house and the pool. Both the intake and return lines would enter the homemade tank from the top. The intake line would take the hot water from the top stratified layer and heat the pool or house and the return line would also enter the storage tank from the top, but release the water at the lower stratified cooler water.

 

[Tennman]

I PM'd you.

 

[Smoke Signals]

I had one year with a Taylor 450 heating my pool. Don't waste your time. The btu ratings on most OWB's are a joke. They can't not continuously come close to heating a pool. The pool would cool the Taylor down and it would struggle to get back to temp I would usually have to shut off pool exchanger to let the Taylor catch up. Then on reloads it would smoke like an old steam train.

Could have this been remedied by side streaming the pool flow through a heat exchanger and adjusting the flow so as to not drop the temp of the boiler loop to much?