OutDoor Wood Boiler adding Thermal Heat Sink Tank. Friggid ALASKA (33Below Today)

[NP ALASKA]

I am no engineer or even half educated on this. Can some one give me some information on an additinonal tank setup? I have a CB 6048 and it is heating two seperate structures. I want to add a heat sink storage tank to help even the speratic ups and downs of the CB as it cycles through burns.
I am thinking of adding a 500 to 1000 gallon tank right next to the CB. I have a recycled 500 gal tank for nothing. I thought of putting it half in the ground and insulating the thing until it looks like the Michelan Man. I think that the tank is lower than the mass in the CB and will gravity feed down. I am thinking of a small pump to push back up to the CB tank.

I have also considered a tank in each building, the problem is space. I think I can fit 250 in the house garage and 300 in the other out building(provided I can get it through the door)?? Thoughts??

Other considerations: I am in the interior of Alaska, temps are commonly 30 and 40 below zero hear. Coldest Dec-Feb.

If I put a tank in the garage this is not much problem since the door is large. The other building the door is 32 inches wide?

Any thoughts would be great thanks.

 

[Nofossil]

Storage is great, but it adds a lot of complexity to the system. Gravity (or thermosiphoning) most likely won't be enough. There are some schematics in other threads that address some of the issues, but at the very least you'd need an extra pump, mixing valve, and some control logic. It's also important to do a rough energy budget - how many BTUs do you need to store in order to be useful?

 

[NP ALASKA]

I have been looking at some other sites. The CB yahoo one is great.

I have decided on about 800 gallons. I am thinkning of making this tank atmospheric. Should I use a coil or plate exchanger? And does it matter that the tank is 32 feet from the OWB? I have a building this far away.

Its 44 below at my palce this morning. Well gotta get going to work. Thanks

 

[Eric Johnson]

After you've priced the coil, you'll probably choose the flat plate option.

A few people here have done it, or at least talked about doing it that way. It's a bit of an engineering challenge, but my understanding is that it can be done. You probably want to use a bronze circulator on the tank side.

You can put the tank anyplace you can pipe the water to, but the more spread out everything is, the more transmission losses you're going to have, especially in your climate.

 

[wdc1160]

One of the most useful things I was able to get from the forum was
1. Able to get a handle on what my needs would be -- quantify in more detail what my needs were.
2. Able to figure storage, boiler size, and losses in more detail
l based the rest on that.

I actually went back and did another heat calc recently. Eric recently posted a program
at
www.heatinghelp.com
that seem to be better than the last one that I had used.

I am going to base the size of the storage on this software's analysis of what I would require in a -5 degree day.