I have a wood boiler set up with 4 zones and no storage. Each zone has a circulator and there are no zone valves. If the power goes out, will the boiler work on convection with a setup like this? Everything I read talks about zone valves and be sure to open the zone valves when the power goes out so the boiler will still function on convection and distribute heat to the house. I haven't seen anything that says much about a system without zone valves.
wood boiler operation during power loss
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ewdudley
Minister of Fire
Presumably if the system would circulate by convection without power, then it would circulate by convection when the pumps are off, whether you wanted it to or not. Normally there would be 'flo-cheks' to prevent unintended convection flow, have a look and see if you can tell if your system has them. They can be part of the pump itself in which case it can be hard to tell, or they could be separate devices in each of the load circuits.
Typically if the building loads have enough gravity flow potential to serve as power loss dump zones there would need to be a normally open dump zone valve that would bypass the load circuit flo-cheks and would serve all the dump zones in parallel.
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the flo check that you are talking about, is it the same thing as a back flow prevente or a check valve. There is a check valve on the supply line coming out of my boiler. That line goes to a manifold that supplies all the zones. Would this check valve prevent convection heating in the event of power loss?
jebatty
Minister of Fire
Although I have a dump zone to handle a power outage during boiler firing, and which would provide some thermosiphon heat for a longer period, my long term solution is a 2000w sine wave inverter generator to power the boiler, my three circulators and associated controls. Every 6 hour burn during a multi-day outage in the depth of winter keeps my storage fully charged for a minimum of two days per burn, and running the generator as needed on eco sips fuel very lightly, with the generator ready to add power as needed to keep the circulator demands fully met.
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