Hello i am new to the forum, and have a few questions i would like some opinions on. My wife an i bought a 20x30 2 story log cabin a couple years ago and it is heated with a hearth stone wood stove with 2 rinnia? wall mount propane heaters as backup, so the house has no furnace, vents or ducting now. I have aquired and owb and need to figure out hoe to heat with it i was thinking radiant floor hear but the home is on piers and i will have to take 1" tongue and groove off the bottom of the whole house and remove the insulation to installl. Also my sub floors are 2x6 tongue and groove with hard wood on top is that to think for radiant? thanks for any help or suggestions
owb heating options
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Karl_northwind
Minister of Fire
NateB
Feeling the Heat
maple1
Minister of Fire
Could also try finding some good used cast iron rads. The old time type. They put out heat.
Along with other things, you will also need a heat exchanger, and very good underground piping - get the right stuff or you will likely be sorry. It costs $10+ per foot and is usually the most overlooked important aspect that people short cut on.
Along with other things, you will also need a heat exchanger, and very good underground piping - get the right stuff or you will likely be sorry. It costs $10+ per foot and is usually the most overlooked important aspect that people short cut on.
thanks for the replies we do live here year round, i will look into the things you have mentioned and i will go with good pipe i have seen to many examples of people not doing it to convince me. Its a wood master 4400
Any chance you have an unfinished basement that you do not use? A friend of mine heats a 3500 sqft single level ranch with an OWB by simply super heating the basement with a hydronic blower. Understand it might be trickier with 2 floors. Good luck!
salecker
Minister of Fire
Hi
I have a 2 story log house on a basement.
I have a wood boiler in a out building with storage.We have cast iron rads with TRV's in our house...AWESOME...
It's like having a bunch of little wood stoves around the house.Ours is around 1100sq ft per floor.Last winter was a colder than normal winter.I still have a couple more rads i want to plumb in,but at the moment we just have 2 14 row rads that heat the main part of the house.These take care of most of the main floor,our daughters bedroom and bathroom have their own smaller rads.The ceiling is 25 ft to the ridge beam in the main area of the house.And we have separate rads in our insulated loft/bathroom.By insulating our loft bedroom/bathroom from the rest of the house we can maintain a cooler sleeping area.
If i ever build another home it will have cast iron rads as a heat source,don't even have to think about it.
I have a 2 story log house on a basement.
I have a wood boiler in a out building with storage.We have cast iron rads with TRV's in our house...AWESOME...
It's like having a bunch of little wood stoves around the house.Ours is around 1100sq ft per floor.Last winter was a colder than normal winter.I still have a couple more rads i want to plumb in,but at the moment we just have 2 14 row rads that heat the main part of the house.These take care of most of the main floor,our daughters bedroom and bathroom have their own smaller rads.The ceiling is 25 ft to the ridge beam in the main area of the house.And we have separate rads in our insulated loft/bathroom.By insulating our loft bedroom/bathroom from the rest of the house we can maintain a cooler sleeping area.
If i ever build another home it will have cast iron rads as a heat source,don't even have to think about it.
shoehorny
Member
Dude, I don't want to sound mean, but it does not seem you know what you are talking about. Cast iron rads are not a heat source. They are part of a system that distributes heat within your home. That said, I have been heating with an OWB for many years and it is a great system, once you have one properly setup and you learn how to make it work.
If you have cast iron rads in your house you have a hydronic heating system, meaning it uses hot water to distribute heat. You did not give too much in the way of important details. Initially, I was thinking you have a newly built log home with no heating system yet. But the fact that you have those rads in place is very important and it will make life a lot easier for you! The way most people plumb an OWB (which, in this case, stands for Outdoor Wood Boiler) is they run insulated PEX tubing underground to their existing heating system, usually in the basement. Because the OWB is an open system with lots of rusty water in it, you do NOT want to plumb the system directly into your existing internal heating system network of pipes. You want to get a plate heat exchanger and pipe it inline with your existing network of piping. Get a bigger plate exchanger, as they come in all sorts of sizes (the bigger the better!).
The way it works is the water being pumped into your home from the OWB goes into one side of the heat exchanger and exits on the other end. Water from your inside furnace network of piping is hooked into the other side of the heat exchanger and it exits the other end. The water is kept from mixing by the plates in the heat exchanger. The water from the two systems flows in opposite directions.
Your best bet is to hire an expert HVAC guy or a good plumber. This is rather easy to install, but a qualified person can make sure it is put in correctly. It should not cost more than a couple of hundred dollars to do and the work is rather easy. There are lots of guides posted all over the internet on how to install these. You can get the plate heat exchangers pretty much from any OWB dealer or on ebay for a couple hundred $$.
WoodMaster makes excellent OWBs! They are one of the top quality OWB manufacturers and they have been around for a while. Best of luck to you!
maple1
Minister of Fire
That was a pretty harsh first sentence that had not much to do with what you quoted.
They are if I am in a cold room and they are providing the heat. Cool the talking down.
salecker
Minister of Fire
To paraphrase you "Dude,I don't want to sound mean,but it does not sound like you know what you are talking about"
That pretty much sums you up.
OWB stands for outdoor wood-fired boiler. A wood fired boiler is a pressurized system.
An open system is technically not a boiler but a water heater.
Oh yea about that 2 commas in one sentence thing.....
I installed my own system,for a few reasons.1st 100 miles away from any HVAC guys the travel would have been cost prohibitive. 2nd i am very fussy about work that is done for me,especially my home not many people live up to my standards. 3rd my system has a bunch of re- purposed components.4th i am quite capable of doing my own work.
I had the owner of the heating shop where i bought my Econoburn heatexchanger pressure tanks and the few fittings that i didn't recycle stop by after i had it up and running.He is the leading hydronic heating guy in the Yukon.He was impressed and called his workers in to look at it.His estimate to build what i did was over 50K.
So i have proof that i can talk about and build a system.When i get my new shop put back together i will probably build a similar system,but a little less refined.
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