When it gets real cold I burn a couple loads a day too. The wood pile is actually going pretty slow so far. I hope we don't make up for it too much in January and February.
I installed an Effecta 35kw last year and was pulling water from the top of my tank straight into my heating loop. I was experiencing the same thing you described, I could barely produce enough hot water to keep up with demand and had to run a fire for almost 16 hours to get my 1000 gallons to temp. This lead me to believe I needed a bigger unit (probably did) and this summer I installed an Effecta 60kw. Sadly the Effecta distributor passed away unexpectedly leaving me on my own to install the unit (well work with the manufacturer and plumber to get it installed). The manufacturer was amazingly helpful and spent a ton of time with me. One thing that frustrated the guy in Sweden was my insisting that I needed 160+ degree water to heat my house. He asked me to trust him and install a shunt (mixing valve) and let the boiler choose the right water temp via its heat curve and motorized/computer controlled shunt valve. I did as asked and have been amazed. I have been keeping my house at 72 degrees with water between 95 - 110 degrees, granted it has been warm. In Europe they do not run room thermostats, instead the run a constant stream of low temperature water - kind of like using cruise control on your car vs. stomping on the gas, coasting, then stomping again (i.e. using a thermostat to control high temp water). I've been meaning to write something up and post to see if others are doing this as well. I find that I am getting MUCH more mileage out of my tanks once they are up to temperature. Last year I was constantly throwing wood in and preoccupied with thinking about it. This year I forget to sometimes go start a fire and even have my controller set at 100 (this is when the controller give control back to my propane boiler).Not sure if you are doing this but if not you may want to give it a try, I am more than impreseed and certainly a believer.
I have baseboard hot water as well. My adventure started about 4 years ago when I installed a condensing propane boiler with an outdoor reset (that is a story for another day - it was never installed correctly and never did was it was designed to do). Basically I tried dropping my house temperature at night and the house never recovered. The problem was blamed on the outdoor reset so it was removed and I was running at 180 degree firing temp - I was convinced I needed high water temp. When I installed my wood boiler last year I worked off of this assumption and was always struggling to keep water temperature hot. Regarding your house, everything is variable as you know so it depends on heat loss, ceiling height, outdoor temp, etc. In my setup I use a heat curve the when it is -10 Degrees (negative 10) my water temp will be 140F, when it is 32F my water temp is 107F - curve is pretty much linear. The problem is if you try to drop temperature at night, the house will never recover with water temp that low. The solution is to run constant temperature - I am fortunate that my boiler also has an indoor sensor, when the Indoor Temperature varies more than 2 degrees the Indoor control overrides the outdoor sensor and increase flow temp until I am back in the target zone. This allows me to use a energy saver mode at night (to drop house temp), temporarily use hotter water to recover and then go back to low flow temp (with almost constant flow). Not sure if any of this helps or if it is too much info, feel free to ask any questions. I am no expert but learned a lot in my workings with Effecta. Can't say it will work for you but it has certainly worked for me and completely changed my opinion on low temperature flow. I have even learned how my propane boiler is supposed to work and reprogrammed it so that it is actually as efficient as it was designed to be
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I am loving my Effecta. I wouldn't worry about Recovery/Setback, I would run constant temperature with low flow temp. I believe the efficiency you will gain out of your storage will be far greater than anything you gain from setback. Keep in mind I am an amateur and only know enough to be dangerous
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Have fun! My brain is too full to even start thinking about the impact on smaller storage tank, I will leave that to NP Alaska. I am hoping to get a plumber here to continue my fun. Running such low flow temp created a problem with my DHW. I had to switch my DHW back to my propane boiler so when DHW calls for heat the circulator pumps suck it up and push it through my house. I will be tapping into my waterline (being pulled from the storage tank) and running it through a separate mixing valve, my wood boiler has the ability to control a separate "zone" for DHW so I can mix water at a higher temp to meet my DHW need separate from heating zones. This will run on a yet another circulator pump (not part of my heating manifold) so none of this hotter water will go into my heating zones. Does this make any financial sense, of course not. Will I be doing it, of courseYes, it does, thanks. In all likelihood his Effecta pellet option has similar reset controls for boiler water temp control integration with storage as yours does. For my pellet boiler, I can't see why it should ever charge the 119 gallons of storage at more than 30%, since it's just excess heat after the zones are satisfied, used to extend the run time of the boiler. Conversely, hot storage water should be used while the boiler is running, down at 30% again, to make room for more heat storage. I'm not sure if on/off is going to do the job, leading to more proportional temperature, constant flow, like you have, but there are also things like; figuring out what to do, is it worth it, doing it, and paying for it. It's still fun to think about though. In fact, I'm on my way to the basement now to tweak some pump settings.
. Maybe one day I will redo the whole system similar to a European approach, no circulator pumps, just 1 or 2 "radiator pumps" (just big circulator pumps) to run constant flow with the house as 1 or 2 zones with no thermostats - my propane boiler is designed to function this way as well but in the US we make it work via a Taco Switch. The possibilities of spending thousands to save pennies is endless.Sounds like you are already a believer in the low temp water. Not sure of your system set up but if you have a manual heating valve you can simply add a temperature sensor to one of your flow pipes and mix accordingly. When you do decide to go for an outdoor reset I suggest doing some research on what they use in Europe. My Effecta boiler is their latest model and has the control for the shunt/mixing valve built into the boiler controls. This is a fairly new model for them so I believe previous installs utilized (of the Effecta units) used an outdoor reset that was tied to some computerized control which then controlled the shunt/mixing valve. I am not sure if anyone in the US carries this kind of stuff. I believe it is commonly used in the greenhouse industry, where they need to run very low water temp for the radiant floors but I haven't been able to find anything for residential use.
Yes, hopefully. However, if you chose the panel radiators you could always say: "But Honey, it's European!"
Forgot t add you can go to the Effecta website and download the manual for their boiler. In the manual you will find a couple of pages that talk about the heat curve and you will find graphed examples of the curve.Have fun! My brain is too full to even start thinking about the impact on smaller storage tank, I will leave that to NP Alaska. I am hoping to get a plumber here to continue my fun. Running such low flow temp created a problem with my DHW. I had to switch my DHW back to my propane boiler so when DHW calls for heat the circulator pumps suck it up and push it through my house. I will be tapping into my waterline (being pulled from the storage tank) and running it through a separate mixing valve, my wood boiler has the ability to control a separate "zone" for DHW so I can mix water at a higher temp to meet my DHW need separate from heating zones. This will run on a yet another circulator pump (not part of my heating manifold) so none of this hotter water will go into my heating zones. Does this make any financial sense, of course not. Will I be doing it, of course
Sounds like you are already a believer in the low temp water. Not sure of your system set up but if you have a manual heating valve you can simply add a temperature sensor to one of your flow pipes and mix accordingly. When you do decide to go for an outdoor reset I suggest doing some research on what they use in Europe. My Effecta boiler is their latest model and has the control for the shunt/mixing valve built into the boiler controls. This is a fairly new model for them so I believe previous installs utilized (of the Effecta units) used an outdoor reset that was tied to some computerized control which then controlled the shunt/mixing valve. I am not sure if anyone in the US carries this kind of stuff. I believe it is commonly used in the greenhouse industry, where they need to run very low water temp for the radiant floors but I haven't been able to find anything for residential use.
It has been a fun learning experienceAgain, very cool, or shall I say, warm to the appropriate degree.
My initial thoughts were the delivery system as well, even did some reading on low temperature baseboard heaters. I spent a lot of time talking with Effecta and asked them about their distribution systems, yes they use radiant heat a lot more than we do but other than that nothing fancy/different. At the end of the day it is all about delivering BTU's to the house. When I thought about low temp baseboard heaters, they are really just baseboard heaters with more than 1 pipe delivering hot water, they are really just delivering additional BTU's. My decision was to stay with the standard baseboard and just have constant circulation deliver the extra BTU's. My understanding is that the norm in Europe is not to have room thermostats (and therefore circulator pumps) instead they have what they call radiator pumps that run water through the system 24x7. The idea is constant flow temp. I believe the challenge with running low storage temp is that it can quickly drop to the point where it cannot maintain the desired flow temp.
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