Hi, I just fired it up today around 4 pm so far it is running great. I did use a HX because I may drain the maxim after I use up my pellets and use up my full tank of oil and the 300 gallons of kerosene I got free from work. I am an airplane mechanic and when ever we have to drain a fuel tank I have my 5 gal cans ready to bring some home.
I did the maxim because I need to replace my furnace some day soon, every year when they come to clean it they tell me "you might have one year left before it goes", but for a 25+ year old furnace I can't complain. the quote I got from my oil company was for $8,200, so I looked for alternatives and ended up buying a maxim. The stove, HX, and all the plumbing will be a little over 9k but I will save money on pellets.
so far I have $7,200 maxim m-175, 1k for 8 of thermo, $200 for the trench, $200 to get the stove delivered, $175 for the HX (20 plate), $25 for the propane tank purge an fill (should last all season), and a couple hundred more in black iron pipe, (2) taco 007 pumps, a new aquastat for my furnace (couldn't believe it was the same type in HD as I had on my furnace, but the old one only went down to 160 F this one does 140 F), 300' of 1" barrier pex ( which HD does not stock, but had on the shelf with a tag that said it was 3/4" so that is what I paid for), and many full flow shut off valves in 1", 3/4", and one 1/2" for the fill point for the maxim loop, all from HD.
It will be hard to figure the exact price for the maxim install because I also split the one 3/4" loop in my house into 3 zones. I did this by cutting out much of the copper under the floor and replacing it with 3/4" barrier pex bought last year. I love sharkbites!
these make the pex connections so easy and I can change the routing any time I want. I put a shut off at each end of each zone so If I have to change the furnace plumbing I can leave the baseboards pressurized and not have to bleed much afterward. I was going to do this anyway, as it was recommended by the oil company as a way to get the temp up in my kitchen which is always cold. (lets see a 12x1 room and only 9 feet of baseboard, I wonder why it's always cold in here)
the thermo needs a large turn, it came home on top of the rails of my ford ranger pickup bed and wanted to spring out past that when untied. to make the rise up to the maxim I had to dig down almost 5' and the thermo still came up at an angle, the rest of the trench was about 2' deep.
because I have an old house with a stone foundation/ crawlspace the penetration was easy. there is a window that was missing out of the crawlspace when I bought the house and I just covered it instead of replacing it. so I pulled some of the stones away from the bottom of the window and ran the thermo in there, whenever it warms up enough again I will pour a new window sill and replace the window. but for now the pipe is about 1' deep at the penetration. I bought a little more thermo than I needed it runs about 9 feet into my crawlspace, but I was very glad I had extra when the guy with the excavator hit my old septic tank and had to run the trench past where I had indicated a turn should be.
I set my maxim up with a HX just like CB says in thier manual, I don't think there is a way to run the whole system off of only one circulator like I was trying to do when I first posted. I also was going to run antifreeze in my maxim so I could just shut it off when I ran out of pellets or had a power failure (very common in this part of town), but after pricing 40 gal of antifreeze at 11.59 a gal I bought a homelite 3500 generator instead for the same money.
Future plans: 300 or so gallons of unpressurized storage in 55 gal plastic(?) drums (don't know if they can take the heat) and a drain back solar system to boost the storage.
: a sidearm HX to preheat my hot water before my paloma tankless hot water heater.
My sister has a CB OWB that is heating her two family house in lake placid, NY, she has an open system with two zones and they only have to fire it once a day all winter (which is 6 months a year) she has had this for two years now and thinks I am crazy to run a HX.
josh
