Curious as to why my Heatmor CSS200 OWB cools down so fast

[HavinFun]

Hello,
I’ve been using the boiler for 4 years, and it came with the house when I bought it. Has been great, saves me $1k a month on oil costs for my 3k square foot home in winter in Southern NH. I replaced the 100’ run of home made insulated underground piping with factory insulated PEX piping and it hugely improved the temperature of the water going to heat exchanger and I use less wood. If my fire goes out at 1-2am, the boiler water temp at noon is 80-100 degrees F. Boiler holds 114 gallons of water. My friend with a CB OWB with 192 gallons of water and under same weather conditions has hot water for much longer but her house is smaller. I think her indoor oil boiler might be reverse heating the OWB water as she doesn’t have to change water routing via valves when switching to oil heat, unless her new oil boiler is setup with some type of zone valves from OWB water? Also, her oil boiler comes on automatically if temp gets low (not sure if from low oil boiler water temp or house air temp). I re-insulated my OWB two years ago and snow will stay on roof of boiler while it is at full heat. More info available to troubleshoot. Thanks.

 

[salecker]

Add some storage for a more efficient system that you can decide when to fire the boiler.

 

[HavinFun]

Salecker,
Thanks. I’ll look up how to do that.

 

[brenndatomu]

Yeah I bet there is a difference in the way the 2 are plumbed up.
Do both systems leave the circ pump(s) run 24/7?
Some boilers have an onboard tank circ pump too...keep the water from stratifying, which can happen even with the circ pump to/from the house running.

 

[HavinFun]

My system has the pump by on the OWB going 24/7. When I use it I turn the oil boiler off, but throw a switch in the basement that turns the indoor circulator pump on 24/7. The water in the oil boiler constantly circulates through the heat exchanger and goes to the heating zone via zone valves controlled by thermostats. The Taco zone valves for first and second floors are set to open as they both need to be replaced .The house generally stays at 68-72 degrees because of this, which I’m good with. I do have new zone valves, but will leave setup as is for now.
My friend’s oil boiler is brand new, and I’m not sure the fellow who installed and plumbed it was 100% on top of things. He installed an external temp probe to the outside of the PEX pipe in the basement instead of to a brass/copper fitting and it did not read right. He had to come back and move it and this mistake (?) makes me think he is not too familiar on plumbing an OWB into an oil boiler, which leads to my other suspicions of her system.

 

[salecker]

My oil boiler is on the house side of my heat ex-changer
I have an dual position aquastat on the feed pipe to my storage. When the water on my boiler side drops below 100 F the aquastat switches from the pump that feeds the heat ex-changer to the oil fired boiler.
The oil fired boiler, underground lines and house rads all have glycol in them