I have a 20cu ft chest freezer from the 70's available for free. Doing the math, it should hold about 150 gallons of water. I was thinking I could line it on the cheap and have a pre-made unpressurized insulated storage all ready for me.
Goal: minimum of 8 hour "run time" with my Memco MW100 burning pine, willow and similar wood. From my research, it appears that with a little bit of modification I should be able to get 4 hours burn time, so I would need 4 hours of heat on storage during the coldest part of the month.
First question: is a chest freezer a good idea to use as storage?
*Second question: is 150 gallons "enough" storage?
*To answer the second question, here's a bit of data: My house is 1200sq ft, I live in Central Maine. We use 650 gallons of oil/yr to heat our house via baseboard and dhw. Our system's max draw on baseboard is 40,000btu/hr right now. Our baseboard circ pumps average 8 hours of run time/day in January. This means we are consuming 13,000btu/hr every hour during the coldest month of the year.
**My math:
Running my tank 150/190 at 150 gallons would give me ~50,000btu/hr of storage. At 13,0000btu draw, that would be just under 4 hours. So most of the winter I would be fine, and on the coldest of cold days I would need to load my boiler more often or just let the oil kick in and keep the house warm.
Goal: minimum of 8 hour "run time" with my Memco MW100 burning pine, willow and similar wood. From my research, it appears that with a little bit of modification I should be able to get 4 hours burn time, so I would need 4 hours of heat on storage during the coldest part of the month.
First question: is a chest freezer a good idea to use as storage?
*Second question: is 150 gallons "enough" storage?
*To answer the second question, here's a bit of data: My house is 1200sq ft, I live in Central Maine. We use 650 gallons of oil/yr to heat our house via baseboard and dhw. Our system's max draw on baseboard is 40,000btu/hr right now. Our baseboard circ pumps average 8 hours of run time/day in January. This means we are consuming 13,000btu/hr every hour during the coldest month of the year.
**My math:
Running my tank 150/190 at 150 gallons would give me ~50,000btu/hr of storage. At 13,0000btu draw, that would be just under 4 hours. So most of the winter I would be fine, and on the coldest of cold days I would need to load my boiler more often or just let the oil kick in and keep the house warm.