Hi all-- still looking into all this, pretty sure that a gasifier furnace is in my future, perhaps (most likely) an Econoburn.
I still need to plan the storage, etc., and am looking into a variety of options, here on Hearth and elsewhere.
I got to thinking- but don't quite have the personal engineering/ math horsepower to really get down to the details- about whether it'd be possible to rig the boiler and storage in a set-up where it's a gravity feed loop. The boiler would be in the cellar. Econoburns have fairly large 2 inch fittings, which'd flow well. I was thinking of a "2-tank" vertically-staged gravity storage, with a smaller sealed upper tank in the 100+/- gallon range being installed in a first-floor large walk-in closet that's pretty much dead center in the house (thus radiation from this tank would help warm everything around it. Then that tank's lower outlet would connect into the upper fitting of a second, larger tank down in the cellar, and the lower fitting of that larger cellar tank would return to the boiler's cold return. Use large-diameter oxygen-barrier PEX for the interconnections. Then, of course, I'd need a second, separate loop for the heat exchange to the living space
I realize I'd still need some sort of thermostatic management for the boiler-tank loop so that the boiler was running at/near operating temp before circulation in the gravity loop started.
Any chance this line of thinking has merit? Feedback and suggestions most welcome!
Thanks
Trevor
I still need to plan the storage, etc., and am looking into a variety of options, here on Hearth and elsewhere.
I got to thinking- but don't quite have the personal engineering/ math horsepower to really get down to the details- about whether it'd be possible to rig the boiler and storage in a set-up where it's a gravity feed loop. The boiler would be in the cellar. Econoburns have fairly large 2 inch fittings, which'd flow well. I was thinking of a "2-tank" vertically-staged gravity storage, with a smaller sealed upper tank in the 100+/- gallon range being installed in a first-floor large walk-in closet that's pretty much dead center in the house (thus radiation from this tank would help warm everything around it. Then that tank's lower outlet would connect into the upper fitting of a second, larger tank down in the cellar, and the lower fitting of that larger cellar tank would return to the boiler's cold return. Use large-diameter oxygen-barrier PEX for the interconnections. Then, of course, I'd need a second, separate loop for the heat exchange to the living space
I realize I'd still need some sort of thermostatic management for the boiler-tank loop so that the boiler was running at/near operating temp before circulation in the gravity loop started.
Any chance this line of thinking has merit? Feedback and suggestions most welcome!
Thanks
Trevor
