I'm converted and need some help.

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Bowow

Member
Nov 27, 2013
76
Chbg pa
I've been on the wood stoe side but was looking for something better soooo I Just bought an Earth woodsman 400 this past week for my 2000 sq ft raised rancher with an insulated basement. Stove is set on pad 80ft from its entrance into basement utility room. I have hot water baseboard heat. So that's my plan for heat. My current hot water heater/furnace is a trinity 150 combi which is an instant heater. It does the hot water and also the baseboard heat. I plan to run the pex lines into a 40 plate heat exchanger and then thru the propane furnace. My plumber says the wood boiler won't be able to do the domestic water without a holding tank anyone have experience or know if he's right. Sorry long post
 
A little more detail would be good but I think your plumber is on the rite track. I guess hot water on demand from wood is doable but not realistic. A storage tank is needed because to heating water on demand requires lots of BTU's in a short amount of time and then no BTU's when the load had been satisfied and thats just not the way wood heat works.

edit: I guess if your boiler is big enough, the temp is high enough and the load is sizes rite it would work.
 
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The stove is capable of 250 k Btus but I know that's burning at perfect conditions. If I hooked into feed line right before the furnace ( with some temp adjustments so propane doesn't kick on) the hot water from stove goes into another heat exchanger within the furnace and that's what makes my domestic hot water when needed. If my stove is running at 170 lets just say by time it gets to furnace it will be 160, that's what my propane furnace is set on make the hot water to a steady 125 degrees.
 
The Earth Woodsman website gives very little information about this stove. It would have been good for you to ask questions before you bought the stove because you likely would have learned a lot to help you make the wisest choice. The website states this about the stove: it is "a firebox surrounded by water" and "12 - 18 hour burns" and two loadings per day in "average conditions." At delivered heat of 100,000 btuh, for two burns per day in a best case scenario you would need to burn about 400-600 lbs of wood per day. And if you would burn less than well seasoned wood, that could double, and amount to more than one cord per week.

The website shows 1" connection ports and also recommends 1" pex lines to and from the stove. Based on installation on a pad 80' feet from the house, meaning 160' round trip 1" pex, you are going to need some very expert installation advice to make sure this stove can deliver the heat you need. 1" pex has an inside diameter of about 0.862". The pressure loss in this length of pipe plus pressure loss from turns, fittings, and the heat exchanger will be large as gpm rises past 6 gpm. System design will be critical in achieving the heat plus dhw you want to be able to realize from this stove.
 
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