Large water storage

[alsekriver]

Does anyone know if a 1000 gallon or larger water storage tank is feasible to attach to an Orlan EkoLine wood boiler?

 

[sdrobertson]

Welcome to the forum and a short answer to your question is yes. Right now I using four 500 gallon propane tanks for a total volume of 2000 gallons(plus expansion tank and water in the boiler) with a EKO 60. Poke around the boiler room and utilize the "Search Forums" feature and you'll come up with many different ways boilers are installed from just the boiler w/no storage to large systems.

 

[goosegunner]

Welcome to the forum and a short answer to your question is yes. Right now I using four 500 gallon propane tanks for a total volume of 2000 gallons(plus expansion tank and water in the boiler) with a EKO 60. Poke around the boiler room and utilize the "Search Forums" feature and you'll come up with many different ways boilers are installed from just the boiler w/no storage to large systems.

2000 gallons!! How many winter days can you go with out a fire?

How long does it take to reheat those tanks after a few cold winter days?

gg

 

[WoodNotOil]

Many here have between 500-1000 gallons of heat storage and find that it gives them good flexibility about when they light their fires. The larger the storage, the more flexible it becomes. However, you also have to match the boiler size so that you can heat the storage in a reasonable amount of time. Your design will have to take your climate into account anyway and the whole equation starts with a really good heat loss calculation.

 

[Hunderliggur]

I have a Paxo60 and 2x500 (1000) gallons of storage. Works fine. There is a lot of discussion in various threads about storage design, pressurized and unpressurize. Nofossil has a great web site for more information.

 

[Frozen Canuck]

IIRC there was a post by Hansson about a person who had 10,000 gallons of storage added to their boiler, lots of flexibility in that volume of storage as to when you light the next fire. WNO makes a good point that you need to match the boiler to the storage. ie: no tiny boiler with large storage....kinda like putting a motorcycle motor in a Mac truck=bad match. You will want a larger boiler to heat the storage faster so you can rest/enjoy more. WNO is also correct that you need to start with a good heatloss calc for all the buildings you intend to heat so your system will be sized properly. IIRC there is a link to a heat loss calc in the stickies at the top of the boiler room page.

GG: Most Garns come with that about that volume of storage. You can ask the Garn owners here, however I don't think any of them would say they wish they had less storage. As far as reheat time goes that depends on the size of your boiler. ie: no toothpick/popsicle stick burners need apply. ;-)

 

[alsekriver]

sdrobertson..we have a Ekoline 60 and have a 2000 unpressurized tank that we would like to use for water storage. We were concerned that it might be too big. How long do you think it would take to heat up that much water and how long do you think it would retain enough heat to use?

 

[Hunderliggur]

2000 gallons is 16,000BTU/degree F rise. If you are looking at a 100F rise (60 to 160), then you have potentially 1,600,000 BTUs. To make the math simple, a 160,000BTU furnance would take 10 hours to raise the temp with no other losses or usage. If you have radiant floors you have usable heat to about 100F. You will probably be working in a 80 degree rise scenario (100 to 180) so you have about 1.2M BTUs to use. What is the heating requirements for your house? What kind of heating system? Do you use it hot hot water also? You first calcualation should be your load requirements (BTU/day) then you will have an idea of what storage will do for you.

I am actually burning a fire today for the first time in two weeks. It got a little chilly in the house and I have some scraps I want to clean up anyway.

 

[sdrobertson]

sdrobertson..we have a Ekoline 60 and have a 2000 unpressurized tank that we would like to use for water storage. We were concerned that it might be too big. How long do you think it would take to heat up that much water and how long do you think it would retain enough heat to use?

There is allot of variables to all the answers I've got for you. First a little background on my schedule...I work 12 hour shifts in a rotating schedule so most of the time I work two on and then two off. Every other weekend I either have three days off, or I have to work three days in a row. On my work days I'm gone for about 14 hours so on those days I don't want to spend it burning. I usually figure two days of burning to recharge my storage. For example last week I fired the boiler on Tuesday afternoon after giving it a really good cleaning and adding chain turbulators. I ran two loads of wood through it and then I relit the boiler on Wednesday. I don't remember how many loads I went through but I loaded it the last time around 6ish at night. On Thursday I relite and burned till the early afternoon. My storage was almost totally depleted and I started out at about 95 degrees. When I shut the boiler down on Thursday I was at 195 at the top, 193 in the middle and 180 at the bottom. A week later (today) I'm still at 183 at the top, 145 in the middle and 100 at the bottom. How many days also depends on the present weather (as how much demand the house calls for during the burn) and mostly it depends on what wood I'm burning. Its taken me three years to get it through my really thick skull that I don't know crap about dry wood. Even last year when I thought I was doing good on my moisture level, it was still to wet and with wood that is not dry enough, you spend allot of the BTU's trying to get the boiler producing like it should. Most of the year I was able to go the three days that I had to work totally off the storage. I'm going to redo the lines going to my house this year as I'm loosing allot of heat through those. As far as retaining the heat, this is totally dependent on how well its insulated. I stood the tanks on end and built a box around the four tanks. I used blown-in cellous and I have 14 inches on the sides (Mostly its allot more than 14" as the tanks are round but the minimum is 14") and 3 feet of cellous on the top. On top of that I placed about another 3 foot of Styrofoam balls (concrete block filler) as they are excellent insulation, but can't take 190 degree temps. This is all in a uninsulated polebarn and I get no frost melt on the roof above the storage. Its impossible to eliminate all the heat lose from the storage, so it would be better to have it in the living space but I didn't have room for this. I also in no way could I have ever convinced the wife that the boiler could be in the house so I do probably burn a little more wood because of its location, but I have a happy wife. All the other posters have excellent advice on doing a heat load calculation but I don't see any problem with that size storage married with a EKO 60. The biggest thing you have to figure out is the insulation and how you want to burn the boiler. My father has 2000 gallons of pressurized storage also and he has a EKO 80. He burns a fire every day as he is retired and around the house most of the time and this works well for him, but I burn allot harder with higher stack temps to produce more BTU's quicker.