Hey guys, I just got my boiler up and running this year and have had some good and bad experience with it so I am looking for some help. Being in an area with no natural gas (yet, still hoping it will come soon) I put in a pellet stove 3 years ago (heatilator ps50) in my 2100sq/ft house that has pretty good insulation, got by on just that for 2 years but couldn't take the cold in the house some time.
Over the summer I began looking into boilers, I am pretty hard-headed so I decided to build one myself. Since then I have been on a steep learning curve, I just hope to one day be happy with it. With outside temps in the 30's or so, I am. A load of wood will last 14+ hours then but now with this single digit stuff it is not very pleasing. I have been burning mostly ash which has been down and cut for a few years, some more ash that is more recently cut.
The boiler holds 300 gallons of water, dimensions are 3 feet wide, 4 feet deep and 5 tall. The fire box is 24 inches wide, 27 inches high and 27 deep with another i think 15 inch chamber behind the fire box to the area where the chimney pipe is which I am now thinking is part of my problem. It has 2 layers of R-13 fiberglass insulation and metal siding. When I built the boiler I put in refractory bricks on the sides and a steel plate on top to keep the flames from directly contacting the metal but I removed that so I could get more room inside the fire box. It is made from 1/8 inch steel plate, the door is spaced 8 inches out from the front of the fire box and is made with 1/4. To control the temp of the water I have a 140cfm blower with a block off valve and a controller that turns it off and on, when off a rubber flap covers the opening shutting down any air flow into the fire.
For my lines I have 1 inch pex wrapped and buried inside 6 inch corrugated drain pipe(without holes) which run about 60 feet, 3 feet under the ground, a taco WB pump and a heat exchanger in my furnace which brings me to another question. For my heat, I have 2 zones, upstairs and downstairs. I almost never have the upstairs on just because heat rising thru the staircase makes it hot up there very easily. My thermostats have settings for COOL, OFF and HEAT on one switch and the fan switch have ON and AUTO. Is there a different thermostat that I could use that would turn the furnace blower off and on at a set temp? Not having to run my blower all the time would be nice. So far to regulate the temp inside my house I have been changing the temp of the water.
One problem that I can think of is my chimney size, I did not do much reading into properly sizing that. I stupidly assumed that the blower would regulate it well enough. I used 4 inch OD 1/4 wall DOM and 5 feet of double wall 4 inch chimney pipe from there which melted the aluminum cap on top. Now I am thinking that I should upsize the chimney to 8 inch but would that really make all the difference in my wood consumption? To give you an idea I think I burned a face cord of good seasoned stuff in 8 days or so with high temps in the 30's which was insane to me after thinking that I may need at most 12 cords a year. Right now I fear that I have way too much heat just flying out the chimney.
A thought that I have is to use a 8 inch steel pipe, maybe 2 feet in length to get from the fire box thru to the outside of the water jacket then to stainless chimney pipe. Inside that steel what about welding plates on either end and running 7 smaller tubes inside it with the exhaust running thru that and the pipe drilled to be filled with water just like how any steam boiler runs?
Over the summer I began looking into boilers, I am pretty hard-headed so I decided to build one myself. Since then I have been on a steep learning curve, I just hope to one day be happy with it. With outside temps in the 30's or so, I am. A load of wood will last 14+ hours then but now with this single digit stuff it is not very pleasing. I have been burning mostly ash which has been down and cut for a few years, some more ash that is more recently cut.
The boiler holds 300 gallons of water, dimensions are 3 feet wide, 4 feet deep and 5 tall. The fire box is 24 inches wide, 27 inches high and 27 deep with another i think 15 inch chamber behind the fire box to the area where the chimney pipe is which I am now thinking is part of my problem. It has 2 layers of R-13 fiberglass insulation and metal siding. When I built the boiler I put in refractory bricks on the sides and a steel plate on top to keep the flames from directly contacting the metal but I removed that so I could get more room inside the fire box. It is made from 1/8 inch steel plate, the door is spaced 8 inches out from the front of the fire box and is made with 1/4. To control the temp of the water I have a 140cfm blower with a block off valve and a controller that turns it off and on, when off a rubber flap covers the opening shutting down any air flow into the fire.
For my lines I have 1 inch pex wrapped and buried inside 6 inch corrugated drain pipe(without holes) which run about 60 feet, 3 feet under the ground, a taco WB pump and a heat exchanger in my furnace which brings me to another question. For my heat, I have 2 zones, upstairs and downstairs. I almost never have the upstairs on just because heat rising thru the staircase makes it hot up there very easily. My thermostats have settings for COOL, OFF and HEAT on one switch and the fan switch have ON and AUTO. Is there a different thermostat that I could use that would turn the furnace blower off and on at a set temp? Not having to run my blower all the time would be nice. So far to regulate the temp inside my house I have been changing the temp of the water.
One problem that I can think of is my chimney size, I did not do much reading into properly sizing that. I stupidly assumed that the blower would regulate it well enough. I used 4 inch OD 1/4 wall DOM and 5 feet of double wall 4 inch chimney pipe from there which melted the aluminum cap on top. Now I am thinking that I should upsize the chimney to 8 inch but would that really make all the difference in my wood consumption? To give you an idea I think I burned a face cord of good seasoned stuff in 8 days or so with high temps in the 30's which was insane to me after thinking that I may need at most 12 cords a year. Right now I fear that I have way too much heat just flying out the chimney.
A thought that I have is to use a 8 inch steel pipe, maybe 2 feet in length to get from the fire box thru to the outside of the water jacket then to stainless chimney pipe. Inside that steel what about welding plates on either end and running 7 smaller tubes inside it with the exhaust running thru that and the pipe drilled to be filled with water just like how any steam boiler runs?
