Special needs project help and info needed....

[brewmaster15]

Hi all,
I'm a newbie in this forum and really have no clue when it comes to boilers..which is why I am here! I run a large tropical fish forum, and keep a large fishroom where I have approximately 2000-3000 gals of water in multiple fish tanks.. I need to keep this water and room heated in the 82-86F range year round.... I also need to be able to heat new cold water relatively fast.... I'm going to be rebuilding this fishroom and want to consider alternative ways of heating the room and the water in it... right now I use electric heaters in the tanks and in the winter I suppliment the room heat with a woodstove.

I live in The Northeast USA-CT..and the electric bills are killing me here...

If any of you Boiler experts could suggest alternative ways to heat this water and/or room....I would greatly appreciate your help and advice.... The new room is probably going to be no more than 20FtX 20 feet....

Thanks in advice,
al

 

[Jersey Bill]

A wood boiler with a storage tank and a fan-coil unit is the most streight-forward way to heat the room. A small heat exchanger will heat all the water that you need to.
Heating the fish tanks will be more difficult. Right now your electric heaters all have individual controls for each individual fish tank. In the hydronic world, this would translate to a piping distribution system with individual thermostats and zone valves for each tank. This is assuming that each tank has its own filter and is isolated from the other tanks.
If there is a common filter, then the common water going to all the tanks can be heated with another heat exchanger.

cheers

 

[brewmaster15]

Hi Bill,
Thanks so much for the info.... at this point the tanks are all separate...but in the future construction..I'm looking at breaking it up into 4-5 systems each of about 500-600 gallons... traditionally these types of systems are each heated by one submerged electric heater in a sump/filter.... If I was go with something as you suggest....could I thermostatly control 7-8 "zones" independently and the general room heat?

Thanks,
al

 

[BrownianHeatingTech]

Thanks so much for the info.... at this point the tanks are all separate...but in the future construction..I'm looking at breaking it up into 4-5 systems each of about 500-600 gallons... traditionally these types of systems are each heated by one submerged electric heater in a sump/filter.... If I was go with something as you suggest....could I thermostatly control 7-8 "zones" independently and the general room heat?

Yup, that would be fairly straightforward.

Probably do a heat exchanger on each filter/pump system. Depending upon the specifics, the control would either be an immersed probe in the tank, or in the filter piping.

When you talk about heating "new cold water relatively fast," I assume you are referring to pre-heating water that you are using to fill/top off a tank? What sort of flow rate, and what temperature does it need to be?

Joe