Indirect Hot water tank

dlabrie · Jan 12, 2005

I am having an outdoor wood furnace installed. It will run a HW loop to my existing FHW system, keeping it up to temp. I want to run a zone to a DHW storage tank. The installer can get a Vaughn 35 gallon, stone lined, system for $800. Home Depot has an Amtrol 41 gallon, DH7P series, system with a circulator for $819. The installer said he would install either, but wouldn't warranty the Amtrol. The Vaughn comes with a 5 year warranty and we would use an existing Taco circulator. The Amtrol, Boilermate comes with a lifetime warranty and its own circulator.

Has anyone had any experience with the Amtrol Boilermate or the Vaughn systems?

Thanks,

Robert_in_NY · Jan 12, 2005

We have a Boilermate that we are putting in my house. Have hooked the zone up to but have not wired it in yet but it is a fairly simple project. I do not know anyone around here that has one and I don't think our plumbing supplier sells too many of them as they did not know how to answer a lot of questions we had before we bought ours. They are a big outfit with 3-4 stores in WNY and are know their stuff. So we kind of knew we were taking a chance on the boilermate when they did not know much about it other then reading the literature. But if it performs like they say then we are going to like it.

My problem with your install is this, you have an outdoor furnace so you need to put wood in it to run. Why run a hot water tank of this system? You will have to keep wood in that furnace year round to keep hot water. If you had a gas boiler then it is a different story. The boilermate is supposed to help the gas boilers longevity by keeping it running year round instead of shutting down for long periods of time. It is suppose to be more efficient also as we have a 96% efficient boiler and most gas hot water tanks are no where near that and the ones that do come close cost a lot and don't have a lifetime warranty.

r0GuE · Jan 13, 2005

I have indirect hot water heating. All I can say is,.. what's to warrantee? A tank, some pipe,..ok so there's a circulator. If they put in a B&G (which I would insist on) you'll have no problems for well over 5 years. If they put in a little ceramic job, I dunno.

Hot water off a wood stove sounds iffy to me as well... but that's not what you asked. Go with the cheap one. And get a big big tank. Recovery is slower than you think.

Varmintmist · Jan 13, 2005

I heat my DHW with my outdoor wood burner.

First question. Why would you get some special tank for your DHW??

I have a 80 gal electric hot water tank, GE, bought it at Lowes for around 275, and a 4x8 inch heat exchanger. I heat with the wood in the winter and use the electric in the summer. Its a matter of shutting the mixing valve and cutting in the breaker. There are no circulation pumps for the DWH, the heat exchanger is outside the HWT and convection current moves the water. Recovery doesnt take any longer on the wood burner than the electric. It seems shorter in fact, probably because the water from the burner is 180-190 at all times.

Panache · Jan 13, 2005

dlabrie · Jan 13, 2005

Re: Indirect Hot water tank

 ( ( DHW? ) )
Domestic Hot Water

 ( ( Why run a hot water tank of this system ) )

 ( ( First question. Why would you get some special tank for your DHW??) )

I have an oil, FHW system in the house. I currently get my hot water from a DHW coil in this system. I could just use the Wood furnace to circulate the 185 degree water through my oil system and be done with it. However the coil is old and should be replaced and the oil furnace is 32 years old and not very efficient. When I replace it in the future, I will install a boiler without a domestic coil and use theBoilermate
that I plan to install now. If I already had an electric water heater, I would just use a heat exchanger and a tempering valve to keep the DHW up to temp. The boilermates are supposed to be very efficient at keeping water hot.

I currently have an indoor wood boiler linked to my oil system, but that too is 32 years old and not very efficient. So I am taking it out of the house and replacing it with a
Central Boiler
Wood Furnace. This will put the mess and fire hazard 100 feet away from my house. The furnace holds 350 gallons of water and will be linked to my oil system via insulated, underground lines. The wood furnace can be set to maintain the water at whatever temp. you set it at . The circulator at the wood furnace will circulate continuously to keep the oil furnace at temp. The house has 3 zones and will call for heat as needed. A 4th, priority zone will be set up for the boiler mate. The Boilermate has an aquastat with a digital readout. You can set your DHW temp with the push of a button. Once the system is together, I plan to shut off the oil furnace, and just use wood. I cut my own wood for free so I will only use oil if I go away and turn the furnace back on. I will also have a way to unplug the system from the electric grid and plug the system into my generator as a backup.

Folks that I know with a similar setup, load the stove twice a day in the coldest temps,around -20, once a day when the temp is around freezing and once every 3 days in the summer to keep the DHW hot.

Varmintmist · Jan 13, 2005

Or you could look at the Central Boiler dual fuel units. And the Hydrofire by Central Boiler Stainless Steel. www.hydro-fire.com

I have one and am coming from a position of been there. I was not blowing sunshine when I asked the question. /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif

Mine is a dual fuel Hydrofire, wood over oil. I have 3 zones and the heat exchanger for the DHW. 2 in the concrete floor, radient heat, 1 forced hot air for the upstairs, wanted ductwork for AC if I want it later.

The furnace heats to 190 and the damper shuts, it opens at 180 and burns to 190. In the dual fuel it will stay open until the water temp gets to 152 then the damper shuts and the fuel oil will keep the temp between 152 and 160.

You control the temp by the thermostat which will send hot water through your system until it reaches X temp. You do not control the temp of the furnace. Just your zones.

Your neighbors are exactly right on line with the burn times I have had. Real cold (0 +-), 2 times a day 40-50 once every day and a half. The warmer it is the less you fill it.

If you are going to replace the oil burner anyway, you might want to think about a dual fuel unit. It is real nice to start the fire also. Put wood in, close door, turn to oil backup, turn power on, walk away. I like that in a woodburner /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif so does the wife.

thcri · Jan 13, 2005

We install a lot of the Boiler Mates. Have had no problems with any of them yet. My house has one of the competitors and no problems with it either. There really isn't much that can go wrong with them. 40 gals unless you are using it totally for storage is a bit small. Typically in houses such as mine we use the 80 gal. Found some houses where even the 60 won't keep up with a whirlpool type tub.

murph

dlabrie · Jan 14, 2005

Murph,
Now you have me worried. The installer and others I have talked to said I would have more DHW than I could ever use.
Our usage consists of showers, dishwasher and washing machine. I thought I had it all figured out, now, I am not sure.

Varmintmist,
I thought about the dual fuel option, It really looks like a great Idea but I like the idea of having a separate oil unit in the house, in case something goes wrong with the outdoor furnace. Also for resale value, some folks don't want to be bothered by wood and I feel you loose efficiency mixing the 2 together.

mwechtal · Jan 14, 2005

David,
OK, we have a natural gas fired hot water baseboard system, with an indirect hot water tank. I don't remember the brand, and the tank is no more than 40 gallons. The week it was installed I was taking a shower, but I didn't realize my wife had started washing clothes. Meanwhile she started the dishwasher. I never noticed a temperature change even though the pressure was down a bit. I'm quite sure that we can run the well dry before we will run out of hot water.

BTW yes, My wife can be a bit wicked, and I think she did that on purpose, but I love her anyway. /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif

Mike

dlabrie · Jan 14, 2005

Mike,

Thanks so much for your comment. This is what I had heard. I was told I couldn't use enough hot water to run it out. My oil furnace is rated for 140,000 BTUs and the new wood furnace is rated at 200,000 BTUs.

Right now with just the DHW coil in the oil furnace, I can only use 1 hot water device at a time. If someone turns the hot water on at a faucet while you are in the shower /forums/images/graemlins/shocked.gif instant ice water.

Varmintmist · Jan 14, 2005

Just a thought but the hot water problem might be distribution. If that is the case then a new heater of any type will not help.

If you are 1/2 in all through the house then your problem is moving the volume of hot water, not the temp. Unless your wife gets cold when she turns on the sink while you are in the shower, the problem is in the pipes, not the heater. If you run out of hot in the whole house quickly, then it is the heating unit.

Just a thought, since you are doing major plumbing a few lenths of 3/4th might not be a bad idea.
............................

I dont think the oil is very efficent in the wood furnace either, but that is a guess. It has probably only run on oil for 4-5 days in the last 2 winters and I used a lot more HH oil in the tractor than I did in the burner to even guess how much oil it would burn if it ran 100% on oil.

Wood or duel, I think you will like the OD wood furnace. You can put in pretty much anything you can fit through the door size wise. Problem with that is its hard to pack with full sized rounds. Ill half some 15-18 in diam stuff if I am in the mood, and I find that I like to keep the logs at around 15-18 inches long. Just makes it eaiser to handle. I fill the back of the burner then put another rank towards the door. Smaller stuff, up to 6 in diameter Ill cut almost the lenth of the firebox.

Like any other woodburner your oaks burn best and longest. You can burn anything you want in the thing though. I toss some pine in in the morning because the burner wont work as hard in the "heat" of the day and I have some cut. I toss in odd shaped stuff in during the day to.

A lot of people dont like them because of the smoke. Well, if you burn seasoned dry wood, they dont smoke that much. If you burn green wet wood, which you can do, it will float a cloud across the ground. It will smoke the most just after you load it while it burns off the moisture. Thats pretty apparent, but some folks dont get that.

Mine is only about 30 feet off of the house. I made SURE which way the wind blew 99.9% of the time before I chose the spot. Even 100 feet away, make sure the wind doesnt blow towards the house. Remember the stack is only about 10 feet off the ground. On a wet day the smoke wants to hug the ground and if the wind is blowing towards the house, you are going to smell it.

Sounds like you thought out what you want and picked it. You will like the burner. /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif

dlabrie · Jan 14, 2005

I have definitly chosen a spot upwind from the house for the furnace. I can't wait to get started putting it all together.

I went to see a Central Boiler set up not far from here. The 84 yeard old farmer had been using a Taylor water stove for the past 12 years. It started to leak, so he got a Central Boiler last year. He has the CL5648 model. He heats a huge, old, drafty, farm house with it. The old house had a forced hot air system in it. He added 3 FHW, base board, zones. So with this wood furnace, he heats 3 FWH zones, the old FHA system and his domestic water. He has 1 1/4" PEX lines comming into a manifold that feed the system. It works slicker than anything I have seen.

thcri · Jan 15, 2005

( Murph,
Now you have me worried. The installer and others I have talked to said I would have more DHW than I could ever use.
Our usage consists of showers, dishwasher and washing machine. I thought I had it all figured out, now, I am not sure.

Varmintmist,

My telling you to go higher is two fold. I will use the 60 gal on city water. Well water comes in so much colder and takes more time to heat up. Your outdoor wood boiler may not be as fast as a regular boiler, but at times maybe faster. With a wood boiler you do need a dump zone for the times nothing is calling for heat and maybe your hot water tank can take some of that extra up. Now if your using this a a pre-storage to your existing hot water heater then it really doesn't matter. But you might as well get as much out of the wood burner as you can.

murph
I thought about the dual fuel option, It really looks like a great Idea but I like the idea of having a separate oil unit in the house, in case something goes wrong with the outdoor furnace. Also for resale value, some folks don't want to be bothered by wood and I feel you loose efficiency mixing the 2 together.

)

tc18ny · Jan 18, 2005

I just installed a Crown 26 gallon indirect. I run it off my Peerless Pinnacle propane fired boiler as a zone. It works great other than my wife sometimes like to take showers for 20 minutes and she does run out of hot water. If I had put in a 40 gallon, I could run hot water for probably 30 to 40 minutes straight. Other than that, it performes flawlessly. The recovery rate is about 1/3 that of our old standard water heater. One very important thing to remember is that if you use a zone valve from your boiler water, MAKE SURE it is a high flow valve. Your indirect instructions should state the minimum flow rate in GPM. Most standard Honeywell or Taco zone valves are only 2 or 3 GPM. Ball valves work the best.
Dave

dlabrie · Jan 18, 2005

( if you use a zone valve from your boiler water, MAKE SURE it is a high flow valve. )

The Boilermate WH-7P, Is 41 gallons and comes with its own circulator. It will be desiginated as the primary circulator on the heating system. The tank will be right next to the oil boiler and connected with either 3/4 inch copper or 1" PEX.

CTyler · Jan 18, 2005

( I have an oil, FHW system in the house. )

Friggen Hot Water?

How often do you have to empty the ashes on these outdoor boilers?

dlabrie · Jan 18, 2005

( How often do you have to empty the ashes on these outdoor boilers?)

I have a small indoor wood boiler and I empty it about once a month. I just push the hot coals to one side and shovel the ash out. From what I have seen, the new Central Boiler I am going to install will burn more efficiently so I would imagine it need it less often.

What do you say, Varmintmist?