Above my wood stove I have an open cieling. There are 3-4 bays to work with, each with 20' or so of length. I want to figure out a way to utilize the heat off the wood stove to warm water in some sort of plumbing overhead. I think the cost of the appropriate copper would be a little prohibitive. I don't fabricate with metal, but a pressurised reservior suspended between the floor joists might be an idea. If the stove temp is up to 700° from time to time, I wonder if PEX would work 6' above the stove, or are there better ideas? Best, Sca
Pex, no...max working temp is 200*...something like this has to be built to be fool proof, which will get expensive. Not sure how much hot water you use, but it is generally not that expensive to make, so unless you use a ton, building a preheater properly will never pay off.
Kinda what I thought about PEX. I need only a few gallons....enough for a short warmish shower. Not interested in 52° water! Last night I thought about baseboard hot water pipes....i wonder if I could scare up a couple of those.
I as thinking about a separate hwh on the second floor above the woodstove. Haven't quite engineered that yet. But I really like the concept.
Just a thought. Have you considered an on demand HWH? Don’t know the cost but it sounds like that’s what you are trying to achieve?
If you are talking about tankless heaters, they are not worth it IMO, just a bunch of marketing hype. The numbers don't pencil out. It's just a way for the mfg to make a cheaper unit and charge more for it. it sounds like the OP is wanting to capture some of his wood heat in the water. A small tank with a circulator coil would be ideal for that. You can get hot water tanks that have no heater in them and you plumb them into your water lines. You could heat it with the stove with a thermo-siphon system and no needed electric or gas. 20 gallons should do it for a short shower.
Hey yall, yes, looking to short cut the hwh altogether, and use warm water for bathing tasks. I looked at On demand, and for our use style it didn't pan out. Having a tank seemed best. But I like the idea of the heat pump hwh. I knew of them, and then a neighbor got one, and loves it. With electric companies sodomizing the bank account, less is more. I'm going to try living on the cheap for a short while, see what I can do. I've always loved off-grid types of living (less money to big utilities is ALWAYS better). On missionary trips and other retreat times, simple was the key, and I want to try that at home. I'm going to experiment with an off-grid clothes washer over the winter, just to see what I can do. sca
I think the best you are going to be able to do temperature wise it get it slightly above ambient in your stove room, unless you are in direct contact with the stove or somehow catching radiant heat from it. Whatever you do, make sure you install a pressure relief valve.
Yeah these homemade water heaters are just potential steam bombs...plus I'm sure if anything major happened the HO ins. would use "homemade" as an excuse to deny...
Probably not what you are thinking of, but you can get yourself clean using washcloths with a basic sponge bath. Throw a giant pot of water on top of the stove and then take what you need out of it to get clean. Toss the leftovers down the drain. Austin Powers talked about this exact thing. “Shall we shag now, or shall we shag later? How do you like to do it? Do you like to wash up first? You know, top and tails... whores bath? Personally before I'm on the job, I like to give my undercarriage a bit of a how's your father!” This is of course a SHTF extreme measure. But you could try it for a month just to save some money and as some kind of training exercise. You could also fill a solar shower bag with water and use that. Or maybe have two big pots. One hot water and one cold water and gravity drain through I mixing valve to get the desired temp. I just think it would be a lot easier to heat pots directly on the stove and then transport them to where they are needed. We have a pot of water heating on the stove nearly continuously that we use for dish washing and to dump in the duck pond (kiddie pool) for the ducks. I would like to learn to weld well enough to fabricate a stainless steel tank to put on top of the stove for greater capacity.
I've seen a few old range boiler setups for sale out there. Most have been scrapped for the copper tanks. New ones are available too. 100 years ago I bet they were very common. You can buy stainless loops to put in just about any stove if you want to drill 2 holes in it. There's plenty of info on how they used to setup wood cook stoves with the tanks in different places like above or below. I'd like to have one of those old 2 burner cook stoves with a loop for water but I don't have the space right now. What really sucks is, in other countries you can buy stoves all setup with a water loop but here they can't get certified.
Son took an old water heater and painted it black, ran a garden hose to connect it and during summer he would use it to take an outside shower in a little shower stall he built out of lumber. Since they live on acreage there’s no chance of peeping Toms. Kind of nice for when you’ve been working outside and are all sweaty and dirty
Boil a pan of water on the stove and sponge bath. About as minimalist as you can get. I doubt you are 700ºF six feet above the stove. It would be warm enough water though with probably no need for a safety mixing valve. Problems with above the stove is weight, water pressure and leaks and sweating. None of these and everyone would be doing it.
