Hey, you stop misquoting me. I don't know what your talking about. We all know you can change those quotes!
I already have the pool and can just heat it with the electric spa heater that came with it. In this case all the maintenance is really just part of the ongoing rehab and therapy. Plus I hate public pools and gyms.
Then that settles that. Now, how is the stove regulated? Thermostat in pool water control whole thing?
No, it's controlled the old fashioned way: if it ain't warm enough, load more wood and open up the draft.
Oh, and I decided to use the rocket stove and masonry bench to heat the water. Someone just posted two unopened 1/2" by 50' rolls of flexible copper tubing on Craigslist for $40 each. I'll wrap one around the top of the rocket stove barrel and run one in long loops inside to top of the 8' masonry bench; I can get a decent 12v circulator pump for $49, which I can run with my battery jump starter plugged into 110v to keep charged. About $30 worth of CPVC 1/2" pipe should do it for the hot and cold lines from the pool to the rocket stove and they gave me a big bag of various copper couplings with the copper tubing. A lot cheaper than the submersible wood stove and I don't have to figure out how to vent it. In the future I can charge the 12v battery with a TEG generator too.
Hopefully this works out for you. I have read of people doing something similar to heat their domestic water, sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. I suppose the devils in the details...
Well, I have two 50' sections of 1/2" flexible copper tubing plus two 6' finned copper baseboard heater sections to pick up the heat from inside the 8' rocket heater masonry bench. I have a 5 gallon per minute circulator pump. I only have to heat a room temp 2400 gallon pool up to 85 degrees. From what I've read and been told this shouldn't be hard to achieve.
That might be one of those details that I mentioned before that causes problems. 5 GPM through a 1/2" pipe is pretty high velocity, which is bad. You want a lower velocity so that the tubes have contact time to be able to pick up and then give off (transfer) the heat. Think of it like this, its kinda like when you pick up a hot baked potato, if its too hot for you, you'll "juggle" it...by doing so you are lowering the contact time and therefore the heat transfer. Easy enough to find a smaller pump later on if it is an issue. Hope you'll keep us updated with pics and such, the build on that rocket heater masonry bench is going to be fun to watch, those things are sweet! Just FYI, Eric VW may be able to provide insights on building that, I believe he has played around with 'em in the past. Popcorn for breakfast?!
Great point on smaller pump capacity. Me and BrianK have an ongoing PM on the subject, too..... but I appreciate ya giving the shout out brenndatomu
Thanks. 300gph (5gpm) was the only 12v pump I could get at Harbor Freight. I can order a 2 gpm pump online and I will if this one doesn't pick up enough heat. I'm running through 100' of 1/2" copper refrigerator tubing and 12' of finned 3/4" copper baseboard heating element which is a lot more copper than I've seen in YouTube videos so I'm hoping the length of copper makes up for the higher flow rate.
Well, they had the smaller pump in stock today so I traded the 5 gpm pump on a 3 gpm pump. We'll see what happens.
I posted photos of much of the rocket stove build here if you're interested: Affordable commercial vacuum formed ceramic fiber riser | Rocket Stoves.. Experimenters corner.. Answers questioned!
Oops, they started a new thread for the build photos: Ceramic fiber board lined 6" Batchbox with simple integral secondary air supply | Rocket Stoves.. Experimenters corner.. Answers questioned!
