I figured this may help others or give you some ideas on how you can heat another building. I've had my boiler online for about 25 years. I had a normal add on wood furnace in my shop which worked fine. Shop is 24 x 50 with 14 foot ceiling. My insurance company is getting high and I wanted to bundle my insurance. Every other company would not give a quote as they said the wood stove could NOT be in there. If it was gone it would free up space and not have to deal with bringing wood in all the time. This summer I finally ran another line to the shop. I used field tile and then pulled the new line through that. I like that as if you ever have any issues, you can install new line without digging anything up. I will start from there. Here you can see the pipes and how it enters in the shop. I drilled a hole through both pipes and stuck a bolt through and this is what the rope attached to in order to pull. I did not want it slipping off midway. I tried to find the fittings I needed but was unable to without a bunch of bulk stepdowns. I wanted stainless or brass. Found an old stainless pump shaft I had and will make them from this. Cut the ends off and will hold from both ends to get what I want. Drilled the through holes first then turned the diameters to size, I also did some reliefs/barbs for the hose to grip better. This system has very little pressure but overkill is good. I'm using a large truck radiator for a heat exchanger so I needed to neck down from a radiator hose to the 1 inch. Here is the radiator I'm using. I don't want to mount it completely solid. Gives me some adjustment and play. I came up with using 2x4's with a slot groove that will ride on the edges of the core. Loose but secure. You can see the groove on the edge of the 2x4 at the bottom. Went to the scrap yard and found some heavy aluminum angle. Will work very nice for this. Wood will just slide in and I'll run screws through the side to lock it in place. The lower limit rests on the end tank. I gave it about 2 inches of upward allowance. The wood is at upper/lower limits here.
I used bevel headed fasteners on to edges as I will lag bolt into wall studs and ceiling trusses. That way, it's all out of the way up high. Lower limit. Upper limit. Now I need to mount the pipe to the wall with a standoff. Has to be kind of stout and I found some really nice clamps at the scrap yard. These will work really nice. Got some box tubing to mount to the wall. I drilled a hole in the middle of the clamp and that will attach to the box tubing. Makes a very clean install So far so good. I'll add another once I get the radiator in place. Use the shipping cap as a cover on the end. Just made 2 holes for the pipes to slip through. Got it all mounted up and the hoses on.
I mounted a normal box fan on the back. Plan is to have the thermostat below and when heat is needed, the fan will run. All the upper work is finished now. Mixed up some concrete and filled the hole in. I waited a couple days then cut the tile flush with the floor. All I had left to do was to Get the thermostat installed. I decided to make up a standoff box so I wouldn't have to mount it to the wall or put any more holes in it. I wanted to be able to unplug the thermostat in the off season as I've had to replace the one in the house due to power surges. Be it power company or lightning strikes. Made my own stainless plug in cover as it's an odd size. I just drilled 4 holes in the back of the box for the zip ties to go through. Figured this way I can change quickly if I have to replace the fan with a shorter cord or something. Just using a cord with 2 male plugs to feed the box. Made it an easier way to do what I wanted. I've had it running all Winter this year and set the thermostat at 50. If needed I just turn it up when I go in but so far I haven't had the need to as it pretty comfortable working with just a flannel. Building is well insulated with 2x6 sidewalls so it really doesn't take much to heat it. haven't really noticed an increase in wood consumption and nice to walk into a prewarmed shop. Better for my machines as well as they don't "sweat" from temp changes, meaning rust. Pleased with the results.
I had been putting this off because I made a big mistake when I built the furnace house. I had planned on putting a hose run under the floor for future heat to that shop. In all the work, I totally forgot about it so I had to cut the floor under the furnace. That meant pulling the front wall out and lifting the stove back. I bored under the floor 12 feet and through a 16 inch footer wall. It had rebar in it as well. Used a rotary hammer and gas powered post hole digger as well. Came in from both sides and had to line the holes up. Nailed it somehow and was extremely happy about that one. Here are some pics of that work. As you can see, it was a lot of work and a lot of hand work. I'm glad that is done. lol
One other thing I will mention. When I put my system in over 25 years ago, the insolated pipe shown was either not made or known to my stove distributer. At that time I used a foam hollow tube that the 2 hoses laid loose in. You can feel the heat around that on the OUTSIDE of the foam. With this new, I can NOT feel any warmth at all! I'm not sponsored or given a discount on it, paid their normal price. It was expensive but this is one thing where it is extremely unwise to go cheap. This new pipe looks to be waterproof as well. I know of 2 people back when I did mine that had issues with groundwater getting around it and sucking the heat off the pipes. I put a perferated field tile under mine and had it surrounded with pea gravel to get rid of the water fast. The energy savings of this pipe, justifies the long term gain/advantages you will receive in my opinion.
Same experience here too...we hoped to just pull the old lines and swampy foam insulation out, then slide the new Rehau line set in, but that old foam had laid in the drain tile soaked for so long that it had become "ribbed", so no pulling it out, especially in the long lengths that were involved. So dug it all out and laid the new line set direct burial. Only about 1* heat loss per 100'. Would have been SOOO much cheaper n easier to use the Logstor line the first time, instead of that crappy cobbled together setup...you can't even buy that foam tube crap anymore from what I hear. They could have at least used closed cell foam, instead of open...stupid! With the new HeatMaster G10000 boiler and line set the wood consumption is WAAAY down...like less than half...all that wood wasted all those years...we figure if we had all the wood back that was wasted in smoke, and lost BTUs, we'd never have to cut wood again. (10-12 cord per year X 20 years!)
Hopefully if I ever decide to pull my first main line I won't have that issue. I used smooth bore HiQ double wall tile. I had thought of having pulling issues as my line runs 50 ft under the attached garage floor. It's radiant floor heat so digging that up would be a nightmare.
