Finally started my install

It is a good feeling with a sense of accomplishment !Well done!

 

Hmmmm Ya still got it?

 

Nice job... On copper joints flux can hold pressure when you fill the system with cold water. Once you heat it up the flux melts and you find your leaks

 

So I learned! Luckily I had enough valves in place to isolate it and it only took about 5 minutes or so to fix. I had to wait until the boiler finished its burn though since I had to isolate the expansion tank and didn't want to start popping pressure reliefs. I feel like I beat the system in some small way now that I'm heating the entire house and making hot water with wood.

 

Makes it all worth it! Congrats!
I find every year when we finally fire up the boiler for the winter, I swear, the hot water in the shower that evening, somehow, sure does feel better than the night before when fuel oil heated it!

 

Yeah man!

 

Congratulations haveissues! Nice job. I would like to see those tanks when completed. What are you insulating them with. I prolly forgot. C.R.S.

 

I'm going to box them in and fill with blown in insulation. I was going to use fiberglass but people on hearth.com mentioned they have had good luck with the blown in stuff so I'm going to give that a try. That is planned for tomorrow.

 

How did you plumb your storage? Like the Oct 25 post? If so any negative wear on the pump running water through the pump backwords? I was looking at my setup and in my piping 100 miles per hour I piped one boiler correct and the other messed up. I figure if I'm going to repipe it I should do it right this time. No time to do it right the first time but time to do it over! Did you put a valve in the storage loop?

 

I did plumb it as in that diagram. My reasoning was the coldest water in the bottom of the tank is being pulled in to the boiler and heated but when the boiler is cold and the tanks are satisfying the heat demand the hottest water will be pulled from the top of the top tank. As I type this the tanks are running the house and the top of the top tank is at 175 and the bottom of the bottom tank is 140. I'm not sure if this is harmful to the pump and nobody suggested that it might be but in my case I'm not concerned. I converted my system from all pump to a pump and zone valves so I have a few extra taco 007. If it fails, it fails but so far so good. There is a zone valve going to the tanks so I can control flow to them and to stop thermo siphoning when there is no heat demand.

A lot of people seem to plumb it so the boiler charges the tanks and the tanks run the house. I don't like that idea as coming home to a colder system will mean waiting hours to get any heat until the whole system is hot enough to make heat, including the tanks. The way I did it I have heat from my boiler 10-15 minutes after startup.

 

That's what I was thinking also I'm thinking of installing a zone valve in line with the pump to prevent heating the tank when the house is calling. Open valve to charge, open valve and turn on pump to heat from storage. Controlled by the relays on the Honeywell 775s.

 

That's similar to how I did mine. But it's all automated so all you have to do is start the fire and walk away. I used a plumbing schematic from TARM.

The boiler will send water to the tanks or the house depending on if the house needs the heat. If the boiler is producing more hot water then the house needs it splits the flow between storage and the zones. If the house doesn't need heat all the hot water goes to storage and is used to heat the house when the boiler is cold. All without me having to do anything.

http://www.woodboilers.com/images/stories/documents/woodboilerplumbingschematic1211.pdf

 

Mine is the same as Mike's. At first I had it so either the tanks were getting heat or the zones but if the zone's had a high return temp it would idle the boiler. It now monitors the output temp of the boiler and the return temp of open zones to determine if the tank zone valve should be open or not.

 

If the boiler puts its hot water into the top of the tanks, and the zones draw from top of tanks, there would not be much of a delay for the zones getting heat when starting from cold. The hot water coming from the boiler would stay up top, and be available to the zone pump. That could be simplified even more by using the same tank tapping for both, with a T. That's what I did.