Hi all. My first post here. I heat with wood at my house, but we bought a "camp" (that's what we Mainers call a second house used for hunting, fishing, etc.) and it had HWBB as the primary heat source and wood backup (unfortunately, on the same flue, but that's another story.) We decided to bite the bullet and put in a heat pump that the insurance company will insure the place with (and much cheaper, about $40 per month, for this little 1300 Sq ft place) and mothball the HWBB by having a professional contractor winterize it with anti-freeze. We did this because the place will be just a "camp" until we retire there in about 6-7 years. The contractor charged $713, and put in very expensive anti-freeze. They claim we can go there now and turn that system on at any time, use it, leave, and that it won't freeze up or have any issues with such intermittent use. Just looking to see if anybody here can confirm if that is true? Anything I should be aware of as possible pitfalls in doing this? Thanks in advance.
I’m a building manager and have a bit of boiler experience. My facility has two closed loop systems that are full of a propylene glycol and water mixture. If they used glycol, depending on the percentage to water, what they say may be correct. With a 50% dilution, it’s good to to -20 Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Thanks, J. I am sure it was the "good stuff," and probably winterized to - 30 or even lower for this location. It just seems to good to be true that I can just throw the power switch and run the HWBB whenever I want, and then have it actually heat the house still, and never have to worry about the HWBB freezing when I leave.
I have a place in the northeastern lower peninsula of Michigan that has baseboard heat (gas boiler). It’s been a seasonal home for the past 20 years or so. It has glycol in the system and is good to -30 or so. I had a company replace the antifreeze a couple years ago (and replace a couple seized up valves at the same time). They used a product called No Burst, which they sure don’t give away. I keep a digital thermometer in the house and when I opened it up in the spring of 2015 it showed a minimum temp of -24 inside between November and April (that was a cold azz winter, kind of like this one is turning out to be). I can confirm that all I do is turn the gas on, light the pilot and set the thermostat. In the fall I shut the gas off and it’s good to go. The boiler is a 1978 Weil McLain, so the antifreeze definitely works. From what I’ve read the glycol hurts efficiency a bit (heat transfer is less), but peace of mind is worth it.
From my limited experience glycol is about 20% less efficient than water and can cause firttings to leak. I have it in my system because of the wood stove. I have a raised ranch and my heating pipes froze even before the wood stove was installed. They haven’t since the glycol was installed. Did they use Glycol? I have had a few things Leak from the glycol.
