For the last 12 or so years I've been heating my house during the coldest months ( Dec - March usually ) with a PSG Caddy wood furnace. Like anything else, there was a learning curve, and after a few years I had the furnace pretty much dialed in to my liking after doing a few mods to how the furnace and blower worked. My house is roughly 2,200 square feet along with a 800 square foot basement. During the coldest days of the year I could keep my house warm but I had to baby sit the furnace a lot since the furnace I had didn't have any computerized controls on it. By the end of winter I was tired of no longer having to feed the furnace and dealing with all of the mess in the basement and waking up to a cold house sometimes because the fire had gone down to coals at 5AM. I was never able to get those magical 10 - 12 hour burn times with my furnace. Some of that was my fault ( cut my wood too short for a number of years ) and I don't think the furnace was capable of doing it even if you loaded it with oak or locust. I've burned noting but ash for the last 10+ years due to EAB and I probably have another 10 - 15 years to go at least. The ex-CEO / CFO never wanted to spend money on anything to have to do with the house ( now I know why ). Since I get to make my own financial decision now I started looking at possibly getting a Kuuma furnace or a gasification OWB. If money wasn't an object I'd build a building and put a Froling IWB and 2k gallons of storage in. I'd done my homework and talked to a lot of people that that have OWB's and decided that Heatmaster was the best OWB on the market currently ( in my eyes ). I also knew that the all you can eat 26% rebate from Uncle Joe would probably never happen again. I was either going to do in 2022 or not do it all. In March I put down a deposit for a Heatmaster G4000 ( I knew prices would keep going up ). I picked the furnace up July 4th weekend. G4000 strapped down on the trailer and headed home from Michigan. That state has the worst roads known to man. All of the weight of the OWB is at the bottom so that's why there aren't any straps at the top. There's an area next to my house where there were some ash, and elm tress that needed cleared out. I rented a Kubota hoe to clear them out and dig down for my concrete pad and a 30x30 area that we dug out and put some 304's down in. Of course it rained like heck that day. The machine had about 4 hours left after we cleared that area out so I taught myself how to run it. I've always had a friend run it for me. It's nice to have friends with toys. Have friend with an excavating business. He has a core drill that they use to drill curbs out with so he dug out next to my basement and drilled a 6" hole for me. As part of the deal, he helped me mix and pour the concrete pad. He had a mixer so it wasn't too bad to do. If I had to do it over again, I would of made the pad 6x8 instead of 4x8. We had a downpour as we were pouring the concrete so that made it interesting. We used these rubber rings that he uses on septic systems to hold the pipe in the septic tank in the block wall. We parget the ring on the outside of the basement with hydraulic cement. I sprayed some flex seal on it and then let it sit for a day. The void between the outside of the block and the inside ring was filled with close cell foam. Rhinoflex pipe going out to the OWB The next day my girlfriend and I ran the conduit out to the outdoor electric box. The plan is put up a 30x30 barn next year so that's why I put up a box now. Next day, I ran the electric from the box to the stove. Mans best friend and I back filled the trench after making sure I had juice to the stove. The trench is 2' deep ( per NEC code ). The picture is a little deceiving. To be continued......
My original post took me about an hour to and hour and a half to put together. Going to rain here Sunday, I’ll try to find some time to do part duet then.
The pressure is on. Boss had me outside cutting up firewood today. Ran into some deer on the way out.
Part Deux As part of the install for the water-air HX I had to pull my Caddy out and redo some of the ducting in the basement. I also had to cut a rectangular hole in the plenum for the water-air HX to fit. Was using a air powered cut off wheel and then my 20 year old junk tool store air compressor decided to spring a leak so I ended up using a reciprocating saw to finish it out. After disabling the duct work to the Caddy. Heat exchanger installed. Since the heat exchange sticks out from the plenum I had to bend metal on both the top and bottom to make sure that all of the heat got into the plenum of the furnace. It's sitting on the zoning damper I had in there for my wood furnace. It worked out perfect. Next step was plumb up the pump and run the electric in the OWB. As you can see from the pic I used 1" heater hose from the Rhinoflex to the pump and return port. I did this for two reasons. I allowed me to back flush the line set, and it also will flex if my cement pad decides it ever wants to move around some. It shouldn't since it's sitting on 4" of 304's but you never know. Better to be safe than sorry IMHO. The pump is Grunfos 26-99 currently running on low. The hole in the OWB junction box was 1/2" and my conduit was 3/4" so that's why I put a metal junction box in. I wasn't too comfortable drilling out the electric box in the OWB. This way I could transition from one to the other. Finished product after everything was hooked up. Next came installing the lines in the house. I made the mistake of buying coiled 1" line from Menards. DO NOT DO THIS. You will end with lines similar to the below pic. They are even worse when they are hot. Go to your local plumbing supply house and buy 20' straight sticks of pex. That's what I used for everything else. Somewhat remedied, I hope. I originally was not going to put a filter in and then read a story on Facebook about a guy whos pump impeller exploded and caused his plate and water-air HX to the then clog up. I can buy four or five inline filters for what those cost so I thought it was no brainer. This also guaranteed that when I filled the boiler that about 99% of the water would get filtered since I could shut the valve off on the pump and force water through the filter. So far I've caught mostly pipe dope and what looks to be steel dust. If you doing an install, I highly recommend putting a T in like I did. I have zero issue with air in my lines. The filter also allows you to purge air out of your system. I wasn't originally going to do a flat plate but decided that if I need to tie something in later down the road I'll kick myself in the rear for not doing it. I originally had the flat plate in another spot and moved it to its current spot. My plan is to hook my domestic hot water into and heat it up to 110F or so then let the HPHW do the rest. I plan on installing the domestic water this weekend. I did buy flush kit that you use on tankless water heater for it so I can flush it in the summer with vinegar to keep it from clogging up. From the flat plate I then am running to the air-water HX. Last but not least, I wired up a PID controller to sense the water temperature and then open up the Y1 circuit on the furnace based off of the water temp. Water temps >145 the PID controller will open the circuit so the geo compressor doesn't come on and the fan will run at full speed. The green light comes on at 160, if the green light isn't on, I know I should probably check the OWB. The red light / alarm goes on at 135. That's sensing my return temps, I always want my return temps >140 that's why I have that set. Last but not least I have an alarm on the DIN board that will alarm if the water is <50. I'm worried about my geo possibly freezing the water in my water-air HX. The vertical blue pipe in the pic above is a way for me to drain before summer time. As you can see from the pics I have a mix of brass and stainless. Most of everything on the plumbing side for this project was ordered from supplyhouse. Some times a SS fitting would be cheaper than brass, and sometimes the brass would be cheaper. Or they would be out of one so I had to order the other. Weird times..... I had to special order pipe insulation, it is on its way and will hopefully be installed this coming weekend. If you are going to embark on a project like this, I would highly recommend using long sweep 90's ( a lot less head loss ), and as many valves as your checkbook is willing to buy. Any questions, please let me know.
Is there an advantage to isolating the HX circuit from the OWB via the FP? Are there any inefficiencies introduced in doing that, vs going direct to the HX, or just having them both in series?
And a great post it was. Definitely looking forward to the follow up. From my research those Heatmasters are great OWB. Nice to have friends with cool tools.
Had to read your question a few times. If my answer is way off, let me know. If you isolated the HX via the FP they would be desperate systems at that point. The HX would need its own pump, and electronics similar to what they use for closed loop system like an oil boiler, or in floor heat. There’s a guy on Facebook who always posts pics of what he’s doing. He knows his stuff so I always take screenshots of his work he posts just in case I ever end with a place with in floor heat. In the pic I’m attaching, a HX would be in place of the in floor loop manifold. By putting them in series I avoid all of the above. As I understand it, the FP should go before the HX because heating hot water takes a ton of BTUs ( we touched on this in another thread ).
OK, I misread what you were saying originally...thought you had the HX on its own isolated circuit, which I thought odd.
Actually, they are and aren't in series the more I think about it. They are in series when I have water going through the FP, they aren't in series when I'm bypassing the FP. I'm actually bypassing the FP now since I don't have it hooked up. I set it up that way in case I ever need to swap the flat plate out.
Nice, clean install. The only thing I see is the orientation of the FPHE. Both of mine were very specific in their instructions NOT to lay them flat but be mounted on their sides (like the picture of the small system board you posted). Yours may be different but worth taking a look at if you haven't already.
I bought mine from badger pipe and they actually recommend installing it this way because it helps keep sediment from clogging up the FPHE. Marty probably does a better job explaining why better than what I can. I would think a FPHE is a FPHE but maybe there are some subtle differences between them and that’s why they specifically tell you on how to orient the ones you have.
nice work still working on my indoor plumbing I also made the mistake of buying a coil of pex went and bought straight pipe to finish I hope to get some pictures soon just way to busy I squeeze in plumbing when I have time JB
