Hello, I got a new place and I plan on setting up my central boiler 6048 for my heat I know my stoves big enough to heat the house and the workshop set up in the barn, my dilemma is it's 550 feet between house and barn if I put my stove in the middle would it be ok if I use good quality underground line. Or am I just asking for a headache. I would basically have two 275 foot long runs.
I’m no expert.. but I would say with quality , proper sized piping with a proper size pump you would be ok.
Yes I know it's not going to be cheap I could almost just buy another stove for what it's going to cost but I really don't want to have to mess with two fires every day.
Have you done an analysis of the heating demand both places? My gut instinct is that you should put the boiler closer to the structure that has the higher heat demand.. what temperature do you keep your shop when you are not using it? Perhaps having the circulation pump for the shop on a timer when the thermostat is not calling for heat to eliminate the chance of freeze up would reduce your wood demand as would having the boiler closer to the house if that is indeed the structure that requires the most heat... 550’ is a long trench to dig deep but getting below the frost line would help significantly with idle time... again, don’t know much about it, let us know what you decide to do..
I have the same stove in the middle of 2 houses approximately 200’ each away from stove. I used thermopex & am satisfied with its heat retraining. I recently put inline thermometers on the supply & return lines to my house & the temperature difference was negligible. I will say this though, you’d better enjoy cutting lots of firewood !!!!!
We were advised by Central Boiler not to put our thermopex below frost line, something about moisture in ground or some such nonsense. I rethink that decision a lot & wonder if we would have been better off going deeper. Ours is about 26” or so underground. On the plus side we’ve never experienced any snow melting whatsoever where the pipe is laid so I guess that’s a good thing.
I agree deeper should be better. Unless there is water in the ditch... In that case, putting stone in the bottom of the ditch and letting the water drain from the ditch would be the preferred method. You might need to put in a french drain somewhere in the ditch to let the water out. Wherever the lowest point is...
We also have a 3rd line running to our barn for dhw & a small modine type heater. That is only about 30’ from the stove though.
I remember reading somewhere that the length of the lines should not exceed 500'. You would have to oversize the lines and get a different circ pump for the longer run, but consider both costs before moving the stove or running the longer lines.
Farmchuck what size line you run? At my old place I had 130ft line to my shop it was 1" themopex and 40ft 1" thermopex to and old house with forced hot air. New place will be radiant heat in well insulated house roughly 2400sf and shops 20x40 forced hot air. And yes i know I'll be burning some wood but I enjoy getting firewood.
I'd highly recommend running a 4 inch field tile under it to drain out to a lower location. Surround it all with pea gravel so any water will get away fast. I did that on mine. Pic shows it on the lower left. I used smooth bore HI Q pipe so I could easily replace the whole line by just pulling it out. It's going under a 50ft radiant heated garage floor here so no going back to fix if something were to happen. Running perfect for 15 years now.
Definitely don't cheap out on the lines...I think anybody that has tried that, will tell you its a mistake. And as already mentioned, make sure your ditch/lines can stay dry. My dad has a large CB that heats 2 houses and two shops...lots of line footage...and it was eating them out of house and home until my brother dug a sump for a pump, made a big difference! This unit is getting some age to it and they have begun to research replacements...looking at a gasifier next time...and maybe 2, get rid of a bunch of that line footage that way. Easier to find models that will heat one house and one shop than it is to find large enough to do 2 of each! Gotta say, Heatmaster is on the list after lukem 's stellar success with his so far!
I re-read a bit, and understood each supply line would be over 500ft, whoops on my part, my longest run is to my house with about 250ish ft of 1" lines to an exchanger in the furnace plenum. Never a problem for heat at all. The shop is about 40 ft away and just makes a continuous loop circulating all the time back to the boiler, for the slab i have two zones on separate thermostats that control each pump independently depending on which zone calls for heat They take hot supply water off this continuous loop, works really nice!! The plumber who set it up said you don't want to have your slab plumbed direct to the supply and return, something about you send too cool of water back to the boiler, and can get away with smaller pumps instead of one larger one to overcome the head pressure
When I plumbed mine they told me you have to have a tempering valve to run into the slabs. You don't want 185 degree water going there at that high of a temp. Never heard of too cool of water hurting something.
Forgot the mixing valve he put in too! Im thinking what he meant is that really cool water returned to the boiler would cause issues with the boiler, but not sure, said his experience is with electric boilers not wood ones, figured can't be a bad thing Nice setup! Nice and clean, love the look of copper If i had a better connection i would post my setup maybe tomorrow when I'm around a better network
