I think it's time to upgrade my circulation and domestic water lines from the OWB to the house. When first installed the current lines where drawn into elephant trunk corrugated pipe with a minimal amount of insulation wrapped around the lines. At first we were getting a 5-6° drop on an 80' run. Now it's around 12-13°. The path is very easy to see in the winter and there is even a variation on the eve of the woodshed that houses the woodstove. The line passes close to one of the pole barn posts and it appears that that corner has a visual drop. I think this summer is the time to make the change. Any suggestions? I'm all ears. Thanks
I'm not sure I've ever seen any real good one with 4 pipes...why do you need that? Rehau is good, Thermopex, HeatMaster/Rhinoflex are good too. None that are worth having are cheap. That's a terrible temp drop by the way, even at first. An 80' run should be more like 1*, if that.
How do other folks run their domestic hot water? I guess I could keep the existing lines for that. Our hot water tank is used as a buffer when the stove is operating. We turn off the electric to the tank during that time. The water gets hotter when a lot is used. I'm sure the domestic hot water run from the stove to the house will have some drop, but performance on that line is not that important. I put this in back in 2004. I bought the lines that my Hardy dealer suggested, it's the orange plastic and I think it has a laminated plastic/stainless/plastic construction, however, I might not be remembering correctly. We had to wrap those lines and pull them through the elephant trunk ourselves. I can't remember if they supplied the insulation we wrapped around the lines, or if it was some of that 4" white packing style stuff I bought separately. All I know, it was a pain to pull and I'm sure there were places were it caught and bunched up inside the 80' run. As far as heat losses getting worse, it seems there may be water getting into the elephant trunk. I'm not sure on this though. I've heard a lot of people using the closed cell pre-insulated lines and that seems like the way to go. A 1° drop would be awesome, although I might miss my snow free path during the lake effect events.
I'm pretty sure most people just run the DHW in series with whatever their household heat emitter(s) is...I'm not sure if the DHW would get plumbed in before or after the main heat load though... For sure!
I've never heard of a separate line for DHW. I have my main loop plumbed from boiler -> DHW heat exchanger -> furnace heat exchanger -> boiler. This loop runs continuously. My DHW heat exchanger is hooked to the cold side of my water heater....water gets pre-heated going in and the water heater is basically just a holding tank. I mix back down to about 125* coming out of the water heater with a mixing valve. As for underground line, I'm running closed cell Thermopex. It's great...virtually no heat loss on my 30' run. If you live anywhere with poorly drained soil and/or a high water table I wouldn't even consider the stuff made from pex/foil bubble/corrugated pipe.
The Hardy has a copper coil in the tank, sitting on the bottom of the tank above the firebox. Inlet and outlet connections are on the back of the stove. So there are two circulation lines, supply and return. Then there are two domestic lines, feed from house supply, (there is a solenoid teed into this to supply make up water to the stove), it makes it's loop through the coil, then returns to the house and feeds our water heater (acts as a buffer) with boiler heated water.
After Katrina in Waveland, MS Hardy donated a stove to heat shower water. We literally set up 6 shower stall made from pallets and blue tarps in a destroyed Fred's(dollar type store), parking lot. The Hardy supplied the hot water from totes using a jet pump. Water came from the National Guard. We had one mixing valve so everyone got the same temperature.
That makes sense why there are 2 lines. You could omit that DHW line set (really just an integrated heat exchanger) and add an external water to water exchanger on your water heater if the price of underground pipe gets too much for ya.
I can use the existing lines for that purpose for now. If need be, I can abandon them in favor of the type everyone else seems to use.
Sounds like water in the pipe. I had the same problem a few years back. I dug down past the pipe at its lowest point between the house and stove and drilled acouple of 1/4" holes to drain it. We have gravel underlay here so it worked. I was in southeast Texas for three weeks with the red cross after Katrina. We had a water Buffalo from the National Guard but no way to heat water, a hot shower would have felt good ,
Not this year. My swing cylinder on my little hoe broke and I haven't gotten around to fix it yet. Maybe next year.
If you have a 12-13° loss on your line set you are loosing approximately 36K BTU's per hour ( BTU=GPM(delta T)) if your pump runs 24x7. I'm using 6GPM X 12° X 500 to get my number. Over the course of a day that's 864k BTU's. Over the course of a month that's one extra cord of wood if your OWB is 100% efficient. Some folks on Facebook were recently talking about the same line too. It's called Kitec from what they were saying. Posting this more for awareness for other folks that find this thread. I realize things happen, and priorities change.
I didn't do the math...but holy crap! That's about what it takes to heat my house during "real" winter...a lil more in Jan/Feb, but a good bit less the rest of the winter here in NEO! For me that equals about 4-4.5 cords/year. But that a lot just to fuel "inefficiencys"
I'm not too far ahead of you. 1st stage geo = 41,700 BTU 2nd stage geo = 55,000 BTU Heat strips = 65,500 BTU It's a 4 ton system, the numbers seem a little higher ( 12k BTU per ton ) than what a true 4 ton system would deliver. The geo guy told me it was truly a 4.5 ton system when he installed it, that seems to make sense based off of the numbers. My heat strips aren't hooked up but my geo does run on 2nd stage when temps are <40F and I haven't built a fire.
Just FYI, if you are still thinking about upgrading, the 26%tax credit ends Dec 31st...it goes up for next year, but has a cap of something like $2k...the one now doesn't have a cap, and includes the whole install cost. Not sure if you could still find a G10000 before the end of the year or not...? Like I said, just FYI...
I know we’ve talked about this a couple times. That’s why I did my install this year. I knew that a deal like this would probably never come up again.
I’d get a Heatmaster and not look back. I’m going to do a install thread for mine. Just need to find the time.
Thank you so much for the information. We’ve had some unexpected expenses come up this summer and are trying to work through them and still get a stove before the end of the year. Do you know if the stove has to be installed before the end of the year to be able to bill for the Credit? Thanks again
