Outdoor Wood Furnace Question

RopeaGoat

Good Evening Fellas,
I just looked at an outdoor wood boiler piggybacked through a plate exchanger to an older (30 years give or take a decade) steam boiler that's only used for forced hot water currently. The complaint is the wood boiler is not keeping up with the domestic hot water. All the heat zones go through two tankless coils and the DHW comes off the bottom of the steam boiler. I think the tankless coils are scaled (sp?) or rusted up and the heat from the outside boiler is not heating the water in the steam boiler enough. Either that or the four other zones are using too much heat first. My thought is to add another plate exchanger solely for DHW and reconfigure the other zones to hopefull bypass or replace the old steam unit. Any thoughts or comments would be appreciated.

Steve Ebels_3

You're probably on the right track

The thing to remember is that the coils in the steamer were originally sized to work at 210-215*. Very doubtful that they're seeing those kinds of temps now. More than likely the current water temp runs from 170 on down causing a noticeable loss in DHW capability.