Supplementing with a wood burning boiler

chuck172

Come over to hearth.com, boiler section. They can answer all your questions about wood boilers there.
http://www.hearth.com/econtent/index.php/forums/

Steve_189

Wood burning boiler

I have a relatively new boiler. It is an Energy Kinetics System 2000. It was installed in '01-- it has been great and really reduced our oil consumption. But with current prices, even with the tuned, efficient boiler we are looking at substantial oil bills. That said.

I had a wood burning boiler fall into my lap and I am trying figure how to best use it to reduce out oil use.

My first idea was to use it as a heat/preheat with a heat exchanger on the return line to the oil boiler but I am not sure how the boiler controller would handle this. Would it realize the water was already up to temp and circulate with out firing the oil burner? If not would it continue to circulate after the oil burner cycled as long as the water was up to temp? It sorta does that now, after the burner quits it run the circulator until the boiler cools down-- but my understanding is that it is also trying to dump heat into the hot water tank during that period. This seems like it should work but seems to be a very inefficient use of all the heat the water boiler would be making.

My next thought was to just dump all the heat into my basement using spare radiators and some left over radiant floor stuff I have thus giving me some radiant heat through the floor and also keeping the boiler, pipes and water heater all much warmer. (My basement gets very cold-- very old house.)

Or a combination of the two ideas. Any thoughts? Worth the effort or am I just going to do alot of work for a very little gain?

I will tell you also I am coming at this from the other direction too-- currently I am re insulating the entire house and replacing all the windows and am really only considering the wood boiler because it was given to me. Thanks.

Steve

Al Letellier_9

wood boilers

Many things to consider here, such as....do you have a separate flue to vent the boiler. Most codes required separate chimney flues for each appliance. Consider the fact that wood boilers burn wood....even when the demand has been met, so they are notorious energy thiefs and do their fair share of polluting the environment. With the boiler you have, I would spend the money first on what you are doing.....insulated and seal up the house.MAKE SURE YOU HAVE ENOUGH COMBUSTION AIR FOR THE BOILER !!!! Consider using outdoor reset if you don't have it already and make your house and system as efficient as possible B4 going to a wood boiler. They may save oil, but create a lot of work, dirt and dust, not to mention bringing bugs into the house, and they smell up the neighborhood. Even the best of wood boilers continue to burn after the draft has shut down. Considering the cost to install it and the wasted energy cost, I would spent the money on the house.

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Steve_189

What is an outdoor reset?

Steve_189

Thanks for the link-- looks like alot of info there.