not sure what this needs

toddandrews

one of our farmers approached us about heating an enclosed manure storage facility. does anyone have experience with this? as i understand it the building will store manure until it can be spread and must be protected from freezing. explosive atmosphere would be a major concern i assume, as well as whatever else would be corrosive to equipment. as usual we are to late for radiant. we will be contacting our equipment supplier/designers regarding this but would like to here some thoughts.
thanks in advance.

Jamie Hall

Been a farmer... gave that up some time ago!

And you are right in your initial surmise: you have three problems with the atmosphere in there. The humidity will be very high. The atmosphere is corrosive. And from time it will be well within the combustible range. Good stuff.

I think -- and this is just preliminary -- that I would probably go for a hot water system supplying hydronic air handlers which took air from the space and blew it back in. Keep the air handlers and their fan motors and controls outside the space; the motors are not usually explosion proof... use a remote reading thermostat to control the system.

If you insulate the dickens out of the roof (I presume a metal building?) you really won't need that much heat -- all you are trying to do is keep the gloop from freezing.

And yes, it would have been better to have radiant in the pit walls and floor, but... 20/20 hindsight.

Solid_Fuel_Man

Could you do some type of radiant ceiling? Walls? I don't think bringing the air into remote non-explosion proof fan coils solves anything. Still bringing combustible atmosphere to ignition sources. Keep it all water and no moving parts. Remote reading thermostat is a must as Jamie pointed out.

Taylor

SWEI

Agreed. Radiant retrofit is still going to be less trouble than pushing fetid air through a fancoil. Yeesh!

Concrete pits? I'd coil PEX around the inside, secure it using poly or stainless hardware, cover that with rolled, nonwoven polypropylene or carbon fiber, and then bury the whole thing in trowel-grade urethane cement.

Harvey Ramer

Can you provide more specifics on the building?

Gordy

Size, and make up of storage building. How much manure, how long to be stored before removal.

Its never to late for radiant, or steam for that matter.

hot_rod

A similar type of load here.

Dave Yates and his team at F W Behler in York, PA heated a large concrete building used to store and warm aggregate for a concrete plant.

It would seem at a certain temperature the manure would continue to compost and generate some of it's own heat?

I put some tubing under a compost pile once to try and pull some heat. The coil pulled the temperature down to a point where the heat generation stopped.