Retrofit from Gravity System

Betz

I have an old hot water gravity system that was once converted to a gas circulating one. As I couldn't afford to pay for heating bills anymore I fit an outdoor wood furnace to it. I have an abundance of wood available and this unit came with a gas backup, so I thought it was a good choice. Ok, here's my problem: When my furnace kicks on the water in the outside unit loses it's temperature, causing the damper to open and more wood to burn up. The capacity of the outdoor burner is about 400 gallons of water. I have some pictures I can post to show you how I hooked into the old unit. I am using a taco 007 out on the burner to constantly circulate hot water, on the inside I have an 009 that kicks on with the thermostat. I have 2 zone valves, one on the old return back into the boiler, and one going out to the outdoor burner. I also have several check valves to dictate where the water is to go for. When the house isn't calling for heat the water circulates in a small loop. It seems to me that I could fix most of the problem with flow. But I'm not sure if I need a high volume or very low volume in the system. Anyone care to give an opinion on what I can do to get this return water heated back up. It has to go through the old boiler to get outside so I would think this would do the job. However, it's not helping much yet. I have an 011 available that was on first, but seemed to be worse with that pump. Oh, don't laugh at my plumbing, it's the first time I've done anything like this. Thanks for any opinions.

Betz

I forgot to mention

that when doing some rough heating calcs I come up with less than 120,000 btu at 0 degrees..plus my old gas unit figured to put out about 150,000 btu at the burner, most of which when out of the chimney. Oh, and obviously my radiators are quite big, here's a pic of one.

Mark W

I admire

your tenacity, and your effort to provide an economical heating system.

I will readily admit I have no experience with linking wood fired boilers with existing boilers. Your issues may be in piping, controls, or both.

But based on your picture of the radiator, I would recommend that you check out the following two links regarding your radiator enclosures:

http://www.heatinghelp.com/newsletter.cfm?Id=77

http://www.heatinghelp.com/newsletter.cfm?Id=115

I am also curious as to why you didn't replace the old gravity beast with a modern gas fired boiler, properly piped and controlled?

It would seem to me that your time, effort and expense expended already would've been better applied to that first, and the wood-fired boiler option could've come as a secondary consideration.

Not that I don't like your vision & ideas! I wouldn't have borrowed a portable electric meter to monitor all my energy sucking devices if I wasn't interested in squeezing the most out of my dollars!

Living week to week, hoping for the best...

Betz

There is really nobody

close to here that can do a proper install of a gas fired boiler. I think the 3" supply and 2" return lines also scared people away. To be honest I was afraid my system would really be a mess. I thought that at least this way I won't have to pay for the high bills of an improper installed, matched, etc. system. Anyway, thanks for your post and comments. It seems that although my rads are enclosed at least they aren't the worst enclosure type that I saw from the other links..