piping a wood boiler

sebast

Looking for a piping and pumping diagram for a closed system wood boiler, piping into a gas or oil boiler?

Dan Peel

Pressurized wood

Here's the information from Benjaminboilers.com, you have many piping options. Enjoy.....Dan

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sebast

do I need a dump zone?

Dan Peel

Maybe yes, maybe no....

What is your wood boiler's output and fluid capacity?
How closely does that output reflect your design heat loads?
How hot do your need to run your boiler side fluid?
What control is there on the wood boiler for controlling firing rate?
How many gallons are there in the full system?
What type of heat emitters are in play?
The answer is not really about the fuel, it's about the system.
Enjoy......Dan

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Robert O'Connor_6

you also

need to be able to move those btu's out of the boiler if there is a power failure. Thats why a zone valve that must be powered to close is useful on the dump zone. I generally dump to all zones above the boiler.

Regards

Robert

ME

hr

It's pretty handy

to have a buffer tank. pipe it so it can act as thermal storage and/or a dump zone. If space allows the buffer coulp be piped to thermo siphon should you have an extended period of no power with a full burn going on.

Most of the modern wood fired boilers with motorized damper and inducer fan can shut down quickly. But you still need to be able to shed some BTU's on mild days or power outages.

In a perfect world you could always built the fire size to match the load. Unless you are able to be a full time "firesitter" this seldom happens

Becareful with pex in any near boiler piping. Every year we get "meltdown" calls where the boiler runs away and melt down the pex connections. Common on outdoor type burners that pipe with pex or PAP directly to the back of the boiler!

If you have the time and $$s these drawing gives you most of the features you need. The wood boiler adds to the buffer via a variable speed circ in the lower drawing.

This is where you get boiler protection for the wood burner.
In the upper drawing I would use a 140° aquastat to allow the circ pump to operate only when the wood boiler is hot enough to burn clean and not condense.

Ideally the gas boiler, if non condensing, would have a boiler control also, to provide return protection.

Differental controlers would control the buffer tank circ to load the tank when the primary reaches a pre-determined temperature.

As Dan mentioned there are tons of variables in wood burning. The quality and dryness of the fuel is also important, but mostly the amount of interaction you wnat, or can provide determined how many safeties you should build into your custom system. LWCs are another good idea, by the way.

I don't know that I have nailed down the ideal "everymans" system yet. they really need to be designed areoun the application and operator. i'm gonna keep trying though. wood is getting a lot of attention these days.

Burn hot and clean to be kind to the enviroment! The EPA is watching solid fuel burners very closely these days

Good luck and show us what you come up with.

Thanks to Dan Peel, Siggy, Mike "tekmar" Miller and other wallies for ideas along this path!

hot rod

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