You can make a massive increase on your boiler firebox by adding a whole bunch of stainless steel best screen at the bottom to keep your coals up in the fire! I bet it would increase your efficiency by about 50%!!!
Thanks for the video - nice storage heater, more pipe coils could be in the central (core) part of the barrel. BTW: SandBat and Polar Night Energy thermal storages also use sand but temperatures 400-500 degrees C (five times water boiling temperature) and huge amount of sand (with insulated walls) so they store more energy for longer period and use hot air probably steel pipes as input (with electric heater) and output. 👍😎
A lot of people at homestead said they the first thing to do is build a hot tub!! Pure living For Life in Idaho... Jake and Nicole on Vancouver Island Two that I can think of. They built the hot tub in a deck before they built their house
@@NorleyFamilyFarms Get that done be great to have a hot tub and then going to snow angels in the snow. Might not be g-rated but who cares? Don't video it!
I actually thought about that, but it was tricky enough to get the tubing wrapped on the outside of the wire cage, so putting it inside was kind of out of the question for me to do on my own.
Explain me, why has he opted for sand? The ordinary water would require a bit better barrel, yet the specific heat capacity is 5 (five) times of the sand.
@@RomanShein1978 yes the only advantage of sand is that you can raise it to far higher temperatures, that's why it's used in some commercial batteries, like storing excess wind energy.
@@erik.... Yeah, it makes sense when you crank up the temperature to hundreds of degrees Celsius. In this case, he uses plastic tubing, water as a heat carrier and hoovering at 30-40 Celsius.
I got to get to chopping some wood now??? You don't have your 3 years of wood stocked up??? I guess you're not from Wisconsin or Minnesota right? I just found your channel so I have no idea what state you're in. Maybe Canada who knows? And you might be a newbie I guess at homesteading but doesn't look like it from your shop!!!!
Why not bury the pipe right into the soil (like in a heating floor) and rely on soil thermal mass instead of the thermal mass of a barrel? The specific thermal capacity of soil is identical to that of sand, yet you will heat a much higher volume of soil, providing greater overall stability in the greenhouse temperature.
Interesting. Why is a sand on a beach still warm to the touch after sunset after a hot day but soil is cool to the touch? I'm not sure I properly understand the term thermal mass apparently.
@@paulmcewen7384 Well, I believe you are dealing with a different phenomenon here. The sand is dry and the soil is wet. Upon sunset, the soil (and the wet sand) loses heat through irradiation AND evaporation, meanwhile, the dry sand loses heat due to irradiation only. This effect is not at play in the greenhouse.
@@RomanShein1978 Ah I see I had not considered that. So would a barrel of sand, and a barrel of soil, both with the same moisture content be able to store the same amount of heat?
Because you loose heat to the surrounding ground it would work good if you insulated the ground you planned on heating . Good idea but not as easy as just heating the ground.
Few things… 1) when shooting temps with IR gun shoot within 3-6” of object for most accurate reading. I wish mfgs would have never put laser pointers on them. Everyone thinks they are expert shots from 30’ now🤦♂️ Also only shoot ferrous metals and poly. Brass,copper,SS, alm. All give false readings. If you need to shoot those materials put electrical tape on them, let warm them shoot. 2) sand batteries in my opinion are a waste of time. You are better off to filling that barrel with water. Water is a better/ faster medium for transferring heat. Same principle applies to large fire places, masonry heaters, mass refractory boilers…they are slow reacting, run away, hard to control in high/low demands.
Curious why you think this is a waste of time, in response to 2). Is the purpose not to smooth out the peaks and valleys of the wood boiler heat output? I could be wrong but I don't think that transferring heat was the primary objective, it was to use it as an item with a large thermal mass to store heat. I believe this concept has been put to use in some town in Finland on a mass scale.
@@paulmcewen7384🤦♂️ To store heat…does the circ shut off? I don’t see any temp controller/tstat. Furthermore is there a mixing valve somewhere? How did he have 160 in boiler and 100 in GH? I’d dump primary boiler heat into that battery then shut off or if the underground insulated pipe is that inefficient I’d start over.
Edit: I just looked at his other vid of how the boiler is setup/plumbed. I’m done commenting 🤦♂️The shop appears to be the only thing plumbed right on one of the primary loops
@@garny3766 I'm no plumber, I don't see the rationale for there needing to be a a shutoff for the circ (circuit? circulation pump?). That barrel packed with sand is such a large thermal mass that I would think it would take a very long time to heat up to a point that would need to be shut off. I could have this wrong but is his plan to have that sand battery on the return leg of his heating loop, in order to "bank" some of that heat inside the greenhouse, as well as moderate the change in temperature over time (as the wood boiler reduces in heat output over the night, the barrel has been banking heat and now starts to dissipate it into the air around it). I can't speak to any of the plumbing code stuff, no idea there. I'm just purely curious of how this would function as a concept.
@@paulmcewen7384 study primary/secondary hydronic plumbing, head loss calculations, stress corrosion cracking, cold water return protection. I believe there is soooo many modifications that need to be done before we even worry about the battery.
I’m not cutting up your efforts or being a know it all. If that feed is coming to your greenhouse directly from the boiler, you are losing a massive amount of heat. Either way, even if you are heating that greenhouse with the return line from any other buildings on the property, the return going into your stove is way too low. A return temperature at the stove that low will eventually rot out your water, jacket, and backside of the fire box. I used to be a small manufacturer of.Owb’s.
To answer your question, the greenhouse is at the end of that heating loop. It first heats our home and keeps it at a comfortable 70 degrees. It then returns outward to the greenhouse first to dump any residual BTUs, before returning the boiler. So all in all it travels through about 600 ft of insulated underground tubing. On average there is about a 20 degree temperature difference on return to the boiler. thank you for your input.
@@NorleyFamilyFarms I guess I was a little confused. I thought you were running a return differential of at least 69°. 160° stove temperature and a 91° return temperature or less when it reaches the stove, on that loop. I must have misunderstood the video.
@@Stoney00075 to answer your question not necessarily a smaller loop, but less heat draw on the loop. OR. Another way to compensate is to install a thermostatic valve at the boiler. Some manufacturers require this for the warranty. Central boiler is one of them off the top of my head. The goal is you don’t want your return temperature anymore than 30° lower than the water temperature inside the boiler. It will cause condensation and rot the boiler out. And I’m not talking about condensation in the fire box. The condensation, as crazy as it sounds, will be inside the water jacket itself under the water. It usually occurs where the returning water, rubs or kisses the inside of the water, jacket and backside of the fire box. Think of patches of microscopic oxygen molecules, stuck to the inside of the stove under the water. This phenomena also increases at cooler operating temperatures, that’s why all manufacturers of open systems require a minimum operating temperature of 180°. There are some boilers you can get away with this because they are designed for a batch burn with storage. One example is a Garn. But your typical open system will rot out fairly quickly if you don’t maintain a consistent water temperature. In addition to my excavation business, I own a commercial welding shop. I have personally seen this damage after cutting open a leaking boiler. You will see eroded metal in the path of the return water. Not necessarily caused by poor water quality, but after talking to the customer, cool return temperatures.
You can make a massive increase on your boiler firebox by adding a whole bunch of stainless steel best screen at the bottom to keep your coals up in the fire!
I bet it would increase your efficiency by about 50%!!!
Make sure your sand is completely dry and use any shaker tool to compact it no gap and you will reach another level in efficiency 🎉solid job btw. 🤘
thank you! well the sand if def dry now if it was not before. but agree with the compacter.
Thanks for the video - nice storage heater, more pipe coils could be in the central (core) part of the barrel.
BTW: SandBat and Polar Night Energy thermal storages also use sand but temperatures 400-500 degrees C (five times water boiling temperature) and huge amount of sand (with insulated walls) so they store more energy for longer period and use hot air probably steel pipes as input (with electric heater) and output. 👍😎
yea, I saw those companies they are really cool. We might do something on a larger scale in the summer time like that to increase heat storage.
That was cool, thanks for posting brother.
Thanks for watching, glad you enjoyed it !
Such a cool idea. I'm still waiting for the hot tub, though 😂🙌🏻
kristin keeps asking for one.
A lot of people at homestead said they the first thing to do is build a hot tub!!
Pure living For Life in Idaho...
Jake and Nicole on Vancouver Island
Two that I can think of.
They built the hot tub in a deck before they built their house
@@NorleyFamilyFarms
Get that done be great to have a hot tub and then going to snow angels in the snow.
Might not be g-rated but who cares?
Don't video it!
Priorities in the right place!
Awesome
thank you!
If you shove in 2 or 3 heating elements and hook them up to 2-3 solar panels, you would need to fire the boiler up only at night
that would be nice. I would like to increase our solar power next year.
Did you get the bag from a local farm and home store or hardware store?
I assume 50 lb bag?
So what do you think of the weight of that barrel is?
We got the sand at Lowes, 50lb bags.
I would have put the tube inside the the wire cage so tubes would have more sand on outside!
I actually thought about that, but it was tricky enough to get the tubing wrapped on the outside of the wire cage, so putting it inside was kind of out of the question for me to do on my own.
as long as you are satisfied but there is a lot of room to improve the design
Water temp exiting the drum is still warm...maybe run it thru an old car radiator for more heating greenhouse.
Explain me, why has he opted for sand? The ordinary water would require a bit better barrel, yet the specific heat capacity is 5 (five) times of the sand.
@@RomanShein1978 yes the only advantage of sand is that you can raise it to far higher temperatures, that's why it's used in some commercial batteries, like storing excess wind energy.
@@erik.... Yeah, it makes sense when you crank up the temperature to hundreds of degrees Celsius. In this case, he uses plastic tubing, water as a heat carrier and hoovering at 30-40 Celsius.
I got to get to chopping some wood now???
You don't have your 3 years of wood stocked up???
I guess you're not from Wisconsin or Minnesota right?
I just found your channel so I have no idea what state you're in.
Maybe Canada who knows?
And you might be a newbie I guess at homesteading but doesn't look like it from your shop!!!!
We are in the mountains of central Pennsylvania, and only been here for 3 years so we don't quite have that big of stock pile yet.
Why not bury the pipe right into the soil (like in a heating floor) and rely on soil thermal mass instead of the thermal mass of a barrel? The specific thermal capacity of soil is identical to that of sand, yet you will heat a much higher volume of soil, providing greater overall stability in the greenhouse temperature.
Interesting. Why is a sand on a beach still warm to the touch after sunset after a hot day but soil is cool to the touch? I'm not sure I properly understand the term thermal mass apparently.
@@paulmcewen7384 Well, I believe you are dealing with a different phenomenon here. The sand is dry and the soil is wet. Upon sunset, the soil (and the wet sand) loses heat through irradiation AND evaporation, meanwhile, the dry sand loses heat due to irradiation only.
This effect is not at play in the greenhouse.
@@RomanShein1978 Ah I see I had not considered that.
So would a barrel of sand, and a barrel of soil, both with the same moisture content be able to store the same amount of heat?
@@paulmcewen7384 Exactly.
Because you loose heat to the surrounding ground it would work good if you insulated the ground you planned on heating . Good idea but not as easy as just heating the ground.
Few things…
1) when shooting temps with IR gun shoot within 3-6” of object for most accurate reading. I wish mfgs would have never put laser pointers on them. Everyone thinks they are expert shots from 30’ now🤦♂️ Also only shoot ferrous metals and poly. Brass,copper,SS, alm. All give false readings. If you need to shoot those materials put electrical tape on them, let warm them shoot.
2) sand batteries in my opinion are a waste of time. You are better off to filling that barrel with water. Water is a better/ faster medium for transferring heat. Same principle applies to large fire places, masonry heaters, mass refractory boilers…they are slow reacting, run away, hard to control in high/low demands.
Curious why you think this is a waste of time, in response to 2).
Is the purpose not to smooth out the peaks and valleys of the wood boiler heat output? I could be wrong but I don't think that transferring heat was the primary objective, it was to use it as an item with a large thermal mass to store heat. I believe this concept has been put to use in some town in Finland on a mass scale.
@@paulmcewen7384🤦♂️
To store heat…does the circ shut off? I don’t see any temp controller/tstat. Furthermore is there a mixing valve somewhere? How did he have 160 in boiler and 100 in GH? I’d dump primary boiler heat into that battery then shut off or if the underground insulated pipe is that inefficient I’d start over.
Edit: I just looked at his other vid of how the boiler is setup/plumbed. I’m done commenting 🤦♂️The shop appears to be the only thing plumbed right on one of the primary loops
@@garny3766 I'm no plumber, I don't see the rationale for there needing to be a a shutoff for the circ (circuit? circulation pump?). That barrel packed with sand is such a large thermal mass that I would think it would take a very long time to heat up to a point that would need to be shut off.
I could have this wrong but is his plan to have that sand battery on the return leg of his heating loop, in order to "bank" some of that heat inside the greenhouse, as well as moderate the change in temperature over time (as the wood boiler reduces in heat output over the night, the barrel has been banking heat and now starts to dissipate it into the air around it).
I can't speak to any of the plumbing code stuff, no idea there. I'm just purely curious of how this would function as a concept.
@@paulmcewen7384 study primary/secondary hydronic plumbing, head loss calculations, stress corrosion cracking, cold water return protection. I believe there is soooo many modifications that need to be done before we even worry about the battery.
I’m not cutting up your efforts or being a know it all. If that feed is coming to your greenhouse directly from the boiler, you are losing a massive amount of heat. Either way, even if you are heating that greenhouse with the return line from any other buildings on the property, the return going into your stove is way too low. A return temperature at the stove that low will eventually rot out your water, jacket, and backside of the fire box. I used to be a small manufacturer of.Owb’s.
So what is the solution? Smaller loops?
To answer your question, the greenhouse is at the end of that heating loop. It first heats our home and keeps it at a comfortable 70 degrees. It then returns outward to the greenhouse first to dump any residual BTUs, before returning the boiler. So all in all it travels through about 600 ft of insulated underground tubing. On average there is about a 20 degree temperature difference on return to the boiler. thank you for your input.
@@NorleyFamilyFarms I guess I was a little confused. I thought you were running a return differential of at least 69°. 160° stove temperature and a 91° return temperature or less when it reaches the stove, on that loop. I must have misunderstood the video.
@@Stoney00075 to answer your question not necessarily a smaller loop, but less heat draw on the loop. OR. Another way to compensate is to install a thermostatic valve at the boiler. Some manufacturers require this for the warranty. Central boiler is one of them off the top of my head. The goal is you don’t want your return temperature anymore than 30° lower than the water temperature inside the boiler. It will cause condensation and rot the boiler out. And I’m not talking about condensation in the fire box. The condensation, as crazy as it sounds, will be inside the water jacket itself under the water. It usually occurs where the returning water, rubs or kisses the inside of the water, jacket and backside of the fire box. Think of patches of microscopic oxygen molecules, stuck to the inside of the stove under the water. This phenomena also increases at cooler operating temperatures, that’s why all manufacturers of open systems require a minimum operating temperature of 180°. There are some boilers you can get away with this because they are designed for a batch burn with storage. One example is a Garn. But your typical open system will rot out fairly quickly if you don’t maintain a consistent water temperature. In addition to my excavation business, I own a commercial welding shop. I have personally seen this damage after cutting open a leaking boiler. You will see eroded metal in the path of the return water. Not necessarily caused by poor water quality, but after talking to the customer, cool return temperatures.