As long as you have some place for the heat to go so the coolant doesn’t boil, and room for the coolant to expand… I had a friend mess one of these up once, and closed the valves to the circuit thru the stove. The explosion and re-distribution of the stove contents from the inside to the outside when the tube ruptured had a pretty spectacular result. At least no one got hurt. Unless you built it to run dry, and have thought out a scheme to drainback all the fluid from the heatex coils so it has nothing to boil, you will always need the circ pump and the house calling for heat whenever you have a fire. One idea might be a circ pump and a fan-coil unit in the garage that circulates the coolant locally to the stove and dissipates the heat in the garage keeping the coolant from boiling in the coils… another thing to consider is what happens if you loose power? Can the system handle and dissipate the pressure caused by halted coolant boiling in the coils? A UPS powering the pumps would buy you some time for the fire to burn down, or another pressure relief at the heat exchanger? nicely done, I like having alternatives…
Yes, good point- just like a water heater- there shouldn't be a shutoff valve on the hot side to prevent over-pressure. Maybe a pressure tank would be prudent for a long-term install.
@@chrisE815 Also, the importance of having a working pressure relief valve. A local home exploded and damaged several others nearby after some clown capped the PRV. It was a pretty impressive explosion, which we felt and heard about 4 miles away.
@@DeathAngelHRA I'm a plumber. I walked into a service call for a blowout on a fitting on the domestic hot recirculation line. PRV was capped, the hwt was in the ceiling right over the cash.. the failure of the fitting probably saved the employees life.
I love the heating system you've put together. Having wood as a backup system is just plain smart. Please share the design info for your heat exchanger so others can think about doing the same thing. Difficult times ahead and we need more people to be suitably prepared to cope with outages and fail over to their renewable backup systems.
only on small , inefficient stoves. I had one and got tired of feeding it every 4 hours, got a bigger efficient stove and only had to feed it once every 12 hours. the 8 and up diameter flues waste energy as well, I stick with 6" flues
I have longed to build a house with under floor or in slab heating. I’m 67+ now, so I’m running out of time, but you never know what the future will bring. Great work on this project and I love your garage.
This fire pit is one of a few covered pits that is on the list th-cam.com/users/postUgkxAU9pOCSV9Y5JprooHvfxTpOrt4hx8uRM of approved products for Disney Fort Wilderness. The product served its purpose well and provided excellent fires throughout the evening. We were able to open the door and do s'mores, but I had to be careful because the handle was a bit hot on occasions. Additionally, I wish they had replaced some of the standard nuts with lock nuts in some places. We lost the door handle after just a couple of days of usage. Not a deal breaker, just a recommendation. I still give it 5 stars.
Ya buddy. Well done. I have been watching chimney heater vids for a long while and you graciously shared your success for us all. I always wondered about just this subject. I am now building a house by myself with a couple part time unskilled laborers. Having seen your system I will be sure and tuck some lines back to the boiler room from the wood stoves. I was under the impression this would not work. My only regret is not insulating and running pex in my detached shop. The rocket mass heater could have pulled double duty. MUCH APPRECIATED!! Kind sir.
50deg C is the dewpoint for flue gases in a wodburner. If your getting return temperatures below this back to the heat exchanger then you will be getting condensation. Suggest you incorporate a return water temperature sensor to inhibit water flow at low temperatures and incorporate 3 port mixing valve to limit the temperature of water entering your underfloor heating system. Maybe consider a thermal store that is heated by the heat exchanger. This would be a normal component in a modern biomass boiler fed heating system.
@towerdave4836 on all our biomass systems a loading valve used to combat this. if overlooked it will rot out a boiler/stove in no time. stacking the exergy with a thermal store/sized buffer is the way forward. mixing the radiant floor would be for more comfort imo.
I love it! Canada is basically screwed up...my garage is at 71 degrees fahrenheit, while my boiler is at 32 Celsius. Remember, my house is exactly 3000sqft and my car is 96 inches wide by about 3000millimeters long by 5ft tall while the garage is only 2.5meters and it has about 2.5miles of pex embedded in it at a pressure of about 4atm, no wait I meant 5000Torr. Yeah my car's engine is usually idling at 3000rpm which is a little bit high. But it's only a tad higher than my lawnmowers spindle at 200Hz. And bare in mind I'm totally just a normal guy, I only measure about 45 pikas, 3iphones, 1 banana and 3 Motorola edge pixels tall! And the whole thing is working well if you keep feeding it enough wood. Right now I'm putting in about 547 1/2cups of wood into the stove. 35.71 Cheeto bags and 75 maple leafs to be exact. I also have to blow about 2300 cfm of fresh air loaded with about 20kilomoles of CO2 from our three visitors. LOL.
You hit it out of the ball park. We would all love to know more about your system. Please keep us up to date. I want to copy you system. How about a kit form for the rest of us. You rock man. Jeff. N714LG. RV-10 owner.
I love the idea! The real issue is what temp you are supplying to your floors and if you are cracking the glycol as it moves through the heat exchanger. You need to check the PH of the glycol. If the differences between the temp going into the floor and coming out of the floor is to great then you will damage the concrete and even the floor covering. That boiler controlled the water temperatures to protect the floor. In the photos I didn't see where you delta with the high temperatures of the watet
Nice and innovative system! Good work. -30 C is cold and I am impressed you can keep your home warm in those temperatures. Definitely pays to have high insulation and multiple ways of heating. I just finished installing the first layer of 2" foam sealed with canned spray foam in the interior 2x4 14" stud bays throughout my two story old 1912 four square house with east looking dormer and full basement. She has never been this warm in 110 years. I would like to transition from natural gas heating to renewably powered electricity and a large solar air heater.
Wonderful ingenuity and craftsmanship, lovely house construction, too! Thank you for sharing your wonderful heat source and how well it performed, albeit with an appetite for wood!
Losing the boiler only happens in the winter. But it could easily be Jan, Feb or March too. I love the boiler plate steel wood stove area. That seems like the best place to have a wood stove that I have ever seen.
Nice video. Great explanation of your system. Not surprised that you go through a lot of firewood base on your outdoor temperatures. I know where I live in Southern New England anytime it gets into the single digits Fahrenheit, my fuel oil boiler runs pretty consistently. Thanks
IMPRESSIVE... You really went all out... My friends have a pretty basic system... 3 thermostats which regulate glycol flow to 3 separate sections of their house... They light there stove maybe once a day. The stove itself was build by a local well-known welder / fabrication shop. The only thing I would do differently is create an isolated 12v system for circulation
Nice work on that heat exchanger on the stove pipe. I did notice that you said it was 38 at the bottom of the tank and 39 at the top which makes me ask if you may have your glycol flow reversed. For the most efficient heat transfer you need a counter flow of the glycol against the heat source. What I'm saying is that the cooler glycol returning from the radiant floor tubing should enter the top of that heat exchanger and exit at the bottom to return to the radiant floor tubing. The heat is greatest at the bottom of the stove pipe closest to the fire and cooler at the top so you want to have a counter flow against that. I have no doubt that it is heating your house but it if you have the proper direction of flow it will be more efficient and heat better. Just sayin'...
@@Tryanythingonce Before you switch the lines make sure of the direction the flow is going now just to be sure. There are directional markers on the pump then trace your tubing. I noticed that you had all red tubing so unless it is marked that might be a bit of a challenge. I wasn't trying to be critical of your work but when I noticed the temperature being higher at the top it made me think that the direction of flow was backwards. I was just trying to be helpful. Please let me know how it goes.
In theory though as water warms it rises naturally which would pull the water up through the heat exchanger and push it to your boiler circulators ( I guess you have it tied in like that?
You have a lot of Grundfoss pumps, I only use one Alpha 2 pump ,for my central heating system (1800 square feet house) and one for the driveway heating. Thanks for uploading the video :-)
In sweden i have seen some auto pellet/wood burning heater. Basicly if you feed it wood it wont use pellets. But if you forget it will add pellets. Pretty neat. Also heated floors is nice even as a swede that has only wood floors and does not wear shoes inside.
Ahoy Ivan from Shropshire, UK. Great job, and a very good video. Delighted that Canada is still reaching the negative temperatures you are experiencing. Would be depressing if it weren't. I have 3 Clearview Log Burning stoves in my 300 year old house, and recently considered installing a 4th with a heat exchanger. The concern was the amount of wood I would additionally consume. Our central heating is fuelled with Kerosine and in the end it seemed easier to remain on liquid fuel. Hugh
Why wouldn’t Canada be reaching negative temperatures in winter? Please tell me you don’t believe that nonsense about climate change being peddled by the tiny Swedish Elf puppet and Soros funded death cult fools.
When I was a kid we lived in a 5 bedroom old farm home without insulation. My parents installed a large franklin wood burning stove. With a family of 8 with a dog and living on a PDNY pay back in the 70’s was rough. When i got a little older my father and i drilled holes on both sides of the stove and rant cast pipe with a circulator pump behind it. We hooked it up to the hot water heating system. The only the we had to do was remember to turn on the pump before starting the fire. The gas company thought we were turning the gas meter around. We didn’t pay for heat for years.
Had you been able to put the return pipe from the stove into the water heter tank higher than the supply...you wouldn't have need a pump.(Thermosyphon) That "flat" pipe can also create a steam explosion if you fail to turn on the pump...or the electricity or pump fail....
that top vent needs a t and a relief valve... You have a bomb there right now. The one on the boiler is to far away to provide correct protection if you were to get a run away situation. If you fill the fire place with wood then go to bed and the electric goes out or the pump stops pumpoing the glycol will boil and go kaboom boom!
My respect for using the Celsius scale, but my greatest admiration for your work. You saved your family. If you're annoyed at feeding the stove constantly, the simplest solution might do you great. Get a bigger one where you can fit more wood at one point and keep it going longer.
I wonder how much flue temp you drop with this exchanger. I was going to do something similar but decided not to because of creosote build up from low flue temps. Honestly if I had a place like yours I would run a outdoor wood boiler. That would heat your entire home with one heat source. That's what I ended up doing.
I highly doubt that heat exchanger lowers it that much if it did the water wouldn’t siphon well. Besides new epa stoves burn stupid efficient my new wood furnace has an exhaust temp that is hundreds of degrees cooler than my old 1995 wood stove.
Did my woodstove a little different, but I’m not trying to heat a whole house. Just a huge 35x40 garage/shop with over 12 ft high ceiling. I already acquired a metal stand somewhere so that didn’t cost me anything. I picked up a used fireplace insert woodstove so it’s triple wall on the sides of the stove and doesn’t get hot on the outside of the stove no matter how hot your fire gets? Stove basically designed to have a fan connected to blow air between the 3 layers of metal on the stove to push the heat out vents in the front of the stove. The top of the stove does get hot and there’s enough room to cook on it if you needed/wanted to. Majority of the heat goes right up the chimney in these woodstoves as I’m sure most everyone knows! So what I did is took 2 55 gallon drums and turned them on their sides. Cut one hole the size of the woodstove chimney pipe 8” on the bottom of the barrel and 2 holes on each end of the barrel opposite side of the lower 8” hole. Did the same thing on the second barrel. Bought two of those barrel woodstove kits to use the bolt on parts around the chimney holes for a better connection to the woodstove pipe. So the first barrel goes on top the woodstove with the one chimney hole on the bottom towards the woodstove. Then the two chimney holes on top gets two 12” long 8 “ chimney pipes. Next barrel goes on with the two chimney hole facing down this time going over the two 8” chimney pipes. Now you have one 8” hole on the top of the barrel to run the rest of your chimney pipe up and out the roof. Nice thing about fireplace inserts is most are built much deeper then the free standing woodstoves normally. So I can load the stove with 22 “ long chunks of fire wood no problem! Basically the woodstove basically just a firebox now and majority of the heat comes off those two 55 gallon barrels that start putting off heat almost the second you get a fire started and those 2 barrels will run you right out of the shop if you have the stove burning full force for very long. The actual woodstove pipe doesn’t get very hot at all since most the heat gets used in the 2 barrels. First woodstove I’ve seen done this way so far. Yours probably comes the closest to it that I’ve seen so far. Neither of our stove designs may not be the prettiest to look at, but their both more efficient than they were originally intended to be with making heat. Like you, my woodstove not in the front room where everyone sees it. It’s out in the garage/shop where looks are not as important! LOL
You wrote that "...The actual woodstove pipe doesn’t get very hot at all ..." That means you will have a lot of creosote built up in the pipe. It will probably cause a chimney fire which is very dangerous and could burn your house down.
Cudos on your fancy garage and equal kudos to your HVAC/Plumber for having pride in the install of your radiant heat pumps. Digging the confidence in making a vid in your pajamas too :) Question for you: if the unforseen should occur and your home burns up are you prepared to battle your homeowners insurance for the claim money? I admire your ingenuity, but can only wonder about your new home being protected.
Come on Nancy. U can look at it and tell it’s not gonna happen. Grade A craftsmanship there. I’m sorry for u tht ur momma left u with a lot her dna and daddy not enough... man. Up
Great idea...I have been looking for something like this for along time. I live in Canada as well, this would work. Thanks for the video. Would be nice to incorporate it into a central fireplace
Any problems with overheating? I know that is a concern with in floor heating. The tubing max heat might be a problem? Generally it used to be that design temperatures for in floor were in the neighborhood of 110F-130F. I can see that in the depth of winter that would be of little concern but the shoulder season could be problematic. I ran a wood stove with a water coil many years ago. I routed the domestic water through the coil then into the heat exchanger in my oil boiler where it reverse fed the heat into the boiler. Since the boiler was downstairs in the basement I used a circulating pump to make the heated water go down through the boiler and into a holding tank (hot water tank) where convection forced the warmer water upstairs and back into the stove aided by the pump. Worked very well but as you know heating water with wood really goes through the wood pile.
@@JohnSmith-yv6eq yeah, nothing I can do to make cool except go swimming. On the bright side the ocean is rarely under 26C and gets up to 29C in the summer.
This is basically how my house I grew up in works dbl fire place with back boiler in between which would flow under pressure to rads in each room beats forced air any day
I do air conditioning In Florida . Wrapping up a 4 year apprenticeship. This is what we were just learning on. Very cool and I really appreciate the video for my knowledge.
Sorry to hear about the Boiler . Wish we could have helped out . But Nice Set up with that exchanger . I know this is an Old video but we in the profession admire great systems . Godbless Ivan
I'm very interested, any plans and drawings available? I'm planning to buy my first house in a couple of weeks, preferable an unfinished one so I can DIY around a bit... Mad Vlad has made alternatives to gas heating quite reasonable for me as an European...
Wow, an NTI Trinity boiler blows up. Who woulda thunk it ? They are renowned for having issues. What blew ? I'm guessing the fan shut down ? Or the exhaust vent plugged and then the combustion chamber filled up with condensate, which damaged the insulation pad. They are actually pretty easy to fix. Ask me how I know. I don't know how many times we had to heat our house with the gas stove and fireplace when the boiler quit.
In retrospect next time I would cover the entire surface of the stove with a square steel box as big as I can make it. 15 to 20 gallon. And wrapping the tank with a ceramic blanket. This would cool off the room the stove is in. While moving most of the heat into the further part of the building.
I love the idea of dissimilar redundancy. Wood burning stove as a backup for a standard in floor radiant heating boiler is perfect. Glad you still had electricity, or that system wouldn’t work.
Great idea, can you get a bigger woodstove or wood furnace to gain more heat vs it all going up the chimney? Also can you put a damper on the chimney above the heat exchanger? This would slow the burn down, but maybe you need it on high to keep the temp steady for the demand which = more wood in the stove! Cool design.
This is a really good idea!! In case of power outs, having a backup battery as said in the comments would be really good! also if possible - to be able to control the air intake depending on the pressure in the system, and also the need for heat. What would be a good to use as an extra safety? Put NC and NO valves in the correct places, so that if the power do run out, or the control system stoppes working, an analog system automatically cools down, and dont overheat the coolant. Maybe some kind of electric magnet holding the air intake? At the same time, if the electricity goes down - it would be important to be able to heat the house so one does not frees, as well as for the water pipes in the house not to go bad.
I love it! I've had the exact same idea. Is it enough to heat your house? I'd have no idea how to size a system, size of the storage tank, length of the coil, etc. My house would have the stove inside, run it During the day, heat your slab in the bedrooms all day and the whole house at night, the mass on the slab hopefully holding the heat for a while, repeat.
You should run a gas line to the wood stove and turn it into your new boiler back up. How much heat are you losing through the exhaust with wood? I have a rocket mass heater only draw back is having to reload once a day. I thought about connecting a gas burner to it. The thing about rocket stoves is the heat loss post combustion is minimal.
But how often do you load wood? We had a central wood burning furnace in Wisconsin that burned fuel oil and was subsidized with 4ft logs up to 1ft round. Also your system does not heat if you are away for more than a day. I would upgrade Garage to a design house unit that burned wood and fuel oil.
I live in a Barndominum. The main house is 2700 sq ft with a 9000 sq ft 5 bay garage. I have radiant heat in the house. I want to put propylene glycol in the system. I have none in it now. How many gallons of glycol did you put in the system. What is the delta T of the exchanger? Thanks
Looks great, and a good job. here in the Uk we think its cold at -5C. Just one question, what happens when the electric goes off? here in the UK we have to have a radiator that is gravity fed so if the electric goes off the heat can still be dissipated, without the need for a pump.
Hey question your temperatures are pretty much the same top and bottom I was curious does your supply water come in from the bottom of the top if it comes from the bottom look at switching your supply feed from the bottom to the top and look up counterflow and how it works by doing this you'll increase your water temperature Outlet
Nice work, I'd consider loosing the glycol. It pumps hard, is corrosive, and makes a mess. I heat 3,200 square feet in northern Maine with 100% wood for 15 years. Gasification boiler and radiant slab.
@@OKuusava I think you need to do your research. Glycol isn't initially, but study what happens when it is a few years old, or when it is subject to elevated temperatures.
@@OKuusava I am an ASE master mechanic. As well as an HVAC tech believe it or not. So I have lots of first hand experience with both the automotive world and heating world. All I will say is please do your own research on glycol in heating systems. Don't take my word for it as obviously you haven't.
I have a Weil McLain boiler running on LP. It has a cast iron core but modern controls that make it quite efficient. Nothing fancy, i.e., and very dependable.
We are using an Italian made fireplace / boiler to heat out home with. It is computer controlled to vary the input air from outside of the house and to switch on the circulation pump to all 12 of the radiators in the home. There is a pressure relief valve in the system similar to your hot water heaters plus an emergency replenishment tank should the system blows the safety. To further protect the system there is a UPS system that utilizes two 12 volt 100 amp hour batteries instead of the 9 amp hour batteries that came with it. These are setup in series for the 24 volts needed by the inverter. This allows for at least 20 hours of power since the only item of importance connected is the circulation pump as well as the brains of the fireplace. Very economical to use, we average 10-12 metric tons of wood used during one heating season. At 130 euro per ton it is far cheaper than using the fuel oil boiler that consumes 3.9 liters per hour for the first two hours and then it drops to about 2 liters per hour maintaining the temperature at a cost of almost €1.38 per liter running for 16 hours per day.
Not sure what would give up first in our Edwardian UK house (circa 1815) at minus 30c 🤣 Ran for a day on the burner while power was out and temps were good. Only a thousand sqft though (you've got so much space??!) and outside temps probably averaged +5c. 👍
Cool, I have the same system but I use it to heat water... I converted the stove to gas though... I was tired of chopping wood and feeding the damm thing.
Not sure if this has been mentioned but, your circulator pumps are mounted wrong. They all should be vertically mounted. Your install will lead to cavitation.
Make sure you have a relief valve on the top of that heat exchanger. And a UPS on that pump in case of power outage. To keep that exchanger pump going.
I would look in to a far more efficient wood burner than a glass door wood stove. I have had quite a few of that style and now have a daka forced air wood furnace. Looking at your design and hearing that you are only running a thru pipe and reclaimer, I would also advise you in to using the heatilator idea, lots of internal exchanger tubes, I would also add brass freshwater tubes, or far more glycol and set your self a coil in the hot water heater
Heating an entire family house with one of those tiny 6" wood stoves is impressive.
As long as you have some place for the heat to go so the coolant doesn’t boil, and room for the coolant to expand… I had a friend mess one of these up once, and closed the valves to the circuit thru the stove. The explosion and re-distribution of the stove contents from the inside to the outside when the tube ruptured had a pretty spectacular result. At least no one got hurt. Unless you built it to run dry, and have thought out a scheme to drainback all the fluid from the heatex coils so it has nothing to boil, you will always need the circ pump and the house calling for heat whenever you have a fire. One idea might be a circ pump and a fan-coil unit in the garage that circulates the coolant locally to the stove and dissipates the heat in the garage keeping the coolant from boiling in the coils… another thing to consider is what happens if you loose power? Can the system handle and dissipate the pressure caused by halted coolant boiling in the coils? A UPS powering the pumps would buy you some time for the fire to burn down, or another pressure relief at the heat exchanger? nicely done, I like having alternatives…
Yes, good point- just like a water heater- there shouldn't be a shutoff valve on the hot side to prevent over-pressure. Maybe a pressure tank would be prudent for a long-term install.
@@chrisE815 Also, the importance of having a working pressure relief valve. A local home exploded and damaged several others nearby after some clown capped the PRV. It was a pretty impressive explosion, which we felt and heard about 4 miles away.
@@DeathAngelHRA Boom!
you cant drain a coil he is just setting himself up for flash steam explosion.
@@DeathAngelHRA I'm a plumber. I walked into a service call for a blowout on a fitting on the domestic hot recirculation line. PRV was capped, the hwt was in the ceiling right over the cash.. the failure of the fitting probably saved the employees life.
I love the heating system you've put together. Having wood as a backup system is just plain smart. Please share the design info for your heat exchanger so others can think about doing the same thing. Difficult times ahead and we need more people to be suitably prepared to cope with outages and fail over to their renewable backup systems.
Good point on mentioning "it's taking a lot of wood"
!!!
Relentless wood loading is required with wood , as you mentioned!
only on small , inefficient stoves. I had one and got tired of feeding it every 4 hours, got a bigger efficient stove and only had to feed it once every 12 hours. the 8 and up diameter flues waste energy as well, I stick with 6" flues
I have longed to build a house with under floor or in slab heating. I’m 67+ now, so I’m running out of time, but you never know what the future will bring. Great work on this project and I love your garage.
I was just talking to my wife about adding something like this to our future house! Thanks for providing video proof of concept :)
This fire pit is one of a few covered pits that is on the list th-cam.com/users/postUgkxAU9pOCSV9Y5JprooHvfxTpOrt4hx8uRM of approved products for Disney Fort Wilderness. The product served its purpose well and provided excellent fires throughout the evening. We were able to open the door and do s'mores, but I had to be careful because the handle was a bit hot on occasions. Additionally, I wish they had replaced some of the standard nuts with lock nuts in some places. We lost the door handle after just a couple of days of usage. Not a deal breaker, just a recommendation. I still give it 5 stars.
Ya buddy. Well done. I have been watching chimney heater vids for a long while and you graciously shared your success for us all. I always wondered about just this subject. I am now building a house by myself with a couple part time unskilled laborers. Having seen your system I will be sure and tuck some lines back to the boiler room from the wood stoves. I was under the impression this would not work. My only regret is not insulating and running pex in my detached shop. The rocket mass heater could have pulled double duty. MUCH APPRECIATED!! Kind sir.
50deg C is the dewpoint for flue gases in a wodburner. If your getting return temperatures below this back to the heat exchanger then you will be getting condensation. Suggest you incorporate a return water temperature sensor to inhibit water flow at low temperatures and incorporate 3 port mixing valve to limit the temperature of water entering your underfloor heating system. Maybe consider a thermal store that is heated by the heat exchanger. This would be a normal component in a modern biomass boiler fed heating system.
@towerdave4836 on all our biomass systems a loading valve used to combat this. if overlooked it will rot out a boiler/stove in no time. stacking the exergy with a thermal store/sized buffer is the way forward. mixing the radiant floor would be for more comfort imo.
I love it! Canada is basically screwed up...my garage is at 71 degrees fahrenheit, while my boiler is at 32 Celsius. Remember, my house is exactly 3000sqft and my car is 96 inches wide by about 3000millimeters long by 5ft tall while the garage is only 2.5meters and it has about 2.5miles of pex embedded in it at a pressure of about 4atm, no wait I meant 5000Torr. Yeah my car's engine is usually idling at 3000rpm which is a little bit high. But it's only a tad higher than my lawnmowers spindle at 200Hz. And bare in mind I'm totally just a normal guy, I only measure about 45 pikas, 3iphones, 1 banana and 3 Motorola edge pixels tall! And the whole thing is working well if you keep feeding it enough wood. Right now I'm putting in about 547 1/2cups of wood into the stove. 35.71 Cheeto bags and 75 maple leafs to be exact. I also have to blow about 2300 cfm of fresh air loaded with about 20kilomoles of CO2 from our three visitors. LOL.
You hit it out of the ball park. We would all love to know more about your system. Please keep us up to date. I want to copy you system. How about a kit form for the rest of us. You rock man. Jeff. N714LG. RV-10 owner.
I love the idea! The real issue is what temp you are supplying to your floors and if you are cracking the glycol as it moves through the heat exchanger. You need to check the PH of the glycol. If the differences between the temp going into the floor and coming out of the floor is to great then you will damage the concrete and even the floor covering. That boiler controlled the water temperatures to protect the floor. In the photos I didn't see where you delta with the high temperatures of the watet
Nice and innovative system! Good work. -30 C is cold and I am impressed you can keep your home warm in those temperatures. Definitely pays to have high insulation and multiple ways of heating. I just finished installing the first layer of 2" foam sealed with canned spray foam in the interior 2x4 14" stud bays throughout my two story old 1912 four square house with east looking dormer and full basement. She has never been this warm in 110 years. I would like to transition from natural gas heating to renewably powered electricity and a large solar air heater.
Very Interesting, Nice job. The insulation factor is the secret. I have seen many floor heating units fail due to the R value of the building. Peace
Wonderful ingenuity and craftsmanship, lovely house construction, too!
Thank you for sharing your wonderful heat source and how well it performed, albeit with an appetite for wood!
Losing the boiler only happens in the winter. But it could easily be Jan, Feb or March too. I love the boiler plate steel wood stove area. That seems like the best place to have a wood stove that I have ever seen.
I know this is an old vid but I love the metal heat reflective cove you've built really good idea and looks great too in my opinion!
Nice video. Great explanation of your system.
Not surprised that you go through a lot of firewood base on your outdoor temperatures. I know where I live in Southern New England anytime it gets into the single digits Fahrenheit, my fuel oil boiler runs pretty consistently.
Thanks
IMPRESSIVE... You really went all out...
My friends have a pretty basic system... 3 thermostats which regulate glycol flow to 3 separate sections of their house... They light there stove maybe once a day.
The stove itself was build by a local well-known welder / fabrication shop.
The only thing I would do differently is create an isolated 12v system for circulation
Amazing system. Thank you for showing it off. Great work by all.
Nice work on that heat exchanger on the stove pipe. I did notice that you said it was 38 at the bottom of the tank and 39 at the top which makes me ask if you may have your glycol flow reversed. For the most efficient heat transfer you need a counter flow of the glycol against the heat source. What I'm saying is that the cooler glycol returning from the radiant floor tubing should enter the top of that heat exchanger and exit at the bottom to return to the radiant floor tubing. The heat is greatest at the bottom of the stove pipe closest to the fire and cooler at the top so you want to have a counter flow against that. I have no doubt that it is heating your house but it if you have the proper direction of flow it will be more efficient and heat better. Just sayin'...
That totally makes sense. Thank you. I will reverse it and see if I notice a difference. Much appreciated.
@@Tryanythingonce Before you switch the lines make sure of the direction the flow is going now just to be sure. There are directional markers on the pump then trace your tubing. I noticed that you had all red tubing so unless it is marked that might be a bit of a challenge.
I wasn't trying to be critical of your work but when I noticed the temperature being higher at the top it made me think that the direction of flow was backwards. I was just trying to be helpful.
Please let me know how it goes.
Thanks for the info as it is almost counter intuitive
In theory though as water warms it rises naturally which would pull the water up through the heat exchanger and push it to your boiler circulators ( I guess you have it tied in like that?
You have a lot of Grundfoss pumps, I only use one Alpha 2 pump ,for my central heating system (1800 square feet house) and one for the driveway heating.
Thanks for uploading the video :-)
In sweden i have seen some auto pellet/wood burning heater. Basicly if you feed it wood it wont use pellets. But if you forget it will add pellets. Pretty neat. Also heated floors is nice even as a swede that has only wood floors and does not wear shoes inside.
I find the video Very cool. Thanks for taking time to tell and show us this
Ahoy Ivan from Shropshire, UK. Great job, and a very good video. Delighted that Canada is still reaching the negative temperatures you are experiencing. Would be depressing if it weren't. I have 3 Clearview Log Burning stoves in my 300 year old house, and recently considered installing a 4th with a heat exchanger. The concern was the amount of wood I would additionally consume. Our central heating is fuelled with Kerosine and in the end it seemed easier to remain on liquid fuel. Hugh
Why wouldn’t Canada be reaching negative temperatures in winter? Please tell me you don’t believe that nonsense about climate change being peddled by the tiny Swedish Elf puppet and Soros funded death cult fools.
When I was a kid we lived in a 5 bedroom old farm home without insulation. My parents installed a large franklin wood burning stove. With a family of 8 with a dog and living on a PDNY pay back in the 70’s was rough. When i got a little older my father and i drilled holes on both sides of the stove and rant cast pipe with a circulator pump behind it. We hooked it up to the hot water heating system. The only the we had to do was remember to turn on the pump before starting the fire. The gas company thought we were turning the gas meter around. We didn’t pay for heat for years.
Had you been able to put the return pipe from the stove into the water heter tank higher than the supply...you wouldn't have need a pump.(Thermosyphon)
That "flat" pipe can also create a steam explosion if you fail to turn on the pump...or the electricity or pump fail....
Your garage is awesome
that top vent needs a t and a relief valve... You have a bomb there right now. The one on the boiler is to far away to provide correct protection if you were to get a run away situation.
If you fill the fire place with wood then go to bed and the electric goes out or the pump stops pumpoing the glycol will boil and go kaboom boom!
My guess, the tank is not under pressure... and a coil installed inside for heat exchange.
My respect for using the Celsius scale, but my greatest admiration for your work. You saved your family.
If you're annoyed at feeding the stove constantly, the simplest solution might do you great. Get a bigger one where you can fit more wood at one point and keep it going longer.
I wonder how much flue temp you drop with this exchanger. I was going to do something similar but decided not to because of creosote build up from low flue temps. Honestly if I had a place like yours I would run a outdoor wood boiler. That would heat your entire home with one heat source. That's what I ended up doing.
Im a fireplace expert and ex-sweep, and this is what I came to say.
I highly doubt that heat exchanger lowers it that much if it did the water wouldn’t siphon well. Besides new epa stoves burn stupid efficient my new wood furnace has an exhaust temp that is hundreds of degrees cooler than my old 1995 wood stove.
@@alexsimpson1324 what is a safe running flue temp? What is a safe flue temp drop.
Who cares you just clean the chimney
@@BEANS-O-MATICtransmissions if my old memory serves me correct somewhere around 320° you can start to condense……….
❤️🔥VERY NICE SYSTEM❤️🔥
Did my woodstove a little different, but I’m not trying to heat a whole house. Just a huge 35x40 garage/shop with over 12 ft high ceiling. I already acquired a metal stand somewhere so that didn’t cost me anything. I picked up a used fireplace insert woodstove so it’s triple wall on the sides of the stove and doesn’t get hot on the outside of the stove no matter how hot your fire gets? Stove basically designed to have a fan connected to blow air between the 3 layers of metal on the stove to push the heat out vents in the front of the stove. The top of the stove does get hot and there’s enough room to cook on it if you needed/wanted to. Majority of the heat goes right up the chimney in these woodstoves as I’m sure most everyone knows! So what I did is took 2 55 gallon drums and turned them on their sides. Cut one hole the size of the woodstove chimney pipe 8” on the bottom of the barrel and 2 holes on each end of the barrel opposite side of the lower 8” hole. Did the same thing on the second barrel. Bought two of those barrel woodstove kits to use the bolt on parts around the chimney holes for a better connection to the woodstove pipe. So the first barrel goes on top the woodstove with the one chimney hole on the bottom towards the woodstove. Then the two chimney holes on top gets two 12” long 8 “ chimney pipes. Next barrel goes on with the two chimney hole facing down this time going over the two 8” chimney pipes. Now you have one 8” hole on the top of the barrel to run the rest of your chimney pipe up and out the roof. Nice thing about fireplace inserts is most are built much deeper then the free standing woodstoves normally. So I can load the stove with 22 “ long chunks of fire wood no problem! Basically the woodstove basically just a firebox now and majority of the heat comes off those two 55 gallon barrels that start putting off heat almost the second you get a fire started and those 2 barrels will run you right out of the shop if you have the stove burning full force for very long. The actual woodstove pipe doesn’t get very hot at all since most the heat gets used in the 2 barrels. First woodstove I’ve seen done this way so far. Yours probably comes the closest to it that I’ve seen so far. Neither of our stove designs may not be the prettiest to look at, but their both more efficient than they were originally intended to be with making heat. Like you, my woodstove not in the front room where everyone sees it. It’s out in the garage/shop where looks are not as important! LOL
Id love to see some pictures of this. Sounds really interesting.
You wrote that "...The actual woodstove pipe doesn’t get very hot at all ..." That means you will have a lot of creosote built up in the pipe. It will probably cause a chimney fire which is very dangerous and could burn your house down.
You can cook on it...that's not hot?
But good work on the 55 gallon drum stove...
@@JohnSmith-yv6eq The stove might get hot enough to cook on, but my comment was regarding his statement about the PIPE not getting very hot.
@@steringp1434 in those types of systems the gasses that cause creosote are normally consumed in the barrel. Check out "rocket mass heater"
Cudos on your fancy garage and equal kudos to your HVAC/Plumber for having pride in the install of your radiant heat pumps. Digging the confidence in making a vid in your pajamas too :) Question for you: if the unforseen should occur and your home burns up are you prepared to battle your homeowners insurance for the claim money? I admire your ingenuity, but can only wonder about your new home being protected.
Come on Nancy. U can look at it and tell it’s not gonna happen. Grade A craftsmanship there. I’m sorry for u tht ur momma left u with a lot her dna and daddy not enough... man. Up
I'd say the only issue is the glycol over the stove since its combustible to some degree, straight water would probably eliminate that issue.
Great idea...I have been looking for something like this for along time. I live in Canada as well, this would work. Thanks for the video. Would be nice to incorporate it into a central fireplace
Any problems with overheating? I know that is a concern with in floor heating. The tubing max heat might be a problem? Generally it used to be that design temperatures for in floor were in the neighborhood of 110F-130F. I can see that in the depth of winter that would be of little concern but the shoulder season could be problematic. I ran a wood stove with a water coil many years ago. I routed the domestic water through the coil then into the heat exchanger in my oil boiler where it reverse fed the heat into the boiler. Since the boiler was downstairs in the basement I used a circulating pump to make the heated water go down through the boiler and into a holding tank (hot water tank) where convection forced the warmer water upstairs and back into the stove aided by the pump. Worked very well but as you know heating water with wood really goes through the wood pile.
I would like to see a follow up video if possible. I have similar plans for infloor heating of garage. Really nice house you have by the way
Impressive system, I’m in South Florida so when I turn off the AC it gets to 30c pretty quickly. I felt left out.
You have the opposite problem...
when an A/C unit fails....
what do you do?
(Phone the repairman?)
@@JohnSmith-yv6eq yeah, nothing I can do to make cool except go swimming. On the bright side the ocean is rarely under 26C and gets up to 29C in the summer.
This is basically how my house I grew up in works dbl fire place with back boiler in between which would flow under pressure to rads in each room beats forced air any day
Awesome. Do you have a tour of the house and cost to buildout. Thanks.
Very good to have an extra heating source 👌( sorry for my english)
I do air conditioning In Florida . Wrapping up a 4 year apprenticeship. This is what we were just learning on. Very cool and I really appreciate the video for my knowledge.
What an amazing backup to have for peace of mind. Good on yeah!
Hello thank you for the content . Just one question where do you live in Canada rough area that you can build slab on grade?
Southern Alberta.
Sorry to hear about the Boiler . Wish we could have helped out . But Nice Set up with that exchanger . I know this is an Old video but we in the profession admire great systems . Godbless Ivan
I'm very interested, any plans and drawings available?
I'm planning to buy my first house in a couple of weeks, preferable an unfinished one so I can DIY around a bit...
Mad Vlad has made alternatives to gas heating quite reasonable for me as an European...
Sweet video. I’m planning a pretty small ICF house and have considered the same system as a back up.
Look at the boiler failure as chance to see just how well built and insulated the house is .
Wow, an NTI Trinity boiler blows up. Who woulda thunk it ? They are renowned for having issues.
What blew ? I'm guessing the fan shut down ? Or the exhaust vent plugged and then the combustion chamber filled up with condensate, which damaged the insulation pad.
They are actually pretty easy to fix. Ask me how I know. I don't know how many times we had to heat our house with the gas stove and fireplace when the boiler quit.
They sent him a new one....
super cool garage boss.. boiler room looks official .
Needs a 500 gallon heat battery! You maintain the heat in the battery and you are golden, they do it in Germany.
I need more info about this. Is it just an insulated reservoir tank?
@@Tryanythingonce pretty much, This old House TH-cam channel did a blurb on their operations, really informative!
@@fbksfrank4 Found it
Thanks
I built one just like this. Running 300ft of tubing in a Adobe house. I have heated exclusively with it for 4 yrs now. I am at 8000 ft in Colorado.
In retrospect next time I would cover the entire surface of the stove with a square steel box as big as I can make it. 15 to 20 gallon. And wrapping the tank with a ceramic blanket. This would cool off the room the stove is in. While moving most of the heat into the further part of the building.
That’s encouraging! I live at 7,000ft in the Tetons and am looking at doing the same.
Great job mate. How do you regulate the temperature going through the pex pipes? And what does the the boiler look like on the inside?
Also interested to know about this. Bcz there must be a max temp of pex pipes and also on the floor finishing (ie laminated floor)?. Thanks!
I love the idea of dissimilar redundancy. Wood burning stove as a backup for a standard in floor radiant heating boiler is perfect. Glad you still had electricity, or that system wouldn’t work.
Great idea, can you get a bigger woodstove or wood furnace to gain more heat vs it all going up the chimney? Also can you put a damper on the chimney above the heat exchanger? This would slow the burn down, but maybe you need it on high to keep the temp steady for the demand which = more wood in the stove! Cool design.
This is a really good idea!! In case of power outs, having a backup battery as said in the comments would be really good! also if possible - to be able to control the air intake depending on the pressure in the system, and also the need for heat. What would be a good to use as an extra safety? Put NC and NO valves in the correct places, so that if the power do run out, or the control system stoppes working, an analog system automatically cools down, and dont overheat the coolant. Maybe some kind of electric magnet holding the air intake? At the same time, if the electricity goes down - it would be important to be able to heat the house so one does not frees, as well as for the water pipes in the house not to go bad.
I love it! I've had the exact same idea. Is it enough to heat your house? I'd have no idea how to size a system, size of the storage tank, length of the coil, etc.
My house would have the stove inside, run it During the day, heat your slab in the bedrooms all day and the whole house at night, the mass on the slab hopefully holding the heat for a while, repeat.
Super setup there 👌👌 One thing you can do to save on wood is to convert that stove into a waste oil burner
You should run a gas line to the wood stove and turn it into your new boiler back up. How much heat are you losing through the exhaust with wood? I have a rocket mass heater only draw back is having to reload once a day. I thought about connecting a gas burner to it. The thing about rocket stoves is the heat loss post combustion is minimal.
But how often do you load wood? We had a central wood burning furnace in Wisconsin that burned fuel oil and was subsidized with 4ft logs up to 1ft round.
Also your system does not heat if you are away for more than a day. I would upgrade Garage to a design house unit that burned wood and fuel oil.
See above re your duplicate posts.
Thats some boss shit you've done there!
I love ICF. When Jesus returns hes gonna give up carpentry and start building with ICF.
I live in a Barndominum. The main house is 2700 sq ft with a 9000 sq ft 5 bay garage. I have radiant heat in the house. I want to put propylene glycol in the system. I have none in it now. How many gallons of glycol did you put in the system. What is the delta T of the exchanger? Thanks
This thing is so G!! Thanks for sharing.
Looks great, and a good job. here in the Uk we think its cold at -5C.
Just one question, what happens when the electric goes off? here in the UK we have to have a radiator that is gravity fed so if the electric goes off the heat can still be dissipated, without the need for a pump.
They look like the tiniest lines are they 3/8 ? They don't look big enough for good flow.
Living like a rock star wood heaters
How much insulation does the ICS give you in R rating ??? Thanks
I curious about how you handle the stack fires from the creosote buildup around the heat extanger.
Hey question your temperatures are pretty much the same top and bottom I was curious does your supply water come in from the bottom of the top if it comes from the bottom look at switching your supply feed from the bottom to the top and look up counterflow and how it works by doing this you'll increase your water temperature Outlet
Nice work, I'd consider loosing the glycol. It pumps hard, is corrosive, and makes a mess.
I heat 3,200 square feet in northern Maine with 100% wood for 15 years. Gasification boiler and radiant slab.
Plus water holdbtu better
@@OKuusava I think you need to do your research. Glycol isn't initially, but study what happens when it is a few years old, or when it is subject to elevated temperatures.
@@OKuusava I am an ASE master mechanic. As well as an HVAC tech believe it or not. So I have lots of first hand experience with both the automotive world and heating world. All I will say is please do your own research on glycol in heating systems. Don't take my word for it as obviously you haven't.
What was the wood boiler you used?
@@blessedthistlefarmstead2481 Attack DPX45. Eastern European brand.
I have a Weil McLain boiler running on LP. It has a cast iron core but modern controls that make it quite efficient. Nothing fancy, i.e., and very dependable.
Cool idea, 2 words - thermal store.
Nice work ! I'm working on a similar system using a pellet stove
It looks fantastic. But does the heat exchanger cause the exhaust gasses to condensate (tar up) in the flu pipe?
I am surprised that there is no cellar. Is that typical for Canadian houses ?
What a great idea to get as many BTUs as you can out of the system!
We are using an Italian made fireplace / boiler to heat out home with. It is computer controlled to vary the input air from outside of the house and to switch on the circulation pump to all 12 of the radiators in the home. There is a pressure relief valve in the system similar to your hot water heaters plus an emergency replenishment tank should the system blows the safety. To further protect the system there is a UPS system that utilizes two 12 volt 100 amp hour batteries instead of the 9 amp hour batteries that came with it. These are setup in series for the 24 volts needed by the inverter. This allows for at least 20 hours of power since the only item of importance connected is the circulation pump as well as the brains of the fireplace. Very economical to use, we average 10-12 metric tons of wood used during one heating season. At 130 euro per ton it is far cheaper than using the fuel oil boiler that consumes 3.9 liters per hour for the first two hours and then it drops to about 2 liters per hour maintaining the temperature at a cost of almost €1.38 per liter running for 16 hours per day.
Are you having any issues with creosote building up in the chimney? A small indoor wood boiler may be a little more efficient
It would look so amazing with one of those antique Crawford parlor stoves.
Sweet setup, nice job 👍🇨🇦🇨🇦🍀
Looks like a good hot burn to minimize any creosote.
Nice lantern collection!
That is a serious mech room.
Not sure what would give up first in our Edwardian UK house (circa 1815) at minus 30c 🤣 Ran for a day on the burner while power was out and temps were good. Only a thousand sqft though (you've got so much space??!) and outside temps probably averaged +5c. 👍
Super cool design, thanks for sharing.
Well done! Great foresight
Cool, I have the same system but I use it to heat water... I converted the stove to gas though... I was tired of chopping wood and feeding the damm thing.
Not sure if this has been mentioned but, your circulator pumps are mounted wrong. They all should be vertically mounted. Your install will lead to cavitation.
Could you show the design of the heat exchanger?
Looks interesting but too complicated for me. Can't beat wood heat tho.
27 degrees below zero? You on the Arctic circle? Lol
Awesome setup 👌
I have been thinking of how to make someyhing like this to reclaim heat lost out the flue.great thinking
could you please post some plans of the heat exchanger
Wow that’s impressive for such a small boiler unit that’s only using your chimney I’m surprised you don’t have issues with draft
It sucks the boiler blew up, but you gotta admit, you were in your element keeping your castle alive during -30 temps 😂
Good work 🔥😎👍🏽
Good job! Good luck!
How did you create the heat exchanger?
Do you have plans or details to share?
yes please share
Make sure you have a relief valve on the top of that heat exchanger. And a UPS on that pump in case of power outage. To keep that exchanger pump going.
Could you post the plans to how you had that built.
I would look in to a far more efficient wood burner than a glass door wood stove.
I have had quite a few of that style and now have a daka forced air wood furnace.
Looking at your design and hearing that you are only running a thru pipe and reclaimer, I would also advise you in to using the heatilator idea, lots of internal exchanger tubes, I would also add brass freshwater tubes, or far more glycol and set your self a coil in the hot water heater
It's what he had in storage...so he used it....
until 14 days later the new boiler arrived from the manufacturer....