Extra Water Capacity on a Boiler System

 
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JB Sparks
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Post by JB Sparks » Fri. Dec. 26, 2008 8:39 am

Good morning everyboby,
I hope everyone had a joyous christmas. Ours was very relaxing, which at my age, that's the way I like it.

I'm making plans for refining my system in the spring. With the help of Freddy and his great ideas i'll be making some plumbing modifications, so I thought i'd run this idea and see what anybody thinks about it.

I have read from time to time on this great forum that adding water capacity can be an improvement. I recently got an old electric hot water heater that a friend no longer wanted. So I stripped the outer jacket off and cleaned out the inside and now I have this 52 gal. tank ready to use for something.

My question is will adding water capacity make for a smoother runing system and how would I plumb it into the system? I now have my coal-fired and the oil-fired boilers runing in parallel and working beautifully. I'm wondering if I add 52 gal. water capacity to the existing 45 gal. capacity that when a zone calls for heat there would be a slower demand for heat on the coal boiler, there-by conserving on coal. Now that I have everything running good, i'm thinking about ways to lower coal consumption. So far i'm using about 40 to 50# a day, heating 1800 sqft. and DHW. Not bad, but if I can make it better i'd like to.

What do you guys think? Ya, I know I got way to much time on my hands :lol:

Thanks
JB


 
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Post by Flyer5 » Fri. Dec. 26, 2008 10:24 am

JB Sparks wrote:Good morning everyboby,
I hope everyone had a joyous christmas. Ours was very relaxing, which at my age, that's the way I like it.

I'm making plans for refining my system in the spring. With the help of Freddy and his great ideas i'll be making some plumbing modifications, so I thought i'd run this idea and see what anybody thinks about it.

I have read from time to time on this great forum that adding water capacity can be an improvement. I recently got an old electric hot water heater that a friend no longer wanted. So I stripped the outer jacket off and cleaned out the inside and now I have this 52 gal. tank ready to use for something.

My question is will adding water capacity make for a smoother runing system and how would I plumb it into the system? I now have my coal-fired and the oil-fired boilers runing in parallel and working beautifully. I'm wondering if I add 52 gal. water capacity to the existing 45 gal. capacity that when a zone calls for heat there would be a slower demand for heat on the coal boiler, there-by conserving on coal. Now that I have everything running good, i'm thinking about ways to lower coal consumption. So far i'm using about 40 to 50# a day, heating 1800 sqft. and DHW. Not bad, but if I can make it better i'd like to.

What do you guys think? Ya, I know I got way to much time on my hands :lol:

Thanks
JB
From what I have heard or read . Because coal is such a nice steady heat it is the most efficent with a smaller water system . Unlike wood where it burns really hot for a short time then cools rapidly needing a lot of storage . May be other opinions though . Dave

 
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JB Sparks
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Post by JB Sparks » Fri. Dec. 26, 2008 2:33 pm

Thanks for the reply Flyer5. Like I said I probably got to much time on my hands and like to play with my new toy.
JB

 
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Post by djackman » Fri. Dec. 26, 2008 3:23 pm

JB Sparks wrote: I'm wondering if I add 52 gal. water capacity to the existing 45 gal. capacity that when a zone calls for heat there would be a slower demand for heat on the coal boiler, there-by conserving on coal.
You nailed it right there, or IOW, faster response time to the house since you're not waiting for the coal to catch up.

Not sure if it would save coal since you're effectively "pre burning" coal for that added capacity.

Might need to resize/add expansion tank with the added capacity.

 
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Post by LsFarm » Fri. Dec. 26, 2008 5:58 pm

Adding water for heat storage is a trick the wood burning folks use.. Coal systems work best with lower system capacity.. I had a lot of capacity in my 'big Bertha' wood/coal boiler.. it took forever to recover from a sudden BTU load.. My current AA 260 boiler only holds about ~30 gallons of water, my 'Big Bertha held about 250 gallons.. The AA260 will recover in 1/10th the time..

I'd save you time and money.. if you want to play and experiment, rig it up with extra ball valves and bypasses, so you can try the system with and without the extra storage..

Greg L.

 
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Post by JB Sparks » Fri. Dec. 26, 2008 7:53 pm

djackman and Greg L,
One says it's a good idea and one says it's of no help, hmmmmmm. Both reasonings make sense. Guess i'll have to wait and see if we get more ideas on this.
Thanks for the input.

Greg, I went over to etribuna's house today to see his AA130. I was amazed at that boiler and impressed watching it operate. A real nice boiler and etribuna did a real nice job with the install.

 
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Post by LsFarm » Sat. Dec. 27, 2008 12:01 am

You will find lots of wood burning folks on https://www.hearth.com using hot water storage, but you won't find many if any coal burning folks here using hot water storage.. coal is so consistant, and controlable.. that you don't need to store the heat from the combustion peaks.. you control the peaks with coal, with wood you have to deal with them..

Greg L


 
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Post by Freddy » Sat. Dec. 27, 2008 6:43 am

Djackman comment about it having faster response time would be correct with some coal boilers, but the AA & AHS make heat very, very fast. Even with a slower boiler, I don't think extra water capacity would ever, ever, save coal. The reason that you'd get faster response with the extra tank is would be because you already spent the coal. Once you wrap your brain around that, you realize that now you have to maintain the heat in the tank & that would take extra coal.
Use the tank as a tempering tank for your domestic hot water. Make (don't buy) a solar panel for it. Nowwwww you're saving money.

 
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Post by coaledsweat » Sat. Dec. 27, 2008 11:10 am

Most efficient heat storage systems are in the 800+ gallon range to start, I would find something else to waste my time, money and talent on. The savings come from running the boiler as hard as you can as long as you can, I don't see it saving enough to make it worth your while though.

 
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Post by JB Sparks » Sat. Dec. 27, 2008 2:50 pm

OK, so we don't add extra water capacity to the boiler system as it would be counter productive (no savings). I agree that using the tank for tempering the DHW especially in this town as our resevoirs are shallow, which means the cold water in the summer is only just cool and in the winter it's just above freezing so a tempering tank makes sense.

So the question now is this hot water tank I got was a mess when I got it, the fiberglass lining was crumbled into a heap in the bottom of the tank, so cleaned that out, also took the outer shell and insulation off so now have a clean steel water tank.Can I use this as a tempering tank for DHW considering there is no longer a fiberglass liner in it?

Originaly I took the tank to use as a dump zone, but I came up with a better idea for that. I got a 4 pole relay and tied it into the circuit so that on over-shoot all three zones come at once and that will drop the over shoot temp down 20* in about 2 or 3 minutes so I don't need the tank for that anymore.

Have I told you guys how much I like burning coal lately.......No!!...Oh sorry! I sure do like burning coal!!!! :D
My only regret is that I didn't started 30 years ago instead of burning wood all those years, well actually only 15 of those years.

 
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Post by Freddy » Sat. Dec. 27, 2008 4:15 pm

Fiberglass inside? Maybe to keep it from rusting? I guess no harm if it's gone, just might corrode at some point. Maybe put a new anode in it?

 
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Post by JB Sparks » Sat. Dec. 27, 2008 7:16 pm

Freddy,
Did you make your solar hot water panels. Did give that some thought as a way not to the oil boiler during summer months.

 
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Post by Freddy » Sat. Dec. 27, 2008 7:50 pm

I have no solar panels at this point.... but have given lot's of thought to them.

 
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Post by djackman » Sat. Dec. 27, 2008 9:13 pm

JB Sparks wrote:Originaly I took the tank to use as a dump zone, but I came up with a better idea for that. I got a 4 pole relay and tied it into the circuit so that on over-shoot all three zones come at once and that will drop the over shoot temp down 20* in about 2 or 3 minutes so I don't need the tank for that anymore.
Someone commented on another thread about the dump zone "wasting heat" - which it sort of is - and to try moving the dump zone temp enable up. I moved mine from 180 to just under 190 as a test. The boiler temp settles out at ~185, dump zone almost never comes on anymore.

Freddy - thanks for adding the caveat about "slow boiler'... that was my frame of mind. Forced combustion air is a world away from natural air in response time.

 
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Post by JB Sparks » Sat. Dec. 27, 2008 9:47 pm

djackman,
Your right I moved the dump temp. up to 190*. That works pretty good, doesn't come on much anymore. That is if I pay attention to what hell i'm doing. The other morning I was reloading and shaking down the ash, I have been leaving the ash door open for a few minutes to get the fire going. Just about that time my friend came over to go out for breakfast. We left and I forgot to close the ash door. Needless to say, i'm glad I came back home in about an hour. All circulators were runing just holding the temp at 195*. You can bet i'll never do that again.


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