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there is a new 30% tax credit in the US when you purchase a high efficiency wood stove. On top of that Lowes and Homedepot stores discount their stoves by as much as 50% this time of the year. My father bought the same stove last year and cut his wood consumption by 50% . I'm pretty stoked to get rid of my old smoke draggon. Here are some photos:
drilling for the water heating loop
Loop installed
loop inside the stove. The first fire needs to be small to set the paint on the stove. Check out the stainless air induction tubes at the top. Once the fire gets hot they inject super heated air for the secondary burn. When that happens the tubes look like the ones in a gas oven shooting out blue flames. It is way cool.
a boiler drain valve installed at the lowest point of the system. A pop off valve and a thermometer at the stove. Not pictured at the storage tank are a small circulator pump, another pop off valve and an expansion tank.
New stove making free hot water. In the photo it still has a small fire but it can still make plenty of hot water even with such a small fire.
Way to go! The high efficiency stuff is awesome, just start it and throw a log on before you head to bed. Wake up and fine it still going in the morning...can't beat that. Unless, of course, its making hot water for you to have a shower with!
Great stuff Troy! Some time if you make it up this way, I have to take you to my buddys house. First to check out his Vintage Harleys, (43 WL, 47 last year knuckle-head, 50 pan-head) and secondly to see his wood burner. It heats his entire (large...) house. Fill it up and your good for days. Everything else in the house (read: hot water) is electric. At some point he wants to put in a windmill on the crest of the hill across from his house and be completely off the grid. Very cool stuff.
Oi! Looks like a very tight installation. You've got your high pressure blowoff, which is good. Circulator to storage tank is a good idea. I hope you realize you could potentially boil off your entire storage tank. Done incorrectly, these wood-fired types of systems have been known to explode. It looks like you know what you're doing, but for anybody else getting any ideas, be VERY careful.
Not trying to rain on anyone's parade, I do this efficiency thing every day. This is our company: http://www.reginc.com
Hey thanks everyone. I'm glad you all like it. Hey Von I really want to check out your buddy's place. I have a good friend that is producing his electro with a homebuilt windmill and solar panels. He even wrote a software program to monitor it all. Really cool stuff if you want to check it out: http://www.briery.com/wind_turbine/
Crowboy is correct if anyone is thinking about doing a hot water loop it has to be done right or it will kill someone. My father did a simular system back in the 70s so i learned a great deal from him, then I did years of research. One thing i did different than his system is to circulate the water through my thermal mass floors (175,000# of heat storage) during the night to help use up the massive amount of hot water this makes. It also helps distribute nice even heat through the house. The thermal mass floors store the heat like a thermal battery and slowly releases it over an extended period (nothing like stepping out of the shower onto a nice warm floor). And yes CC rider we have passive solar that we use to help heat the thermal mass in the house, However i can't remember the last time I saw the sun
The cool thing about the passive solar is if I can get 4-6 hrs of sun I have to let the fire go out but inturn I get alot of free heat.
One other thing I should point out is that there are no sweated fittings at the loop. It has brass couplings and brass nipples before the soldered fittings. I've read about where people soldered at the loop and the heat from the stove melted the solder-not good at all to have near boiling water blowing all over the place. Sorry for all the disclaimer stuff but...
So anyhow, If I can be of any help to anyone please send me a pm and I'll try to point you in the right direction.
You do a hell-of-a-lot better job of sweating copper pipes than I do.
Nice looking job. I wish I could replace our fireplace insert, it almost works better than an open fireplace. A stove like that would heat our whole house, and make the natural gas bill a lot smaller. And a heated floor would be awsome in the garage 8)
thanks for the props 4eyes. Cool that you picked up on that. I had lots of practice when I built my manifolds for my floor heat. I'll tell ya I was pretty bad at first.
I had an open fireplace in my old house and for the longest time I thought it made the other rooms in the house colder. then I'll be damned if Myth busters didn't prove it to be so. Anyhow I doubt if your insert is that bad However, you might check out Lowes for close outs and with the tax credit its almost like buying a used stove.
I was burning with a Timberline airtight stove which wasn't too bad but with the new stove I hope to cut my consumption in half.
Troy, your shit is the SHIT! I hate I am not going to be there for your gathering. I would really love to meet you and see your place first hand! Sounds like my dream house! I am a few years away from building my own house, but I plan to build it completely off the grid. Out in the woods on some family land and I want to be as efficient as possible since everything will have to run on stored power. The place I want to build is beside a 6.75 acre pond that has one drain with almost 40ft. of drop and a 14" diameter pipe. I want to use some hydroelectric from it and some solar. Not enough wind here to be efficient so, I will stick to hydro and solar with diesel generator back up, in case of the apocalypse! When it starts to come to fruition I would love to have you lend me some of your knowledge for the build and design. Having a farm and so-on I plan on having an in-ground diesel storage tank and pump, so the generator can sump directly from it. I will also have an in ground gasoline tank and pump as well, we are talking miles from the nearest store, so you have to be prepared. The old farm house is about 10 minutes up from where I plan to build and it currently has both tanks there, I will just move them if the EPA will let me use the old ones. I have researched several different companies who provide solar equipment and installation. The price seems very reasonable considering I will have no bills and the entire system comes with a 10 full coverage warranty! With the house being built around solar energy I think it would be no problem for me to rig a generator on to the batteries that is hydro powered by the flow from the pond, this way power is being stored even with no sun. If we hit a dry dark spell, then on with the diesel power! Heat is not as much of a factor here, cooling is the most important. I plan on running a open loop geothermal 32 SEER carrier unit for cooling and a high efficiency wood burner for heat. I am not sure about heating water yet, so some pointers there will be appreciated. I do plan on using well water with an electric pump but have a back-up system that with the turn of a valve can introduce filtered pond water into the system in the event the water table drops, which happens during our dry seasons from time to time. I am interested in your floors as I don't know much about them. I plan on having an external propane tank to provide cooking fuel and other possibly! The same company will visit monthly to fill all three fuel tanks, which should be the only bills I have to pay! Sorry for the novel, but I know you are interested in this kind of stuff and I could benefit from your knowledge!
Hell yeah man we need to get together. I planned my place out for 18 years. It evolved over time but I still made a few mistakes. But Damn bro that is a lake you are talking about and I'm so jealous! A hydro jet is the way to go and if you have a 40' fall man that is some serious power. Hell, I think all you need is an inch diam of water falling ten feet and it will make you a bunch of electricty. Anyhow, there are a couple of companies that sell them but they are pretty big bucks. Start reading now because you can make your own. I think I can remember watching something on youtube.
As far as the tanks go you might see about keeping them above ground. Let the people filling them pump them and you use gravity feed when you need to use them. Not that a small pump would use that much electricty but every little bit counts. The main reason I say think above might be better is it might be easier to get it past the EPA. If one of those were to develope a leak while underground you have one hell of an expensive toxic mess. I'm sure the regs for underground are much stiffer than above.
If you can do slab on grade you can use the lake for cooling just by pumping its water through your floors. The water might require a little cooling but probably not much. I run an open DHW system and cool my house with make up water for the hot water tank. In the summertime if we use hot water (ie: showers, and laundry and such) the fresh water runs through the floors before it enters the hot water tank. Again, that's 175,000#s of thermal storage.
I really hope you can work something out with your plans because it sounds like you have an awesome opportunity.
Anyhow, give me a pm sometime and we'll talk.
Troy
Here ya go man. This is crazy serious at 20 kwh 24/7 but with what you have access to you could light up a small city commune ;D
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_QkNzJiaCao&feature=related
This is more realistic
This uses the nozzle jets I was talking about. Pretty good video worth watching
I like how at 3:05 he looks over and thinks awe shit I forgot the throw the disconnect
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w8Iq0b2jwyw
HMMM. Thats interesting stuff! I will still need solar for when it gets dry, the overflow, well, it dont overflow! I am way to booger-up for this talk right now, thanks though, I will check it again later and definatly converce with you some more about it!
I will be way out from where current power and water is run. The county will require me to pay large fees to get it run out there, and I don't even want it! I wan't to be 100% self sufficent. Grow, raise, cut, butcher, power , and even roll my own smoke! You know what I mean?
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