Has anyone successfully hooked up their wood cookstove to a hot water system? My Oval cookstove has in/out hot water pipes that run through the firebox, but I haven't found an installer who's ever done this kind of a hookup.
-- Katie Q-J Joel and Sarah Gagnon wrote: > I have been using a solar batch heater for a few years now. It serves to > preheat the water, which then goes to a very well insulated conventional > electric tank heater. In the summer, the water is hot enough most of the > time that the tank heater needs to add very little heat. Kitchen and > bathroom sinks are on either side of a common wall, with the tank almost > directly beneath them, so there is very little waste getting hot water to > the tap. > > If I had more remote taps, I would locate the tank closest to the greatest > use. An instantaneous electric heater (or even a small tank) at the remote > tap would minimize water wastage, albeit at the expense of some wasted heat > (which does heat the house, after all). > > If the logistics worked, I think the water heating should be integrated > with space heating using biofuels. I think of wood as stored solar. In the > months of November through January, there is very little direct solar gain > around here. Worse, the incoming water is colder, needing more heat to be > warmed to service temperature. So, when you need it most, the sun isn't > there. It is there, though, in indirect form in the wood I burn to heat the > house. Moreover, my use of the stored solar is inversely proportional to > the available direct gain, making my wood stove the ideal complement to the > solar batch heater. The trick is to get them to work well together, which > is difficult unless you luck out or plan a house around it. > > In the early 20th century, it was common to heat hot water with a tank > connected to the kitchen range. A convective loop of pipe adjoined the > firebox and circulated water from the stove to the adjoining tank. A > similar heat-transfer coil could be wedded to a woodstove to convectively > heat water in a nearby tank, provided the tank was somewhat higher than the > coil. Ideally, that tank could be the same tank as is heated by the sun in > a batch heater, or, absent such a tank, it could be the tank of a > conventional electric tank heater. Conceivably, the storage tank could be > heated with propane of natural gas (or even oil), since the chimney is > at hand. The storage tank would most likely end up on the second floor > with the woodstove on the first. > > This isn't the only possible arrangement, by a long shot, but it is > something to think about. I agree with Margaret that the ultimate solution > may lie in generating our electricity from renewable sources, but we are a > long way from that. If you read Mark Jacobson's web article advocating wind > as the energy choice of choice, you may have remarked, as I did, that we > could generate enough energy to replace all fossil fuel use in the US with > a mere 500,000 5-megawatt wind turbines. We have the equivalent of 2000 of > those so far. Only 498,000 to go! > > Joel > > At 06:34 PM 1/27/08 -0500, you wrote: > >> On Jan 27, 2008, at 6:22 PM, Ira Goldstein wrote: >> >> >>> Howzabout a middle way scenario in a dwelling with say a basement, >>> 1st floor & second floor (or more): installing a single on-demand >>> heater in a location somewhere kinda equidistant from the various >>> points of use (maybe on the first floor) to eliminate an overly long >>> run and wait time to any particular use location? >>> >> That would be ideal. In most houses kitchens and bathrooms are in the >> same general area. It would still take some retrofitting of hot water >> piping and a gas line would be needed and it could be power vented >> through a wall to the outside. Maybe hide it in a closet? >> >> I have day dreamed about doing this from time to time. And this >> discussion has me thinking again. But I no complaints about the >> AquaStar in the basement. >> >> _______________________________________________ >> RSS, archives, subscription & listserv information for: >> [email protected] >> http://lists.mutualaid.org/mailman/listinfo/sustainabletompkins >> free hosting by http://www.mutualaid.org >> > _______________________________________________ > RSS, archives, subscription & listserv information for: > [email protected] > http://lists.mutualaid.org/mailman/listinfo/sustainabletompkins > free hosting by http://www.mutualaid.org > > > -- _______________________________________________ RSS, archives, subscription & listserv information for: [email protected] http://lists.mutualaid.org/mailman/listinfo/sustainabletompkins free hosting by http://www.mutualaid.org
