Wood H2O heater?

[1stmate]

Anyone have any experience with heating (domestic) water with wood & not blowing themselves up into the next time zone?
These fuel prices are making me nutz...

[Deberosa]

We got a chofu heater for a wood fired hot tub but now that I see how it works, it is a really simple way to heat a body of water with wood.

The system consists of a fire box which is really like a barrel inside a barrel with the outside layer filled with water. Two hoses go to the tub of water - and it's the slope of the bottom hose that is important, the top one can be any where higher. That setup causes the water to naturally circulate - in the bottom hose and out the top. It gets very hot! We have to watch and often run cold water in to cool it down. It wouldn't take much to use it to heat water for the house.

[Vidman]

I would love to have a woodfired hot water heater. We own two small portable sawmills and have a 24 hour scrap fire buring 6 days a week.

I'm gonna call tomorrow to see if my woodstove is in stock, if it is I'll be Cheyenne bound!
For my small Ranch application I figured I'd just wrap a few coils of copper tubing around the stovepipe & gravity feed it.

[kbabin]

I found these links....

http://www.woodheat.org/dhw/dhw.htm

http://www.lehmans.com/jump.jsp?item...mp;itemID=4053

http://www.motherearthnews.com/Green...ttachment.aspx

Kev

Thanks
Good info on the creosote, OK, so stealing heat from the stovepipe is a really bad idea.
Time to develope 'plan B'... whatever that may be in my case. Probably just a cast iron kettle & a nifty wash basin.

[HockeyFan]

Thanks for posting the links.

[wildwood]

Well we have used this system for over 10 years with very little problems. We have combined it with a solar system for the summer. We lived in our shop and had a system there and just refined it some for our house. It has been on line for over a year and the only problem we have is too much hot water! We are acturally looking at running it through a radiator set up for a back room when we have too much.
Here are the basics
It is a thermosiphon system. To make it work your holding tank must be at the top of the system. Ours is in the loft eve above our upstairs shower. Now there are two ways to go here, presurized or not. Our shop system was a tank with hinged lid. (we used a tank float to control the water level). we never had to worry about anything blowing up. The house system is closed and we have a high pressure release valve that vents to the top of the shower. this has released twice on us as the water has gotten too hot. When it does we just run some hot water and the cold water filling it back in quickly dilutes the overheated water and the problem is solved.
now here is how it works. We ran coils inside the back of our wood stove. It is an old earth stove that was already set up for this, coils and all! The water runs from the bottem of the holdiing tank up in the eve, into the bottem of the coils, it heats up and then is literally flushed up into the top of the holding tank. This continues to circulate all on its own.
In the spring and fall when our wood stove is shut down and our solar is not yet up due to freezing nights. We light a fire and usually have hot bath and dish water within 3 hours.
We have added a few little touches to make it more effecient such as a cordless BBQ tempurature probe so we can check the water temp. (our shop one was were we could go up and lift the lid and stick our finger in it.) Pretty simple. We also have a shut off valve on the cold water inlet to the holding tank. This way if there are several showers to be had in a short amount of time. We shut this off and use the available hot water and then turn the cold back on and let it dilute down the tank and start heating again. The only draw back on this is you can't let the holding tank run dry or you could create steam and blow up a line. There are just 2 of us so we usually don't have a problem. Hope this helps

[Fabman]

Originally Posted by 1stmate

Anyone have any experience with heating (domestic) water with wood & not blowing themselves up into the next time zone?
These fuel prices are making me nutz...

My question is what does &amp stand for. Seems like everyone but me knows.
I built myself an outside wood fired boiler/furnace that I have worked today piping in to get her ready for the cold weather.
I got something in my left eye a few weeks ago and then I burned my eyes welding on the boiler and that got infected so I didn't get her fired up by when I was sure I would, but I am getting close now.
There are two types of what they want to call boilers, however, one type isn't truly a boiler, because it doesn't boil the water. It only heats it, as mine will if the Good Lord is willing and everything works right.
This is what is truly a open loop water heater. A closed loop could be a boiler if allowed the burn the heat source long enough to heat the water until it boils, but with mine, as most outdoor boiler/furnaces, the air will be cut off when the water temperature gets to a certain point, which will cause the fire to die down.
Mine has a blower that will come on at 160* F. and then back off at 180* F.
I don't have her online yet but I am now so close I feel better now than I did a couple weeks ago.
I just stopped a few minutes ago for a short break from running the pipe and need to get back at it but I'll be back for another break, I am sure, LOL, if I can help anymore. I am hoping to tell the city of Danville, where to stick the $600 plus electric bills we had per month the last two winters.
When I have more time I'll tell you a few ways to beat the heat bill if you try.
Dennis

[Bones]

&amp is a error when the site converted to a new server a few years ago. You replied to a post from March 12 2008 and the last reply before yours was April 15,2008. When they switched to a new server not all the messages converted accurately so there were a few errors.

[Bones]

Good luck with your outdoor water heater. Some cities have outlawed them because of the smoke issues when they are smoldering instead of a roaring burn.

[Tim Horton]

I have seen a number of "water pre-heat systems" to warm water from ground temp before it goes to a water heater.. The thought being any warmth you put into the water before it goes to the water heater saves water heater operating expense....

Now the nuts and bolts.. I've seen anything from built in pre-heat coils in several models of wood stoves.. Many home made pre-heat coils attached to many different models of wood stove..

A pre-heat coil does not have to be elaborate or expensive to save water heating money.. Water usually comes out of the ground about 50-55*.... So any BTUs of heat you can put into that water, that don't take away from room heating energy WILL save you water heater operation $....

Like said.... DO NOT take heat from the stove exhaust pipe.. You want to maintain about 250* or so stack temp to do proper venting/draft of the stove and control stack buildup...

If I were to start heating with wood today, I would pre-heat hot water in a minute.. I also would design in a simple "summer bypass" in the system to not use the pre-heat coil so it does not condense moisture in the wood stove, or on the floor..

My 2 cents..
Good luck..

[randallhilton]

This might not be the answer you're looking for but . . .

Several years ago, I stayed in a hotel, well off the tourist trail. It had a bathroom on each floor. If I wanted a hot shower, I would let the proprietor know and she would heat up a batch of water with a very simple set up:

She had a 3 sided "fire box" built of a stack of Haydite blocks on the ground. On top of the fire box was a water tank. The tank was actually a modified gas fired water heater. They had removed the outer jacket and insulation and removed the gas control (plugging its port with a 3/4" pipe plug).

She would throw a few chunks of split wood into the fire box, douse it with gasoline then light it by tossing a lit stick from a safe distance. The water would be hot in a matter of minutes.

I'm not saying I recommend it but it worked quite well.