What is your OWF water jacket temperature at beginning of heating season?

[Dean186]

The water jacket temperature of an outdoor furnace at the beginning of heating season (before a fire is started), says a lot about the average temperature in the area and when additional heat is desired.

I was wondering what the water jacket temperature was when you fired your furnace up for the season.  This is like asking; what is the average temperature in your area when you make the decision to fire up the OWF?

Water Jacket temperature    47 degrees,    mountains of Colorado,     October 22, 2010

[doctorb]

67 degrees - started October 31,2010

[firechief]

Not fired up yet but currently is at 82

[MudBud]

It was 67 degrees in the boiler and temps at night started hitting mid 30's...end of September in lower Maine.

[DBRACKETT]

Started Oct 9th fot the first test run of the stove water temperture was 59 degrees. I must say this forum has been a wealth of information for the E2300 and trying to figure out the learning curve. Started it the 9th as a test run found out I liked having the electric water heater in the off position and it hasn't been shut down other than a quick cleaning that it really didn't need but the operator needed to figure out how long for the future.

Again appreciate all the info i've found here at this forum and will post more detaails later.

Dan

[ecrane99]

63 degrees in CT.  Oct 29.   5 hrs to reach 180. 

[island]

51 in ohio

[doctorb]

Firechief-

Where is your stove located?  Is it outside?  It's hard to believe that your water temp is 82 degrees on Nov. 1, especially with the other start-up temp readings listed on this thread.  Why is your temp significantly higher than the rest?  Doctorb

[tonto]

Probably about 45-50 degrees on Nov 5th 2008!! Hasn't shut off yet. Best investment I ever made. Tonto.

[firechief]

Doctorb-

Not sure why the high temp.  Went out again last night and circulated the water as I've been doing about once a week thru the summer.  Again last night it was still around 81.  I'm still not fired up yet but its been down in the 30's the last few nights so I'm expecting that number to drop suddenly.  My stove is outside and I only have about a 40 foot run.  Our temps are supposed to only be in the 40's as highs the next few days but back up to the mid 50's for the weekend.  I'll probably wait a week or two before I fire that bad boy up for the season.

[doctorb]

Firechief-

That 81 degree temp just doesn't make sense.  Do you have a temp gauge in your basement to monitor the temp of the furnace water?  I happen to have mine set up to look at the inflow and outflow temps from the stove.  If you do, you can check the accuracy of that furnace temp gauge against the one in your basement.

Another more likely reason is that, since you are circulating the wood furnace water, some heat from your basement  furnace (which is probably turned on for heat or at least hot water) is being exchanged in the "reverse" direction.  See if there's heat in the pipes running from your basement furnace to the heat exchanger.  If so, your using some of the energy used to fire your basement furnace to heat the stove water as well, which would be a waste of money!  Check it out and let us know.   Doctorb

[MudBud]

I would bet you are right doctor!!!!  I have a shutoff off of my heat exchanger to stop heating the boiler water in the summer time.  If I open it up I would heat useless water and cost me more oil.

[firechief]

I think you guys are both correct.  I have no shut off in the basement and am probably heating that water through the furnace when i occasionally circulate it. My stove is close enough that I can look out the sliding door and easily read my gauge and can also read it from my second story bedroom. This will only be my second year with the E2300 and am still learning the curves.
I was very happy with my stoves performance last year and am waiting for some cold temps to get it going again. The weekend is supposed to be in the mid 50's and into the 60's next week. Two years ago our natural gas prices were outrageous, last year they were the cheapest in many many years.  This year they said it would be cheaper than last year.
So the good thing is at this point my heat is costing very little even with the natural gas.  Regardless, wasting is wasting and if you could tell me what I could do to remedy this I would greatly appreciate it.

[doctorb]

Firechief-
The easiest remedy is to place shut off valves either between the outdoor stove and the heat exchanger, or between the basement furnace and the heat exchanger.  If you are going to circulate the stove continually, which was suggested to me by the people at CB in a telephone call last year, then you are going to need a closed loop in your basement that allows recirculation back to the outdoor boiler, but prevents the circulation from reaching the heat exchanger.  If your plumbing in your basement is directly linked to the heat exchanger (and it sounds like it is), then you would need a connection between the inflow and outflow, with a shut off valve, connecting these two.  To complete the remedy, you will also need shut off valves on the pipes leading to and from the heat exchanger to isolate that part of the loop.  On this side of the loop, then, it will take three inline shut-off valves.

Conversely, you can also accomplish a separation of these two systems by placing valves between the indoor furnace and the heat exchanger.  This would prevent the hot water from your furnace from contacting (through the heat exchanger)that from the outdoor boiler and save the natural gas energy for your heat/hotwater when the wood boiler is not running.  You do not need to circulate the indoor furnace water through the heat exchanger continually when the outdoor furnace is not in use.  Hope I haven't confused you.  Doctorb.

[MudBud]

Doctorb, I couldn't have said it any better.  I have ball valves everywhere I need them for just that purpose, especially because I dont want to heat the boiler with Oil during the summer.  Close the ball valve off the inlet to the heat exchanger and that eliminates the waste of oil heat to the boiler.  Also its good to have ball valves to aid in the future!

[Steve_M]

11/4

4:45----54deg

5:45---140deg and climbing 8)

Steve

[doctorb]

Wow Steve-

90 degrees in one hour!  What stove do you have!  How many gallons are there in the water jacket of the stove?

Doctorb

[Steve_M]

Doctorb

My stove is an Empyre 450---300gal water I think.  I  put in a wheelbarrow load of  KD 2X6 pine cuttoffs from my shed building project.  It may have picked up some heat from the house once circulation started.

Steve

[firechief]

Doctorb, Mudbud-

Yep that's definitely the issue with my system- adding shut offs !!
Went out the other evening to check water temp again which was still at 82, got up in morning and realized i forgot to shut down.  Water circulated all night long, when I went out to boiler the temp was at 92.  Thats enough for me to get off my butt and get those valves installed.  Thanks for the info and advice.

Supposed to be around 70 here this week, bummer.

[Jeff]

When I was testing the original Bio-Mizer We purposely set it up so the gas furnace inside would heat the water in the bio-mizer if the bio-mizer was not running. The reason was that we did not run anti-freeze in the system and there were many times we could not find appropriate fuel to run, as that first series of testing machines were quite finicky on fuel types.

[doctorb]

I don't know how to do the calculations, but my impression is that a great deal of energy can be transferred through the heat exchangers, and the heat exchangers are not smart enough to act as a one way valve.  I originally thought this "reverse" heating would be a good thing....protective from freezing the outdoor furnace water supply.  Now I look at it as an energy drain.  It would be really nice if there was something we could put in line in the system to allow a contolled and known amount of heat to be transferred from the basement boiler to the outdoor furnace to protect from freezing, without having your oil burner keep 450 gallons of water at 130 degrees on top of heating your house.  Doctorb

[MudBud]

I couldn't agree more doctorb....I would rather have the boiler water in the 90's and recirculating versus paying to heat it from the oil burner.

[Dean186]

Thanks to all that reported their numbers, here is a summary sorted by date.

   Date      Temperature

   9/30      67 degrees
   10/9      59 degrees
   10/22    47 degrees
   10/29    63 degrees
   10/31    67 degrees
   11/2      51 degrees
   11/4      54 degrees
   11/5      48 degrees

Average Temperature:   57 degrees