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re: heating water with wood stove
18 may 2000
loren amelang wrote:
>to move the heat from the stove to the tank, you either need a pump, or
>convection...
i put a 55 gallon drum on top of a woodstove, filled it with water,
and coiled 300' of 150 f garden hose inside (doubled in parallel to
reduce the pressure drop.) the hose connected a basement cold water
laundry tap to the drain fitting on the existing electric water heater
tank, still powered, but with the cold water input valve closed. i
could have used less hose, with a circulating pump and controller,
but the extra hose seemed cheaper and simpler.
i could hear the water boiling a bit at the bottom, but the bubbles
must have condensed above, because the drum stayed about 120-140 f
in the winter, with no insulation around it, and the water didn't
evaporate much. there was still lots of hot water for showers with
the electric water heater turned off for a week. the drum also helped
keep the house warm for a day or two with no fire in the stove (55
gallons of water stores as much heat as 2750 pounds of bricks, with
less thermal resistance.)
so, that worked pretty well for a couple of weeks until the steel drum
i started with developed a pinhole leak in the bottom. then i switched to
a plastic drum sitting on top of some wonderboard (waterproof fiberglass
reinforced drywall), which lasted a month or so before it started leaking.
this might be a practical system, with desirable heat storage, given
some sort of unpressurized tank that doesn't leak, eg an open steel drum
with a plastic film drum liner inside and some insulation above it, with
the drum and the stove surrounded by insulation in summertime. resting
the drum on some wonderboard strips and sliding a few out in the winter
might avoid overheating.
nick
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