Final Drawings Coil Setup. Comments/Advice Needed

Hi,

On Monday I'm going to install a 40ft. coil in my Alaska Channing stove. I would appreciate any feedback of my design. I started a thread a while back with an older drawing and thought it would be easier to start this thread. I hope that is OK. I'm only planning on using my circulator and currently I have an oil fired boiler and an oil fired H.W. heater. I'm hoping to use the setup to warm a basement and to help out with the hot water too. I would keep my boiler set at 140/180 and the hotwater heater at 120. If either appliance needs more heat then the burner heads would kick in and pick up the slack. Honestly I've been keeping the high side of my boiler at 140 and it has been heating the basement just fine. Please see attachment.

Hi trader, it looks good to me. Did you look at this thread??

Tell Me It Was Worth It.

In it there was another forum member who bent up his own coil. you may want to read his comments.

I think your system should work fine. Are you going to install a few temp gauges so you can see in/out temps for the coil and or boiler??

Greg L

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I'm curious, how big is the storage tank?

I bought a Whirpool 30 gallon tank with a 6 year warranty for 220.00 at Lowes. It is glass lined. I was also thinking I might want another circulator between the storage tank and the boiler. Any thoughts??

I just finished reading the other thread. It was helpful, thanks. I went to buy copper at Lowes last night and they were all out. Apparently some guy who owns a small plumbing boutique has been buying it up and then marking the price up and re-selling the copper in his store.

Without an extra circulator the plumbing may or may not heat the water in the boiler effectively. If you bypass the tank with one leg between the stove and boiler you will get a continuous loop between the three units with one pump. You could complicate your life with two pumps and controls too. I'm not sure how complicated you want to get though.
Are you planning to turn the power off to the oil boiler? A second pump in the system with an aquastat control would allow you to control the temp of the water the boiler sees, preventing it from starting when the coal boiler is not running, just started or down on heat. You should use checks in a two pump system. Even with an aquastat at the stove, you will push colder water to the boiler at pump startup from the tank, that will trigger the oil boiler to fire.

I was originally not going to use a tempering tank but the more I thought about it the more I favored the tank. There is only 10 gallons in the boiler plus what is in the pipes and I was afraid that the PRV would blow off when I ran the stove on high. So I thought it made sense to have 30 gallons of hot/warm water in reserve. So I guess what your saying is that I shoud have a 2nd circulator between the tempering tanka nd the boiler. I have an extra circulator anyway so that is not a problem. Are you saying to install check valves for each circulator? Also, I'm planning on using keeping my boiler running but to set the high/low about 120/140. My plan is that the boiler would only kick on if the stove wasn't lit or if there tempering tank can't provide enough reserve hot water to the boiler. The hot water tank would be feed with the cold water from the coil inside the boiler so it shouldn't change anything because now it gets it cold water form the regular supply line. In the summer I could drain the tempering tank and coil inside the coal stove and bypass this setup completely. I would love to setup an aqustat but the electrical may be to much for me to figure out at this point.

traderfjp wrote:So I guess what your saying is that I shoud have a 2nd circulator between the tempering tanka nd the boiler. I have an extra circulator anyway so that is not a problem. Are you saying to install check valves for each circulator? Also, I'm planning on using keeping my boiler running but to set the high/low about 120/140. My plan is that the boiler would only kick on if the stove wasn't lit or if there tempering tank can't provide enough reserve hot water to the boiler.

I'm not saying you need the second pump, I'm saying the way you show the plumbing on your drawing it more than likely needs one. Are you going to depend on thermosiphon to move the water to the boiler?

One pump will insure the water goes through the stove coil, tank and boiler if it goes in the tank from the stove and then exits to the boiler. By having four connections from the two other devices means you will have two loops, not one. Reducing the tank connections to two means the waterflow will be the same in all three units with one pump as it is three units in one loop. With four connections, there is no way of knowing what the boiler will get out of this.

Any suggestions on how to plumb my H.W. coils into my hot water heater?? Looking at what I posted there might be a problem with the boiler coil circulating the water from the H.W. tank. I need the coil to feed the H.W. Heater. I need to think this one out. I also want to be able to bypass the coil in case of a leak. This is my current setup.

Thanks

Don't you want the cold incoming water to go to the hot water heater first? This is the way it should be for summertime use, when coal is not being burned. and this is probably the way it is now.

Do you want all the hot water from the water heater to go through the boiler?? I don't think this is a good idea. You would end up using the hot water heater to heat the boiler's water when the weather is warm.

I would let the boiler's coil thermosiphon through the hot water heater. Or put on a 'sidearm' heat exchanger. I think thermosiphon will work fine.

You want the tempering valve at the outlet hot water pipe supplying the house with hot water. Plumb cold incoming water into the valve to mix with the hot water as needed.

Or you can run the cold incoming water through the coil in the boiler, this will work while the boiler is hot. With the appropriate shut off valves, you can run the cold water through the coil in the winter, directly into the hot water tank during the summer.

Take care, Greg L

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Ls: The drawing in my last post is my current setup. Right now I can by pass the coils and or use the H.W. heater with shutoff valves. I was studying my original drawing and just got nervous that the water wouldn't circulate from the coils to the H.W. tank. Inthhis latest drawing the coil would be pressurized and would feed the cold line into the h.W. heater. I also could bypass the coils by keeping a tee into the cold supply line for the cold water feed into the H.W. tank. I think this would work.