Hot water pump?

[zmoz]

I have a pathetic gas fireplace in my house, worthless and expensive for making any heat. I can get quite a bit of 2x4 chunks of wood to burn for free, but it would take forever to recover the costs of installing a wood burning fire place.

What I'm thinking is I'll build some sort of wood burning water heater outside my house, and pump some heated water inside. Where can I find a cheap pump that I can use to pump the heated water?

[JW]

Seems to me I paid $230.00 for a pump out of the mcmastercarr catalog. It is a bronze head with magnetic drive to an impellor, moves about 4gpm at 0 feet, 12volts DC like 3 amps. I was messing around with a thermosyphon system, arrrgh total waste of time. I ended up using heat transfer fluid(basically low smoke oil) and let me tell you, I can move tonns of heat with that little pump. It circulates the (oil)heat transfer fluid through a simple heatexchanger, no more than 12 feet of 3/8 thick wall copper tubing(with 1/8th in copper fins silver soldered on it) in an extreme flame turbulance, I cirulate the heat transfer fluid into a several gallon sump tank of the heat ransfer fluid and water heat exchangers are there, with there own seperate pumps to raditors. Trust me you dont want such a system on for long, when its running at full tilt.

JW

[windstuffnow]

  It would take a small motor and some creative pulley adapting but an old chevy water pump would work.  They don't care about the heat.

Just a thought...about 20 bux for a rebuilt...

Have Fun

Windstuff Ed

[skravlinge]

The pumps used to circulate water in central heatingsystem, are small , moves a lot of heat, you can hardly hear a sound from it, and they last for decades. They are not the cheapest pumps in price, but in the long run they pay. I strongly  advice you to use a acumulator tank. Wood then you burn it to get the most out of it, produce more heat than you will need for the moment, you will have hot water as well.

A bigger tank make it possible to put fire about once a day.

[bob g]

from what i have read i tend to agree with you on the once a day firing.

with a well designed system, with large enough water capacity, a single hot firing once a day should be the goal.

from what i have seen the europeans do it this way, and the russian fireplace is based on this premise, that is a single hot firing and alot of thermal mass.

check out www.surpluscenter.com  they have quite a few pumps that are not that badly priced that handle the temp requirment you will be using i would think

bob g

[jtbartlett]

I have been kicking around the same idea for a while now. I don't see why a domestic circulator pump won't work. I use a Taco 007 for my furnaces with no problems, 50 bucks. A 275 gallon oil tank should has plenty of thermal mass to absorb heat from the wood burner. Heated water can be circulated from holding tank or left alone to buffer change in ambient temperature. Makes more sense than burning oil/gas if you have the wood to burn.

[ghurd]

Dankoff pumps. Good products.

http://www.dankoffsolar.com/cgi-bin/siteman/page.cgi?g=Solar_Heating%2F&d=1

The El Sid model isn't listed, but it is good too.

G-

[JW]

Geeze, 275 gallons of heat transfer fluid (oil) Thats alot...

 I would use water(or coolant) if your going to make a thermal battery, 275 gallons of heat transfer fluid would cost a small fortune(besides water has excellent thermal mass). The idea behind using HTF is the possible high heat exchange rates, as liquid to liquid heat exchangers may be used. And small quanties of HTF may be used. If your using the heat at ground level, no reason you cant use an "open system"(not sealed) with water you only need heat to like 180*f. In such a case I wouldnt use HTF. Also when using HTF one must realize it is flammable, very strong measures must be taken to insure the heat exchanger in the fire never-ever leaks into the combustion zone.

JW

[JW]

Sorry,  I see you ment circulating water in a 275 gallon tank.

JW

[skravlinge]

275 gallons I do not that is in liters but probably around 1000. An Insulated tank of  1000 liters is that a house of 150 sqm use to have here. If you live in North I think the tank is of the right size.  We fill the stove once a day and try to fire as hard as possible, in this way reduce emmissions (and save work and money). If you live in not rural areas in Sweden you must acumulate the heat while using wood.

[weldingrodd]

TACO water circulating pumps ....Lowes Home Centers $59.00 plus a couple bucks for adapter plates.

[nothing to lose]

Moving heat from my outdoor charcoal maker into storage and then heating the house and water is something I been trying to find the best way to do. Since this is a charcoal maker and does other things too I do not want it close to the house, plus it will be in use all year, not just winter. So I am looking at around 50-100' underground piping each way.

By doing so much reading here I get alot of ideas how to do things differently than I originally planned or find sources for parts etc..

Thanks everyone.

Anyway, I will check out the $60 pump at lowes. Now for my thoughts on the systems.

Why not use Vegie oil as the heat transfer fluid?? I think I saw something mentioned about high cost of the fluids? Well cooking oil gets pretty darned hot in normall use. Not sure exactly how hot it should get as a max, but my deep fryer goes to at least 400F I beleave. So I will be looking for a few 55gal barrels of fast food oils to strain and use at a cost of FREE for the taking

I figure I should be able to heat the oil to around 200-300F safely at the charcoal maker then pump it to an insulated storage tank. At the storage tank I will either pump it directly through the baseboard type heat exchangers in the house or other ways to heat the house with it. Maybe a couple things at the same time like radient under floor heating and base board heater, and maybe even a large radiator with fan forced air.

 Or I may use the oil only as far as the storage tank, then use water and heat exchangers for the actual house heating system. Still I could go 250gal free oil in the storage tank for temps up around 300F and that would heat alot of water for along time!!

Although cooking oils thicken when cold, I don't think they actually freeze to apoint they would bust a pipe, like severe cold durring a 2 week vacation when no heat source would be in use. Also I think a really good firing before leaving for a week or two oil would be good. Get a very well insulated 250gal tank of cooking oil to about 300F and it should hold heat for a very long time. Then using a small heating system just use enough heat to keep the house above freezing. One thing I hate about traveling as a family in the winter is no-one has a fire going to keep the house warm. My daughter had some very nice Water Globes that have froze and busted in the house. 300F oil might prevent that in the future. My water pipes were safe, but the globes broke, go figure.

As far as various coolants, non-toxic is important to me for this system also. I plan to have animals again later (pigs, goats, chickens, etc..) and most will be down hill (and down wind) of the house and storage system, so if a major leak should happen I don't want to poison the livestock (or pets). Cooking oil should pose no problems other than a mess should a tank burst or crack.

 I think in a sealed looped system bacteria in the oil would not be a problem. Heating the oil 300F or more should kill them off and if done in the open also boil out any moisture. Strained and filtered well and placed into a clean sealed system I think it would last for years. Since it's most likely free for most people to get then filtering/flushing and replacing the oil if needed would not be that big a deal.

 Last thing I am thinking of also is it should not be corosive to metals. Not rust out steel pipes, safe for copper and aluminum, maybe even keep the pump lubricated well also

Might be worth checking into.

.

[picmacmillan]

i think you mean specific heat capacity not thermal mass.water has a specific heat capacity of "1"...which is real good but i wonder if say antifreeze would be better because you would want something that has a very high boiling point, more so than water all be it it is the least expensive option as i see it...just my 2cents :)because of the high heat capacity you would be able to utilize higher temperatures before it will change it's state from liquid to steam at 100 celcius...anyhow, good posts, something i am interested in doing sometime in the near future....pickster

[skravlinge]

You will store heat probably for a few days like this. If you get it free its can cheap be replaced when its old. The old oil can be burnt if you have a system which can use oil. I do not know where the waist wegoil goes here, its not easy to get hands on it free at least. I use my own used oil which is not very much, together with old newspapers to get a nice fire in the stove. I can't leave it unattended as it goes quickly real hot, and it has to be hot to burn OK.

[nothing to lose]

Yes,

I have been making sawdust and oil logs for the last few days or week myself. Maybe longer.

I take a large coffee can add sawdust, add some cooking oil, stir well. When well wetted but not soaked to dripping I take a table spoon or so and pack into cardboard toilet paper tubes. First I put in some dry saw dust for the bottom end, then spoon in the sawdust/oil mix and pack that down tight, then add more and pack. I do that till almost full then add dry saw dust to the top end and pack well.

This has givin me similar to a wax log. Oil does soak through the cardboard alittle. I stacked a few in a coffee can AWAY from the fire. Tossed in on hot coals these burn pretty nice for awhile. Having hot coals but no wood in the fire and needing to add logs, these are pretty nice for fire starters.

Lattely I have also been stacking the wood for the fire, then just a little kindling in the middle. Once I lit the kindling and it's burning well I just spoon in oil/saw dust. That also has been making a good fire starter. Used far less kindling and starts the logs alot faster too.

I have no idea yet what effect this may be having on the smoke stack though. I have the simple 6" metal pipe and will be taking it apart to look soon for any sign of greasy build ups etc...  Don't want a chimminey fire here!

If you try packing logs this way. Saw dust alone, or sawdust in oil, either way it burns nicely when packed tight into cardboard tubes like toilet paper, paper towls, holiday wrapping paper, etc.. uses for the rolls center. Dry saw dust and the carboard tubes also make great fire starters even if you don't want to mess with the cooking oil.

I don't use grates, so they may not work as well on one, I don't know. They might burn off the outside cardboard and fall apart? Mine don't but they sit at the bottom anyway, nowhere to fall.

[Lucky1]

If your looking for a cheap or even free pump go to your local hvac installer and ask if they have any old boiler pumps. Where I work in the winter we do 3 to 5 boiler change outs a week and the pumps just get chucked in the dumpster. You may have to buy the flange fittings for your size pipe, but I believe they are only a couple of bucks.

Lucky