Bunk House with Hardy H2

[salecker]

Here are some pictures of the pump, installed, including the model number. I'll pull the pump later today and try to get some pictures of the bent flange as well as the area that I think the leak is coming from...

I have pointed out two of the four 7/16" bolts that I remove to unmount the pump.

That is a different pump then i have seen.
Maybe thats why it's so expensive.
Look around you should find better prices than that.Used maybe? I bought 3 used Grundfose this summer for $20 each.When he delivered them i got 4 because he found another under a pile of stuffs

 

[E Yoder]

It's a stainless 009, basically Hardy uses stainless pumps instead of using water treatment. I don't know of any other manufacturer that does that. A regular cheaper cast iron pump works fine, but will slowly rust due to lack of water treatment.
Normally you would unbolt from the pump flanges, you'll see bolts top and bottom, not the bolts you were pointing at.

 

[LiamFitzpatrick]

Amazon has this pump as a direct replacement for $210 so I ordered it. This will be a bolt on replacement and we should have the new pump within a week.

 

[Country Living in VA]

Outside Heating Inc.

store.outsideheating.com

The pumps used originally in these units are stainless steel, depending on the water in your area, you can probably get by with less expensive Non SS pump. The link above has some options.

 

[LiamFitzpatrick]

Outside Heating Inc.

store.outsideheating.com

The pumps used originally in these units are stainless steel, depending on the water in your area, you can probably get by with less expensive Non SS pump. The link above has some options.

Country Living, thanks for the links. I have ordered one of those that you showed.

Also, we finished stacking the firewood that we've had down for almost two months. Today was a very good day and the dry weather allowed us to drive up to the pallets for stacking the already split wood. Here's a picture of the finished stack...we have lots more wind-fall to collect that will be much better seasoned. I feel very good about having this part completed...We prolly have this much more available around the farm to gather and split/stack.

Makes me feel all "warm" both inside and out to stand on the deck and see this resource ready. Hahahaha!

One step at a time...

 

[LiamFitzpatrick]

New pump has arrived. I'll be installing tomorrow.

 

[LiamFitzpatrick]

New pump came without a power cord and I found out that's normal so I spent a few minutes swapping the cord from the old pump to the new pump. Minor adjust to the cabinet insulation and the new pump bolted up and tested good. I'll be watching it all afternoon for seal leaks but I don't expect to find any. All that remains is a full system test. Our temperatures should drop to 30° tonight so I might fire the system and test it beginning about 4:00 pm.

 

[LiamFitzpatrick]

We are four hours into a very successful test. We have shut the heat pump down to 60° and the Hardy is set to heat to 72° enabling the Hardy to carry the load. I've just re-loaded the burn chamber and everything looks very good. (I did have to use a fire starter to get the fire going.) So far, fingers crossed, the test is going well.

 

[LiamFitzpatrick]

[U]LiamFitzpatrick,[/U] your situation of inheriting a Hardy H2 sounds very familiar to me. A little over a year ago, my wife and I moved out in the country and inherited a Hardy H2 as well. Like your situation, it hadn't been used in several years. I to was excited to get the thing fired up and working.

Country Living in VA,

Did you find that the Hardy was reliable in controlling the burn. I.E., the blower turn on/off according the the demand for heat? Does the pump run continuously? Just learning the multiple functions of this unit and we don't have anyone else to ask...

 

[LiamFitzpatrick]

We enjoyed a very successful first night on wood heat I checked the burn box this morning to find a wonderful bed of coals that had burned about 95% complete. I laid a new load of wood onto the coals and AWAAAAY weee go. The wood flamed up and the fire began to reestablish a renewed fire.

I call this a great test with extended burn throughout the night. The thermostat is the gauge that measures our success at 72° all night. We are very pleased.

 

[LiamFitzpatrick]

We have enjoyed a second trouble free day with the Hardy keeping us toasty warm all night at 72°. I am very pleased with the performance of this OWB. I recognize that this unit is old and outdated by many newer more efficient furnaces. But, this one, except for the creosote build up on the walls of the burn chamber, is working like a champ (knock on wood pile). I'm very pleased.

 

[SpaceBus]

I hope it serves you well!

 

[E Yoder]

Great to see it running.
One thing to remember, the pump only runs when there's a call for heat, so don't load it heavy on a warm day when there's no flow or it will boil.

 

[Country Living in VA]

Sorry I’m a little late answering Liam, but have had a busy week. Your blower will run a bit more when you first fire up your stove. After some coals build up and your water lines and system warms up, it will have an easier time keeping the water at temp and not run as much. When the temperatures are in the teens and twenties, it will run more. When it is windy, it will run less as the wind seems to keep the fire stoked up. In regards to the pump, it should only run when your fan in you air handler is running-when thermostat call for heat.

I am happy for you having a couple of days of wood heating under your belt. We have been very happy with ours and love the warm air that comes out of the vents as opposed to the heat pump air.

One other thing I learned is to not over do the cleaning of ashes. They may pile up to the grates, but really only need cleaning out every 10-14 days when you are burning regularly..

 

[LiamFitzpatrick]

Sorry I’m a little late answering Liam, but have had a busy week. Your blower will run a bit more when you first fire up your stove. After some coals build up and your water lines and system warms up, it will have an easier time keeping the water at temp and not run as much. When the temperatures are in the teens and twenties, it will run more. When it is windy, it will run less as the wind seems to keep the fire stoked up. In regards to the pump, it should only run when your fan in you air handler is running-when thermostat call for heat.

I am happy for you having a couple of days of wood heating under your belt. We have been very happy with ours and love the warm air that comes out of the vents as opposed to the heat pump air.

One other thing I learned is to not over do the cleaning of ashes. They may pile up to the grates, but really only need cleaning out every 10-14 days when you are burning regularly..

Country & E Yoder, thanks for the replies. We have been very lucky and really feel good about this system.

We just came back to the yard and as is my nature, I came to check the furnace status. Just as I rounded the house, I heard the auto-refill feature turn on the water and the low water low warning light went out after only 20 seconds and the water shut off. Awesome. The serial number of this Hardy says we DON'T have the auto-refill feature but my analysis of the plumbing told me it was there so I'm glad to have witnessed it function correctly. Love it!

 

[LiamFitzpatrick]

We're experiencing our first bit of trouble with our Hardy because I have used a larger piece of wood that is not dried and consequently doesn't want to burn very well. I've been adding smaller pieces of wood around the larger piece to fuel the burn chamber in an attempt to get the "overnighter" sized log to burn up, but it's a learning experience. I can see that this is not a good way to use your wood. The Hardy is still functioning and we're warm but using more wood than should have been required to burn wood that should haven't been used yet.

I call this a good lesson in resource management because I knew in my gut that I should not have placed that log on the burn pile yet. I felt that is hadn't seasoned enough but it was too big to split by hand so I couldn't really test it with the moisture meter. (I still haven't bought a log splitter.) So, I'm paying the price of my ignorance.

This lesson serves to motivate me to get out today and gather some more windfall dried wood for burning because everything else we have is going to be too wet to use for at least three more months. I'm fixin' to get the meter our and test some of the oak we've stacked but I'm feeling pretty certain that 60 days of drying ain't gonna' make it ready. Live and learn.

 

[SpaceBus]

This season will be harder and less efficient since you have marginal wood. Get as much split and stacked as you can now and be ready for next winter. Softwoods like pine and spruce are less dense than oak or maple, but will dry much faster. If you get the wood stacked with decent air flow you can easily get softwoods to dry in one season.

 

[LiamFitzpatrick]

We were able to gather almost a pickup truck load of mostly seasoned deadfall wood yesterday. Consequently, we had a better night last night. Out inside temperatures remained constant and the Hardy still had a good bed of coals this morning. I stoked the burn chamber this morning and tossed in a hand full of chips and off we go. I'll be foraging for more wood this morning.

 

[maple1]

Kind of sounding like you might have a long winter ahead, if scraping for dry wood in only November? There might be a chance at some point you'll have to let the fire go out and drain it for the rest of heating season? Good luck going forward though, regardless.

 

[brenndatomu]

Get as much split and stacked as you can now and be ready for next winter. Softwoods like pine and spruce are less dense than oak or maple, but will dry much faster. If you get the wood stacked with decent air flow you can easily get softwoods to dry in one season.

And some hardwoods will dry in a year too, maybe not under 20%, but good enough to "get ahead" with an old school boiler.
Poplar, Box Elder, most Maples, Ash, American Beech, Basswood, Black Walnut, Birch, some types of Elm, especially if dead standing...

 

[sloeffle]

Please don't take this the wrong way, but I hope you like cutting firewood. I have two friends that have Hardy OWB's and one burns 10 cords a year and the other burn 12 cords a year. I would not consider them efficient by any stretch of the means.

 

[Country Living in VA]

Once you get a good bed of coals, even the somewhat wet wood will burn fine in your Hardy. I was in the same situation as you last year and none of my wood was seasoned. When it is truly cold, every morning the wood would be burned down even with non seasoned wood. Remember, it is not a game of getting a hot surface like the typical wood stove, you just need to heat a water bath up to about 170 degrees.

When it’s cold, the Hardy’s are wood eating machines no doubt.

 

[LiamFitzpatrick]

Kind of sounding like you might have a long winter ahead, if scraping for dry wood in only November? There might be a chance at some point you'll have to let the fire go out and drain it for the rest of heating season? Good luck going forward though, regardless.

If you look back you'll find that we only just started gathering wood for the first time. And that was after we found out that the woodburner would actually function. So, we're doing good despite being behind in storing up wood, we have a good supply stacked and drying and access to lots of downed windfall that has accumulated over the years both here at the farm as well as the adjacent National Forest areas.

We're reacting to the situation, sorta' like playing the cards you've been dealt, and working things out as we go. As of today, we've been heating exclusively with the Hardy woodburner and learning how to manage the system as well as the requirements of the wood loads. This entire operation is dynamic so I feel very good about how things are going.

Thanks for the wishes of good luck. I'm afraid we're all gonna' need them.

 

[LiamFitzpatrick]

We've been enjoying an unseasonably warm period of weather so I decided to let the Hardy go out. Yesterday, we had 68° and bright sunny day. While in the woods we were rewarded with a major score of two red oaks and two poplars that had come down about six months ago. All four trees are massive at over 75 feet tall. They didn't have the consideration to fall parallel to the trail so the crown of the oaks is away from the trail which means that we'll have to hand carry the rounds back through the brush to the trail for hauling to the house where we'll finish splitting.

We were able to get approximately 32 feet from the base of the larger oak bucked into four foot sections and loaded into the back of the pickup truck using the forklift on the tractor. I used my new peavy to maneuver those sections onto the tractor forks. That peavy is a fantastic tool. I doubt that we would have been able to accomplish what we did yesterday if we'd been reduced to smaller rounds we could move by hand. I worked with my wife and my mother-in-law and the three of us were wiped out after six hours off lumberjacking. Feels pretty good to watch the wood pile grow.

We were able to gather almost of pallet of dried dead fall for immediate burning when we decide to fire the Hardy again. There is still a large volume of timber to CSS that we'll have to continue to work on but I'm gratified to know where it is and that we can do the job.

 

[brenndatomu]

I worked with my wife and my mother-in-law and the three of us were wiped out after six hours off lumberjacking. Feels pretty good to watch the wood pile grow.

There is still a large volume of timber to CSS that we'll have to continue to work on but I'm gratified to know where it is and that we can do the job.

Just think, some people pay to go to large germy rooms filled with lots of expensive equipment and stare at themselves in a mirror while they "work out"...I'll take a "woods workout" over that ANY DAY!