has anybody tried this

[caretaker]

New to the forum, been burning wood for 30 years, love this place, wished I found it long ago, my question is this, I always wanted to wrap my stove with copper tubing and run a slow curculating pump, that runs all the time , thru some baseboard heat, if you guys think this is efficient or feasable, and why, more and more I'm looking for self efficiantcy thanks

 

[cmonSTART]

I've thought of the same thing. Folks have done it, but safety has to be a consideration from what I've read. There are some articles here on hearth.com, as well as John Gulland's site, woodheat.org.

 

[Mike Wilson]

What type stove are you burning, and is it EPA or non EPA?

I'd imagine you could make this work, however if it's an EPA approved stove, you'd just have to be careful to not cool down the firebox temperature so much that you lose secondary combustion, and thus efficiency. That said, I'd just go with a fan blowing cool air onto the stove. Try it for a full day, you'd be amazed at how well it works.

-- Mike

 

[JimWalshin845]

New to the forum, been burning wood for 30 years, love this place, wished I found it long ago, my question is this, I always wanted to wrap my stove with copper tubing and run a slow curculating pump, that runs all the time , thru some baseboard heat, if you guys think this is efficient or feasable, and why, more and more I'm looking for self efficiantcy thanks

It is a great idea, but not really safe and expect a flood or two every year. You can't use copper flex pipe (too thin) and regular solder joints will probably not hold up. Your stove is going to run cooler so you'll put out more emissions and a continuous running TACO pump should really be attached to an aquastat.

One real downside to the whole project is that you will not ne able to safely run your stove during a power outage unless you have the circulator on a back up generator.

If you are really into being self sufficient, look at whole house wood/coal-Oil/gas furnaces like Yukon carries. http://www.yukon-eagle.com/

 

[Webwidow]

Webbie used our house as his own personal test lab. At one point we had an Efel Coal stove with copper pipe rapped around the front face where the most heat was generated. As I recall it worked well for our application, it was a close run to the basement where we dumped the H2O. Try the Boiler room thread and perhaps some of the hydro folks could better answer your questions.

 

[Webwidow]

There was also a product for use inside the stove. Piping encased in refractory, however it took up valuable space in the firebox.

 

[begreen]

If you do try this, be very careful and have a good working pressure relief system in place. Hot water can turn to steam which can be dangerously explosive and scalding. Proceed with a lot of studying and caution.

 

[caretaker]

I'm a plumber and all the concerns are valid, this system would work far enought away from the wood stove so the joints are safe, I was thinking more on the line of passive heat. if I can bring heat thru a pipe up stairs and thru baseboard heat it would warm the farthest room from the stove, been thinking about this for 25 years, the pressure relief valve is a must. if I put the water regulator on it , would use a smaller pump, more of a curculator

 

[Grover59]

I tried something like this years ago in another house I had an Ashley wood stove and I used these boiler plate heat exchangers. It worked pretty good however the circulator had to be running all the time, I used soldered joints and they where fine as long as the water was moving but let it stop a long time and it would blow the joints apart. I actually pre-heated my baseboard loop with it.

Steve

 

[atlarge54]

Without a source of extremely cheap copper I don't see how you could out perform a used boiler. Am I correct in assuming you don't even have existing baseboards in place? They're not cheap. It seems like most of the used boilers on ebay are in the NE area.

 

[webbie]

In reality, DHW is all you can really hope to get off a stove using coils and that type of thing. Webwidow remembers right, although she may have forgotten that we dumped the heat into our Solar tank, not into the boiler!

We usually used bent finned copper, not soldered at all. We also made some which were silver soldered or brazed - something like 800 degrees, which is fine for use outside of a stove.

We always used proper controls, PR valves and other similar safety measures. PR never blew, because coils were not IN the firebox.

Yukon makes an in-firebox unit called the Hotrod for a similar use - that thing cranks out some serious heat! More often used in furnaces in the basement, but could possibly be retrofitted to certain stoves. BTW, even Vermont Castings used to sell an internal hot water heat exchanger (fit inside firebox).

Personally, I like the ones outside the box - like between the stove and a rear heat shield. Less danger of PR valve blowing during power failures, etc. -

 

[caretaker]

I can get the copper free and have all the other stuff in storage, might I will buy the pressure relief valve new, I have cast iron base board heat off an oil furnace, as back up, I have 5 or 6 pieces of base board heat in my basement, that not being used, and would like to play around, I also played around with this idea years ago, build a cement room not attched to your house and put a monster wood stove in it that burns 4 foot logs, and pipe in the air from that room thru ducts and ground