Need help with boiler piping

[greg.ouellette]

I am installing a new Benjamin DO180 and it will tie into an oil boiler and I need to keep the oil boiler at temp so I can keep that oil man away..
My primary heat is Wood so I could shut the switch on the oil but if something would happen and I need to get away I wouldnt have to worry about the house.

I have attached a schematic of how it is plumbed right now..

Any ideas....

 

[maple1]

This is a bit off your specific topic, but if you haven't purchased your boiler yet, I'd reconsider the choice.

I have a CC500, the wood side of which appears to be indentical to the DO180 - and after 15 years of use I am convinced it is about the most inefficient wood burning unit you could find.

If you've done some homework and are set on it, I wish you well.

 

[greg.ouellette]

HMMM
I had my doubts but I decided on the Benjamin for the Dutch oven design and that my wood is never as dry as it should be and the Biasi or the Buderus had the fins and I could see issues right away. I was on the fence on this decision and I needed to do something right away due to other wood boiler developing a leak...
Does your boiler have the baffle on top it kind of acts as a secondary burn area.
I should have gone with the Profab Empyre gasification unit...

 

[maple1]

Mine (you should be able to see the PR on it on the benjamin site) is also called 'dutch oven'. The top half of it looks exactly like the D0180 - from the pictures at least. There is one baffle inside the fire box, it is at the back (vertical) in front of the flue exit, with an inch or 2 of space between it and the back of the chamber. Mine is now all warped and hanging by a thread.

It is as crude as fire boxes get. I have a damper on my smoke pipe a couple of feet or so up from the back of the furnace, I can regulate the draft & fire with it. If I open it up so the fire burns half decent, the heat has a direct path up my chimney to the outdoors, and I have to load it every couple of hours. If I try to damper it down some to keep more heat in it so more will transfer to the water before it goes up the chimney, I get creosote build up like crazy. No matter how I set it, unburned coals build up in the bottom of the firebox until I have to empty it to get any amount of wood in. When it is quite cold out, I have no choice but to shovel out a good amount of wood in hot coals form to make room for fresh wood. With light heat load, I can leave them in there until most eventually burn up, but I am getting very little heat out of it while that is going on. The coal build up is likely the most aggravating thing, I think it is promoted by the cool return water coming up around the bottom of the firebox. Just an all around inefficient design - basically a round chamber surrounded by water with an almost direct path from the firebox to the outdoors. I have looked quickly at a Biasi, I thought it had pretty decent looking potential for a non-gasser, but don't have any experience with them.

Just relaying my experiences, hope you find them useful. Might be helpful if anyone else with experience to share could chime in - but it's not doing much for your intitial question - ooops.

 

[Clarkbug]

I am installing a new Benjamin DO180 and it will tie into an oil boiler and I need to keep the oil boiler at temp so I can keep that oil man away..
My primary heat is Wood so I could shut the switch on the oil but if something would happen and I need to get away I wouldnt have to worry about the house.

I have attached a schematic of how it is plumbed right now..

Any ideas....

There are a few different things at work here, but Ill step in where I might be able to....

First off, is your oil burner a "cold start" type, or does it have to always be hot? If you are only looking to pump hot water through it to keep it from firing, then you could set up an aqua stat instead that would trigger a relay. This relay would inhibit the firing of the oil burner until the wood boiler is cold. It would also help you avoid the standby losses from pumping through your oil boiler all of the time.

However, you dont show any pumps or other controls on your system. The way you have it drawn currently there doesnt appear to be any way to make the water flow through your oil boiler at all.