Overheat loop in cold polebarn

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taxidermist

Minister of Fire
Hearth Supporter
Mar 11, 2008
1,057
Fowlerville MI
My boiler is in my polebarn and after a overheat due to blown fuse I need to start to think about a over heat loop but I cant figure out how to keep it from freezing? Anyone have any sugestions?


Rob
 
You could put a circ on your overheat loop with a relay programmed to run the circ for a few minutes every 30 minutes or so, keep the loop from freezing up. The relays can be had from Grainger.com for fairly cheap...

Or go Glycol/Water....

I think you'd want to make sure you use a circ without flow checks as I'm not sure how well circ pumps will allow flow when they have no power. I'm sure someone will chime in who knows...
 
Do a search of posts of Eric Johnson as it seems like he was working on installing a radiator in his attic with a air purge. It was quite a while ago and I can't remember the specifics at this moment. Do you have the newer style with the overheat loop installed in the top of the boiler? This could be filled with anti-freeze and have a valve that would open if you hit a really high temp and it would just flow up to the radiator and back down through the overheat loop.
 
Yeah I have the overheat protection I should try to find out how they use that and maybe go from there.
 
Do you have city water - if yes you could just hook that up incase of overheat and it would dump water through this coil to cool it. I believe this is the way the Europeans are required to hook it up. My father uses his to heat small amounts of water for animals by the barn.
 
No city water and no water in the barn. You got me thinking about using that connection as a over heat gravity loop
 
Here's a "far out" method that you may try and be satisfied that it works before you depend on it. Sometimes if you manually open the flowcheck your system will thermosyphon backwords. You must, of course first check to see if this occurs or see what you need to do to make it happen. If it does you could put a bypass on your flowcheck with a normally open valve in it. With the loss of power, the valve would open and thermosyphoning from your storage tank would take place.
 
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