Post Your Piping Diagrams

[EdisonBurn]

1. The DHW coil is a fairly large indirect coil like you would find in a boiler and is big enough to supply hot water for laundry and a shower simultaneously. But I take the output of the DHW coil through a Taco 5000 series mixing valve configured as a diverter valve where the output goes to the bottom of an electric water heater if it is below 135 degF and goes directly to the DHW demand if it is hot enough already. (I only heat up the main storage a little once in a while during the summer so there isn't necessarily wood heat for DHW all the time.)

2. Buffer tanks serve a few different purposes.

When I'm burning oil the buffer lets the oil burner run for longer stints so there's no short-cycling.

In my system the buffer serves four other purposes.

One is to make it simple and convenient to supply heat for all the loads regardless of where the heat is coming from. Any heat source can be on-line or off-line and the heat distribution works the same seamlessly.

Another is to separate cooler return water from hotter return water depending on the zone it's coming from. The cooler return water settles in the bottom of the buffer tank and the hotter water rises, so when the buffer is recharged the water returned to storage is the coolest possible, which increases the heat capacity of storage.

When heating from storage the buffer keeps the heated water for DHW and hot tub separate from the heated water for the baseboard and radiator loads.

And finally the buffer serves as a reservoir of 'spent' water from baseboard and radiator loads that is too cool for those loads but is plenty warm for the in-floor PEX circuits. This way the in-floor loads have an opportunity to lower the return temperature to storage even further, which helps to increase the heat capacity of storage even more.

(Here's a picture of my DIY buffer tank that many have seen plenty of times already.)
View attachment 150741

Thank you... awesome diagram and explanation.

 

[BoilerBob]

I plan on it! Waiting on SID to get the cad drawings of the tanks and I will go from their. I am not designing anything new...i'm coping standard ASME mech layouts. The hard part has already been done by a PE. Once you find the right design its like playing with legos.

As you can see, you don't need CAD drawings to post here, a sketch will do.
I love the DIY alterations that EW , NOFOSSIL and others here do to there systems. Great to see folks think outside the box and come up with different ways to get good results from their heating system. Getting good results from home made or recycled materials.

 

[ewdudley]

Great to see folks think outside the box and come up with different ways

Most of my stuff merely incorporates various European practices. Their buffer/heat-exchanger tanks are much more elegant and sophisticated, but not worth thousands more to me. (However it's possible that the idea of pulling from the bottom of the buffer to feed low temperature loads like in-floor PEX is original.)

 

[velvetfoot]

Here is mine. The idea is that the zones get first crack at the boiler water and the excess goes to the tank. It works, but I wonder if this arrangement is best. Any suggestions welcomed!

 

[Sid]

Great to see so much action here. Like others have stated, these don't have to be fancy CAD drawings, a napkin works just fine lol. I hope the drawings keep coming and as long as people are civil, I think myself and reading bystanders stumbling across this thread can learn quite a bit from both the drawings and discussions about them.

I'm currently in 'chimney install mode' but hope to use all this good info from this thread soon as I put my first order in to get ready to pipe.

 

[EdisonBurn]

Here is mine. The idea is that the zones get first crack at the boiler water and the excess goes to the tank. It works, but I wonder if this arrangement is best. Any suggestions welcomed!

View attachment 150777

Thanks velvet for the diagram ... I like the use of the one thermostatic mix valve for both of the boilers.

 

[EdisonBurn]

Sid, have you given thought to an electric water heater and or buffer tank?

 

[Sid]

Sid, have you given thought to an electric water heater and or buffer tank?

Due to my circumstances, new baby on the way, new house, cars breaking down, backhoe needs work, etc. I am going to just run this summer DHW on wood and oil and see how it goes. I am interested in later possible adding a heat pump hot water heater, not only does the efficiency impress me, but it will only be run in the summer (when I don't want to fire wood boiler) which will also help keep my workshop cool and dry.

 

[Clarkbug]

Here is mine. A few drafting errors here and there that make it less than ideal (not to mention the setup is not ideal either). Credit to some other members here in the Boiler Room for providing some CAD details a few years ago when I was putting this together. (Not calling them out here, in case they want to remain mysterious)

 

[Mike Fromme]

I used one of the tarm diagrams... There are proably cheaper ways to go but the engineering was already done for me. And I only had to add a couple tees and connect the supply and return headers on my existing system to make the oil, wood and storage all get along.

I did make one change. I left the existing expansion tank in place and added a second to handle the wood boiler and 1000 gallons of storage. This way if I have a catastrophic problem with the wood boiler side I can close two valves and run on oil only.

 

[huffdawg]

(broken link removed)

 

[skfire]

Here is mine. A few drafting errors here and there that make it less than ideal (not to mention the setup is not ideal either). Credit to some other members here in the Boiler Room for providing some CAD details a few years ago when I was putting this together. (Not calling them out here, in case they want to remain mysterious)

looks good [I need to dig into my back up server at work and find my Dwg file, then I can post