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  1. #11
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    Re: Biomass Water Heater

    I am building a hydronic heat system that heats my greenhouse right now. I have the benefit of having a wood burning furnace that I am installing custom made heat coils into the firebox which will heat the fish tanks, as well as the air in the greenhouse via radiators. I am certain that coils within a compost pile would work very well for heating the fish tank water in a greenhouse. The main problem to contend with beyond the composting itself is finding a fish safe coil. The system would be much more efficient if the actual tank water flowed through the coils(heat exchanger) than with a closed system with two heat exchangers. Copper is your best bet, but there is the toxicity issue. Stainless would be ideal, but is very expensive, and difficult to bend. If you did a closed system, it could eliminate the toxicity problems, but would take a much larger pile to create the desired temps. I wonder about Badflash's idea, the Babington burner. Could you use this as a waste oil burner inside of a drum, or woodstove, with some stainless steel coils? The intense heat would require a shorter tube length than a compost pile, and make it doable. With enough water as thermal mass, this may only need to be fired a few times a day to achieve an adequate temp. http://www.hilkoil.com/product.htm I am using two coils similar to the largest one pictured on this page, but they are both quite a bit larger than this. Each one has nearly 14 feet of tubing inside the firebox. I am running an open system with the actual tank water going through the stainless coils, supplying the radiators, and when the temp drops too much in the fish tanks, a solenoid valve will divert flow directly into the tanks until the thermostat is satisfied.

  2. #12
    Moderator urbanfarmer's Avatar
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    Re: Biomass Water Heater

    How about heating a metal tank from underneath that is part of your system. The water just dumps into that, acquires some heat, and moves on. The water could be heated just before it gets to the fish, but just after it gets filtered through everything else.

  3. #13
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    Gig Harbor, WA
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    Re: Biomass Water Heater

    Brier,
    I'm read your post about heating your greenhouse and tank water using a wood furnace. That interests me a great deal as I am building a greenhouse for an AP system in WA state and have an ample supply of firewood. I looked at the website you recomended for heating coils in the fire box. It seems like a great idea. Does the water flow from the FT to the heating coils and back to the FT? Do you have any pictures of your system and/or wood furnace? Also how large an AP system are you heating?

    Does anyone else have experience heating with wood?

    Thanks,

    Scupper

  4. #14
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    Re: Biomass Water Heater

    just to add to the discussion, i did toss the idea as there is a local dary that used to give away tons of cow poop free to gardeners here, consider a heat sink the large amount of poop will produce not only hear but i have been reading about producing methane, there are some low cost systems in use in places like the philippines, this solves the issue of smell and you produce gas to run burners or a generator, once the manure is finished you can bag and sell the composted manure, with a heat sink ( dry mass of dirt) the dirt will slowly release the heat on cold days and help in heating at least? just some ideas, i think i recall reading some people from japan were doing stuff like this in Fla in the 70's
    if i ever get to build in Philippines i will do the methane if i ever have a lagre supply of poop, i hear chickens make's the best methane production, but then i hate the mass raising of chickens and prfeer free range so there goes the poop lol

  5. #15
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    Re: Biomass Water Heater

    Scupper look into thermal mass wood heating or russian stoves , i may get the numbers wrong but a thermal mas or russian stove seems to be the best method to extrace heat from wood, from my understanding it is a narrow long fire box at the top it narrows down and a second chamber opens up where more outside air is brought in, when the lower fire gets hot enough the smoke ( unburned gas) ignites or burns something like 2000 degrees i think they say the efficiency is something like 90 percent WAY above any other type of wood burning and produces very very little smoke ( clean air for the neighbors ), used in houses they use masonary i think at least 2 tons. fire this thing up once per day and it releases heat for 24 hours, you could use dirt for thermal mass but the dirt has to be kept dry, i think this would work very good in cold climat . but then there are those that use the smoke from a low temp burn to run car motors which can run generators ???lol

  6. #16
    Moderator badflash's Avatar
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    Re: Biomass Water Heater

    We actually have a section of the forum for that. See SHCS...How It's Done..!
    The best fertilizer is the farmer's shadow

  7. #17
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    Re: Biomass Water Heater

    ah ok sorry just learning my way around here

  8. #18
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    Re: Biomass Water Heater

    Biomass could also be used as a more efficient water heater, simply by using the same method of heating the air.

  9. #19
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    Re: Biomass Water Heater

    Hello...I had heard a lot about biomass water heater and i am here looking for reviews about biomass water heater.

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