Update on the Wood Burning Pool Heater How Well Does it Work

I have had quite a few requests to provide some more detailed information on how well the wood burner works.  I would like to share some temperatures with you using a AGPtek Dual Two Channel Digital Thermometer.

I have been very happy with how well this pool heater has worked for us this year. We have had such a cold summer here in Michigan this year and this heater has been one of the only reasons we have been able to enjoy the pool. Normally, the solar heater and solar cover can keep the pool comfortable but this year it has just not been adequate. I have run the wood burning heater only when needed, maybe once or twice per week at the most. We have been able to easily keep the pool temperature above 75 degrees so far this year.

The numbers and methods here are just for rough estimation of how well the heater works, this is not meant for the science books, but should hold true with a heater of similar size and efficiency.

I measured about 69 gallons per hour with a 33 degree average warm up to the water. This was with an average sized fire going as the temperature here will fluctuate as you add wood and let it burn through. I have seen it as high as 45 degrees and as low as 15 degrees, so it just depends on how much and what material you are burning.

Calculations I used:  15,000 gallon pool divided by 69 gallons per hour (filled one gallon in 52 seconds) gave me 217 hours to heat all of the water 33 degrees. Or if you reduce, it comes down to about 27 hours for 4 degree rise for the entire pool. You can also just divide 33/217 to get a coefficient that can be used to create a formula. Y = .15x where Y is the degrees you will heat 15000 gallons of water and x is the number or hours you run the heater. So if we plug in 24 hours for x we get y=3.6 degrees Fahrenheit.

Hopefully that makes sense to be used as a ROUGH estimate for calculating how much you can heat a similar sized pool.





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This post has been shared at:  The Homestead Barnhop, Simple Saturdays Blog Hop, The Backyard Farming Connection Hop, Natural Living Monday, Frugal Crafty Home Blog Hop

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Aquaponics in the News

Got to spend the morning with one of my shale customers while they presented their system to CT Governor Dan Malloy and the Commissioner for the Department of Agriculture, Steven Reviczky. This footage was taken at the Arc of Meriden in their greenhouse



Other News Links:

Meriden Record-Journal
WTNH News 8
Patch.com

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Another Teaser Video

I know some of you find these teasers agonizing, but heres the next one! Dont worry, the project is almost done and I wont torture you with these videos anymore!

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Revision to the Rocket Mass Heater

I made a design revision to the rocket mass heater.  It makes a huge difference with being able to remove the ash out of the burn tunnel.

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Building a Rocket Mass Heater

The rocket mass heater is up and running and its quite the inferno!  It will be quite interesting to add some enhancements to it in the future.  Im hoping to cover the entire unit and pump the heat under the floor to increase the thermal mass.  And, make it so it can burn either wood or pellets!

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Burning Pellets in a Rocket Mass Heater

After a few prototypes, a few burns, and singeing the hair off of my hands, heres my solution to burning pellets in a rocket mass heater.  Burns hot and super clean.

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Outdoor Wood Burning Garage Heater Heat Your Garage For Free Using a C

 

Recently I made a homemade outdoor wood burning boiler system to heat our garage. I have been excited to get this put together ever since I built our wood burning pool heater earlier this spring. I realized that with the same setup I was using for the pool, I could also heat water for an indoor heat system. All I needed was some sort of indoor radiator and fan and some underground tubing to cycle the water through. 

I am planning to expand my small garage wood shop this winter and did not want to have to run an electric heater all the time to heat the garage. My other options were to purchase a small propane heater, kerosene heater, or some other type of more powerful heat system but those can be expensive.  So, I decided on the wood burning heater instead. In most cases people will just put the barrel stove right in the garage, and that is a very efficient way of heating. However, my insurance company would not allow any wood burning stove (especially a homemade stove) inside the home. So this is where the wood burning boiler system design works the best. Although it is not quite as efficient as having the wood burner right in the garage it works very well to heat up our small insulated garage.

 

Weve been running it for approximately three weeks now, and with the temperatures dropping like they have, were really happy with the results.

 

For information on how I built this system, watch the video below.  Thanks for watching!

 

 

 

 

 

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Installing a tank window

I installed 2 viewing windows in my 1000 gallon stock tank for the aquaponic system.

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Doors Floors and Dome Foam

Made a lot of progress on the inside over the cold winter months.




Heres the transcript:

We’re nearing the end of the project!  There will be one more video after this with some of the finishing touches and then I’ll go on to some other videos about the aquaponic setup.  You may also notice that some of these segments may look out of order.  I was working on everything at the same time depending on the weather, but wanted to group similar segments together to create a better story line.

I needed a large door in the dome so that I could move tanks and grow beds in and out of the building.  Garage doors leak a lot of air so I decided to build some custom doors.  The doors were framed using 2 by 4’s and pressure treated plywood.  When they are completed, they are bolted to some strong hinges and anchored directly into the building’s frame.  I still need to add some gaskets and weather stripping to create a good air-tight seal.

I also needed to remove some of the struts from the dome structure to make a larger opening for the equipment.  I removed 6 struts and it didn’t seem to make any difference with dome’s structural integrity.

To level out the floor, I brought in several yards of sand and spread it throughout the building.  I then racked it out and roughly leveled it out by eye.

Now that the sand was in place, I was able to do a final leveling and compact the area where the stock tank belonged.  I decided to place the tank directly on the sand to help protect the base, and save a few dollars by not needing to put brick pavers under it.

To keep the floor from settling over time, I borrowed a plate compactor and compacted the entire area.  When this was complete, I also borrowed my neighbor’s laser level and raked out any of the high or low areas, and then compacted everything again.

There are about 5500 bricks that are used in the floor so I made up a couple of carriers which made the job go much quicker!  It’s still a lot of work to carry them all in, but at least the bricks remain flat and oriented so that setting them into place is fairly quick.  Between carrying them in and laying them out, I average 10 bricks per minute.

To get started, I set a straight string across the floor and lay out a course along the line.  This will act as the base reference for the rest of the rows.

The bricks are laid in an alternating, or basket weave pattern and can be adjusted a bit to compensate for their imperfections.

Along the edges, I roughly cut off the bricks so they would fill any gaps that were smaller than a standard brick.  Since most of these areas will be covered with grow beds, I wasn’t concerned about making them look perfect.  Any remaining voids were filled with gray sand.

The same type of cuts were made around any of the plumbing that comes up through the floor since these areas will also be well hidden by grow beds.

The shed area and northern walls are all insulated to help retain heat during the winter.  I decided to use a do-it-yourself spray foam instead of fiberglass batting because of all the odd shapes that needed to be filled. It also will reduce air leaking, and minimize mold.  The foam sticks to everything, so I had to protect the polycarbonate from over spraying by stapling painter’s plastic throughout the dome.

Not only does the foam stick to the dome, it also will stick to clothes and skin.  Full body protection, goggles, and a respirator is needed!

The foam comes as a complete kit.  Each kit contains 2 tanks with A and B parts, hoses, disposable mixing nozzles, and spray tips.

It took a little while to get used to a good spraying technique.  The first few cavities were a bit uneven, but once I got a feel for how it worked, I was able to fill the areas better.  The kits come with a fan spray for regular stud spacing, and in hindsight, it would have been better to use that tip everywhere.

The biggest problem I ran into was spraying the majority of the foam overhead.  My goggles kept getting foam on them and I couldn’t clear them.  By the time I was done with a set of tanks, I could barely see anything!

I also insulated my custom-built doors.

The fan tip worked really well at controlling the spray pattern.  The foam comes out a bit slower, but you have far more control and a more even fill.  To save a little money, I sprayed the standard sized wall cavities with one layer and plan on using standard fiberglass batting.

The knee-wall under the dome is also filled with foam.  Once it hardens, it’s easy to cut off any of the excess that sticks out.  I then cover the walls with treated plywood.

That’s about it for now.  We’ll wrap up the series finishing up the exterior and a few odds and ends. Thanks for watching!

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Building Aquaponic Grow Beds Time Lapsed

This is a time-lapsed video showing me building a deep water culture (DWC) bed and a media bed. For details about the entire build, please see this video series:   Youtube playlist

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Rocket Mass Heater preview

Heres the teaser video for the rocket mass heater.  More details to follow!

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Videos of Rocket Mass Heater and Bell Siphon

Here are a couple of videos I finally got around to putting together this weekend. The first shows a small bell siphon system I put together for a science fair last February. I used a bin I got at Ikea a few years ago, that happened to fit perfectly on top of a 10 gallon fish tank.

Over time a glass bell will start to grow an algae film, which rather defeats the purpose of having a clear bell. But its fun for a science fair or classroom.


Small system I put together for a Feb 2012 science fair

That month I also put together my final rocket mass heater configuration, using cinder block and bricks with the 55-gallon steel drum.


My Rocket Mass Heater in Feb 2012

I like using the cinder blocks in the place of the insulated section of chimney because it is far less expensive. In addition, four stacked blocks are the perfect height inside a standard 55 gallon steel drum, leaving 1.5-2 inches of space for the gases to escape at the top.

Within minutes of me posting the cinder block rocket mass heater video, someone warned me that cinder blocks explode in fire. I have had no problem with this in the fires Ive burnt in this system over the past six months. But I checked it out.

Allegedly moist cinder blocks can be a problem in fires - the water rapidly evaporates and the expanding gas can cause the blocks to shatter. My blocks arent getting wet since they are covered by the steel drum. If they were to shatter, the flying bits would be contained inside the steel drum.

While Ive read too many accounts to completely discount the danger of exploding cinder blocks, a search for exploding cinder blocks only yields videos of young men blowing up gunpowder inside a pile of cinderblocks (a really, really bad idea, by the way).

This fall Im planning to reconfigure my greenhouse so the rocket mass heater is inside the enclosure itself. That way Ill capture the radiant heat off the heater itself, not just the heat traveling through the exhaust ducting running under my grow bed. Ill also be playing with solar heating. Fun times!

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Starting the Rocket Mass Heater

Today I finished building and fired up the rocket mass heater for the geodesic dome. Ironically, its January and were having record breaking warm temperatures in the 50s but I couldnt resist and started it up. I will do a full video about the construction in the future, but wanted to share a few pictures of it. This heater is a bit different than some you may see. I wanted to be sure there was enough drafting in the chimney so I doubled up the barrels.

The entire burn tunnel is buried under the floor. It took a little while to get the drafting to start. It didnt help that the internal chimney wasnt insulated yet (missing some parts for it), but once the system got warmed up, it turned into a raging inferno.

A picture without the flash shows how well the fuel is burning in the tunnel.

I ran out of sand so I wasnt able to completely bury the horizontal exhaust. It was quite hot to the touch, but as you moved down the pipe, I could hold my hand against the duct and it was slightly warm.  It was quite funny to see the sand around the duct drying out so quickly. It will be interesting to study the temperatures along the system in the future!

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How to Build Your Own Solar Pool Heater and Add a Diverter

Watch this video to see our solar pool heater design and learn some tips and tricks when building your own. We are in the second season of using this solar pool heater to heat our pool and have been very happy with the results thus far. The heater is made of 2 x 4 construction and 3/4" particle board for the box. The tubing is 500 feet of 1/2" irrigation tubing which was purchased for less than $20. Once I get the tubing back into place I plan to cover the entire box with a piece of glass, plastic, or some other transparent material that can hold some additional heat in around the tubing. 


The diverter that I made diverts some of the flow of pool water from the pool pump for both my solar heater and the wood burning heater.

I let this run continuously through the solar heater when it is sunny. I will post a separate video on the exact temperatures once I get some figures put together but the heater helps keep the pool temperature around 80 degrees with less than 8 hours of sunlight on the solar heater or pool. I also use a wood burning pool heater if we have a few days of rain or clouds to boost the temp back up. Click here if youd like to read more about wood burner.


The overall cost of this project with the irrigation tubing, fittings, PVC pipe for diverter, valves, and wood for the stand was about $80. I also used some stain that I already had to seal up the untreated wood a little bit as well. Compared to the cost of the solar heaters that you can purchase this project is a fraction of the cost with more surface area of tubing that can capture more heat energy.





This post has been shared at:  Homestead Barn Hop

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If I Were Starting from Scratch

Southern States 250 Gallon Poly Stock Tank
Southern States has apparently created their own line of stock tanks, and it almost makes me wish I could start over from scratch. These bright blue tanks are UV protected and less expensive than Rubbermaid tanks of the same volume. Plus, there are a few unique sizes and shapes, like this 250 gallon tank that could be positioned in a corner.

Now that Ive lived the life of trying to observe my relatively dark fish in a black, covered stock tank, I also like the bright blue color. It wouldnt be everyones preference, but Im always thrilled to see a new, commercially available tank option!

In other news, I found out I have a supplier for expanded shale within a pleasant drive from DC. Matthew Ferrell has started a company called HydroShale, and is selling expanded shale that is the right size for aquaponics (3/4 inch). Its a bit pricey if you need to have it shipped, but if I can pick it up, I can get it in bulk for less than even the expanded clay beads Home Depot sells online (ViaStone from ViaGrow). Nothing will ever be as inexpensive as gravel, but I do like working with these lighter materials.

In the mean time, Im just glad I finally put up my greenhouse this past weekend. The garden and fish have done amazingly well without cover for the first portion of winter, but the temperatures will remain well below freezing for most of this week. But with the protection from the wind and solar heating during the day, I expect my garden and fish will weather this bitter week adequately well. Hooray for bluegill and goldfish!

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Wood Burning Pool Heater Upgrade and Update

We have loved having this pool heater available to boost the pool temps a bit in the spring and fall. It has worked great although over the last year and a half has lost some efficiency. Taking the advice of some great feedback on the first build I am going to try a few new ideas with this and see if I cant get a more efficient heat transfer and boost the temps up even more!

The most common feedback I received was "Why dont you wrap the copper tubing around the outside of the barrel?" This is a great idea and one that I had considered before I started the first version of the pool heater. I ended up deciding to put the tubing on the inside of the barrel because I wanted it to be engulfed in the flame with no tubing exposed to the outside air and I also didnt like the look of the tubing on the outside. In the end this is what I have found...

The coil on the inside is much more efficient at absorbing the heat; however, it does not hold up as well over time since it collects soot and creosote over time and becomes less efficient. Overall this is the best approach but you will need to take the coil out each year and clean it up.

The second approach was to wrap the coil around the outside of the barrel. This also works very well but in order for it to be most efficient it will need to be covered in some sort of insulation to keep the heat around the tubing. I noticed that the outside area of the tubing is actually working like a heat sink and cooling the outer side. With good insulation wrapped around the barrel with the tubing in between the heat would be trapped and provide the best heat exchange to the water. I am currently looking for some good outdoor insulation that I can use for this application.

In the meantime I have both the coil on the outside and the one on the inside in use and the temps I am getting are fairly close to what I had when I first started the project last year.

This has been such a fun project to work on and experiment with and I am excited for the winter season so I can test its use heating my garage again! Stay tuned for updates on that and thanks for stopping by!

Soldering equipment -

Spark start torch head - http://amzn.to/1BMl54f
Mapp Gas cylinder - http://amzn.to/14G5DdF
1/2"-3/4" pipe and fitting cleaner combo tool - http://amzn.to/1BSy2ao
Tight spaces pipe cutter - http://amzn.to/1y0INKD
Pipe cutter - http://amzn.to/1xP2qDj
Lead free solder - http://amzn.to/1wGPqvL
Flux - http://amzn.to/1yPxXqA


The Vogelzang single barrel kit can be purchased here - http://tinyurl.com/onurub9

Fiskars X27 splitting axe - http://amzn.to/1QEOfrG

All of these products and more recommended items from the SSL Family are available at the Simple Suburban Living General Store

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Wood Burning Pool Heater Heat Your Pool For Free!

 

 

You do not have to own a large homestead in order to produce your own food, live sustainably, and save money in the process.  Our goal for our family is to find ways to save money, reduce our waste, and reuse the things that are normally thrown away or recycled. 

Of course we recycle in our home.  But reusing is even better.  And landfill waste is a last resort.  This Ted Talk completely changed how we think about recycling.

Our green scraps are composted or fed to the worms or chickens.  Our paper and cardboard waste is reused.  We shred all of our paper and cardboard.  The shredded paper is composted and the shredded cardboard is turned into briquettes that we then burn in our wood burning stove.   We will post soon on that process.

I converted the Vogelzang Barrel Stove Kit I built into a simple pool heater and so far it has been working great. In this video, I show the conversion process and how I am diverting the water using the existing pool pump. This is an excellent way to heat your pool for free! I have been using recycled paper logs as well as free pallet wood for fuel and a few seasoned logs to extend the burn time.  I will post actual temperatures as soon as I get the thermometer installed into the diverter.

Copper pipes coming out of stove:

Diverter:

Watch this video to learn how to heat your pool using an inexpensive wood burner!


Todd





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This post has been shared at:  The Homestead Barn Hop, Simple Saturdays Blog Hop, HomeAcre Hop, Simple Lives Thursday, From The Farm BlogHop, The Backyard Farming Connection Hop

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