OWB water temperature question?

[Canton]

Without knowing what type of burner you have and how your system is plumbed, the only thing I can do is tell you what I run mine at. I have a C.B. 5036 and run my set point at 170 until mid January when the coldest part of the year comes and then I bump it up to 180, unless we are in a mild winter. I would like to point out that if your system is not plumbed correctly it can cause alot of problems, for instance, I have a (stubborn) friend who has the exact same stove as myself and he had someone hook it up on the cheap. Now his house is smaller than mine by around 300 sq. ft. His home is an older brick 1 1/2 that has been remodeled and insulated. When it came time for updating the furnace and air system, he put 2 small units in the house, one in the basement for the downstairs and one in the attic because the heating guy told him it would be less expensive. Getting back to my point, when they hooked up his C.B. they ran one loop into the house and it goes through the downstairs furnace, the water heater and the upstairs furnce and on the return line he is usually losing somewhere between 26-30 degrees. Now that may not sound like a lot but on a system that holds less than 300 gals that you are turning over 26-30 degrees temperature on 20-25 gal a minute that turns into quite the btu usage. He burns double the wood I do and I can not make him understand the problem. Last year I offered to rehook his loop from the garage to one of the furnaces for no charge until he could see the differance in his wood consumption and he turned me down, so I just let him keep whining. Bottom line is you are going to have to take the MFg's suggested parameters and then see what produces the best results for you.

Yes, you are correct. I should have included my setup in this. Currenlty I'm running a shaver 250 (230 gallons) with one circulator pump running 24/7. It runs into the house through a 3 port manifold, through the water to air heatexchanger in my furnace plenum and back out to the stove. Also off the manifold is a seperate pump that runs to a small (22K BTU) water to air htxch with fan setup to heat my basement. With my OWB pump, I'm getting around 10-12 GPM at the furnace and, best I can tell with the crappy gauges I have, I lose about 6 degrees when the fan in the plenum runs. This seems a little low to me, but my incoming temp is fairly low. I can't notice much of a loss with the small basement heater. My boiler is running at 150 right now with a 5 degree differential on the t-stat. I can't see any difference in temp in the line set - less than a degree, possibly 1 degree.

I can't believe your friend is pushing 20-25 gpm through his system. That must either be one hell of a pump or an awful big line set. I'm no expert on this, but I think that's like 20 psi through 1" copper - very impressive.

Back to my original question - any reason to run higher temps in the boiler other than the fact that your delta over the heat exchanger should be greater resulting im more heat output? I've seen the condensation issue stated and I think it has some merit, but I'm not sure I'm a believer yet.

 

[darren_nh]

I may have missed it but if your system is hot water and not air, keep in mind that the baseboard heating lenths and zones in your house are sized for 180 degree water. If my water was at 150, the zone pumps in the basement would be running a lot more than at 175 keeping the house at the thermometer setting.

I have a hot water system with oil backup. I don't think my OWB would go down to 150.

 

[russhd1997]

I may have missed it but if your system is hot water and not air, keep in mind that the baseboard heating lenths and zones in your house are sized for 180 degree water. If my water was at 150, the zone pumps in the basement would be running a lot more than at 175 keeping the house at the thermometer setting.

I have a hot water system with oil backup. I don't think my OWB would go down to 150.

I have a similar set up in both of the houses that I heat with my OWB. I have a Central Classic 6048. I leave mine at the default setting of 185 degrees year round. It can be adjusted up to 195 but I don't know what the lower limit is. Our hot water is heated by the OWB too and I don't like the "cold shower" complaints.

 

[Canton]

I may have missed it but if your system is hot water and not air, keep in mind that the baseboard heating lenths and zones in your house are sized for 180 degree water. If my water was at 150, the zone pumps in the basement would be running a lot more than at 175 keeping the house at the thermometer setting.

I have a hot water system with oil backup. I don't think my OWB would go down to 150.

I'm not sure where this thread went south, but my only question was whether or not there was any factual reason to keep your water temperature above 140. I have no problems with my system. I'm not trying to solve any issues. I'm only wondering if there is any advantage to increase the water temp in my OWB. My apologies if this was unclear.