so now what !!!! glycol or no glycol??

[bassman]

I am just getting into the serious heating season and freaking out a bit .
I will not be tied to my boiler but how do i stop it from freezing??
it gets down to minus 30c for months ata time and in this time i have to fill it every 6 to 8 hours .
this year my gas will run as i am looking at the boiler as a gas reduction not a replacement as i tried to do last year.
boilers are good but when it gets cold you better have alot of wood and ejoy sleeping like you have a newborn ...
keep in mind it gets cold here so all you 4 cords a year people are living in a warmer place .
today it never froze so my load of pallet chunks is still going after 22 hours .

so i want to add glycol and that will set me back 800 bucks for 45 gallons and that will treat my water to a mixture of 30 percent.
now i am hearing that i may need more and how the hell you do that when the boiler is full with the mix??
or then i read that glycol is bad as it reduces the way the water then takes heat and whats that all about????
help

shayne

 

[ericjeeper]

Lots of factors to consider

Yes glycol is very expensive.
Why would you ever let it go out? Or atleast get cold enough to freeze?
Is it set up in a way that you could just drain the system down?
You could always use your propane furnace to heat it from the inside out. Granted this is not practical dollar wise. The water will be circulating through your coil and when your propane fires it will blow heat towards the fancoil and rob a lot of heat from your house.

 

[infomet]

Antifreeze for the car is about $5/gal? Wouldn't that do?
An industrial supplier might have it in 55 gallon drums, but I expect the discount auto stores may be cheapest.

I'd check with the QWB manufacturer re the guarantee vs antifreeze use.

 

[YCSTEVE]

This is my first reply as a memeber of AboristSite so please bear with me. Is your circulating pump wired to run all the time? A dealer told me that would keep it from freezing up if the fire went out and no one was stoke it.

 

[IndyIan]

If you are going to leave your boiler off for days at a time you'd better use glycol. Leaving the circulation pump running just pulls heat out of your house to try keep the boiler from freezing and its no guarantee that it will work.
Hopefully your dealer knows what he's doing as some glycol mixes help keep your boiler from rusting so it could pay off in the long run.
Also you are right that glycol mixed water transfers less heat but unless your boiler is undersized you shouldn't notice any difference.
Ian

 

[leon]

to clycol or not too glycol that is the question.

I am just getting into the serious heating season and freaking out a bit .
I will not be tied to my boiler but how do i stop it from freezing??
it gets down to minus 30c for months ata time and in this time i have to fill it every 6 to 8 hours .
this year my gas will run as i am looking at the boiler as a gas reduction not a replacement as i tried to do last year.
boilers are good but when it gets cold you better have alot of wood and ejoy sleeping like you have a newborn ...
keep in mind it gets cold here so all you 4 cords a year people are living in a warmer place .
today it never froze so my load of pallet chunks is still going after 22 hours .

so i want to add glycol and that will set me back 800 bucks for 45 gallons and that will treat my water to a mixture of 30 percent.
now i am hearing that i may need more and how the hell you do that when the boiler is full with the mix??
or then i read that glycol is bad as it reduces the way the water then takes heat and whats that all about????
help

shayne

first and foremost use the non toxic glycol used for rvs and swimming pools and you will have no worries. do not use automotive antifreeze due to the possiblity of contaminating your drinking water.

a jet pump used for well water can be used sucessfully to fill the boiler via the drain sillcock of the boiler with no trouble by using a few additional plumbing fittings to adapt it to fill it with a small washing machine hose from a water bucket or five gallon pail-do not worry it works as I have done it.

 

[Husky137]

first and foremost use the non toxic glycol used for rvs and swimming pools and you will have no worries. do not use automotive antifreeze due to the possiblity of contaminating your drinking water.

How is this even possible?

 

[Patrick62]

A different perspective

Okay, let's think this one thru.
First let's assume that the system is protected with glycol.

You fire it, and heat with it for awhile.
Then you leave it for awhile. It cools off, you now have at least 100 gallons of very cold water in the boiler. You come back, and decide to burn some more wood. How long is it gonna take to run that thing back up to temp???

I say the efficiency is gonna drop badly when you keep warming/cooling the thing! Running the pump below freezing makes sense to me.....

If it was ME! I would have the entire setup as a addition to the house, better yet in the basement. Use another room as wood storage. This way if things get cold, it doesn't freeze until everything else has as well. The bad part is that the dirt, dust, grime, and danger has now been brought indoors.

-Pat

 

[bassman]

I am not wanting to let it go out every day or two ... I just want protection just incase i cant get home in time or am out of town for a few days.
I know that glycol is the only antifreeze option i have as i was told by the guy that sells it that it is a heat trasfer fluid that improves the way it carries heat and also protects from freezing.
is he wrong??? maybe ... I am not an expert just repeating what he told me.
also glycol is safe in case of spillage and also the only legal way to go.
it is also about the same as car antifreeze price wise.
now the post saying just let the pump run ... well i assume you mean circ pump and yes it runs year round but in winter this alone will not keep it from freezing.
my setup is done in such a way so i can turn off all exchangers and just circulate the water from the boiler .
I have gone 3 days at minus 25c and when i came home the boiler was still full of wood so i know my 250 feet of underground lines are not losing anything to the ground.
my biggest concern is that i buy 45 gallons of glycol and i put it in the boiler then top it up to full and then my mix is too weak .... then what ??

 

[ericjeeper]

Glycol

There are several types of glycol.Some are poisonous, some are not.
The pink RV antifreeze is generally not recommended it does not take the heat well some say it will crystalize or something similar.

 

[habanero]

...The pink RV antifreeze is generally not recommended...

I concur fully with that statement. I've never known it to crystallize out or anything like that, but using it in a heated system is way outside its design parameters. It is not meant to protect metal from corrosion at elevated temps, which chemically-speaking is a whole different ballgame than at the ambient temps that stuff is designed for.

If you want a non-toxic antifreeze, simply get something with propylene glycol rather than ethylene glycol. Dow makes a couple different types that are meant as heat transfer fluids, but a cheaper alternative would be nontoxic car antifreeze such as Prestone LowTox or Sierra. They are more expensive than the regular ethylene glycol solutions, but a whole lot safer for pets and kids.

 

[leon]

anti freeze

How is this even possible?

Are you referring to the use of a jet pump for delivering the anti freeze?, its easy to do.

I suppose the other option is to use a high percentage of alcohol in the boiler make up water if one wished to do that just as is done with windshield washer fluid.

Its all up too you but unless you have a segregated water flow-locked valves or a separate filler point physically not connected to the house water line I would not use automotive anti freeze due to the possibility of contaminating your drinkwater due to backflow.

 

[habanero]

Leon's mention of alcohol is a good idea, as long as you use ethanol. You'll lose corrosion resistance, but it'll work as an antifreeze (plus if you do have a leak into your drinking water, you'll feel great about it for a while).

If your boiler isn't physically connected to your domestic water, then you really don't have anything to worry about, though.

 

[jags]

Just thinking outside the box (or inside). Why not build a small, well insulated shed over the OWB. Put a heater on a thermostat, and don't let the darn thing freeze in the first place. If the heater is needed, thats fine, not only that, it will make for a faster reclaim time for your OWB because it never lets the fluid get down to freezing. Just a thought (and its coming from a wood stove guy).

 

[Husky137]

Are you referring to the use of a jet pump for delivering the anti freeze?, its easy to do.

No, I wasn't. I was referring to your concern about contaminating the domestic drinking water with antifreeze, which is why I specifically quoted that portion of your post in my post.

 

[bassman]

Just thinking outside the box (or inside). Why not build a small, well insulated shed over the OWB. Put a heater on a thermostat, and don't let the darn thing freeze in the first place. If the heater is needed, thats fine, not only that, it will make for a faster reclaim time for your OWB because it never lets the fluid get down to freezing. Just a thought (and its coming from a wood stove guy).

my boiler is very well insulated and there is no sign of snow melting around it .
all but the door is cold to touch .

 

[bassman]

I should also mention that no consumable water is heated with the boiler.
I have a tankless water heater that uses gas .

 

[drmiller100]

if you use alcohol and you mix it above about 50 percent, it will catch fire.

propylene glycol is what RV antifreeze is. tastes bad, but won't kill you.

if you want to get REALLY picky, all of the antifreezes change how much energy a given amount of liquid can hold.

real world says that boilers are built with plenty fo flow, so that esoteric chemistry issue is pretty much not an issue.

additional anitfreezes can indeed however change the boiling point. Add a bunch of alcohol, and you can cook off the alcohol and cause an explosive situation. ethylene glycol or propylene glycol would be much better.

 

[bassman]

if you use alcohol and you mix it above about 50 percent, it will catch fire.

propylene glycol is what RV antifreeze is. tastes bad, but won't kill you.

if you want to get REALLY picky, all of the antifreezes change how much energy a given amount of liquid can hold.

real world says that boilers are built with plenty fo flow, so that esoteric chemistry issue is pretty much not an issue.

additional anitfreezes can indeed however change the boiling point. Add a bunch of alcohol, and you can cook off the alcohol and cause an explosive situation. ethylene glycol or propylene glycol would be much better.

what are the prices per gallon of the following??

alcohol
ethylene glycol
propylene glycol

I would never use alcohol as I dont think it has ever been used this way..
car antifreeze and propylene glycol i am sure are about the same price so really propylene glycol is the only way to go.
I really just want to know if one drum (45gallons) will treat a 150 gallon boiler.
like i said in my other post i would have no way of adding more if i didnt add the right amount in the first place.
getting the glycol in the boiler is no problem as i have pumps .


shayne

 

[habanero]

...I would never use alcohol as I dont think it has ever been used this way..

Back in the old days (real old days, anyway), it was common to use alcohol/water mixes in automotive engines for antifreeze. You don't need a real high percentage to act as an antifreeze, an the azeotrope with water is stable enough you have a hard time boiling it off. But all that being said, the best way to go, in my opinion, is propylene glycol based car antifreeze and be done with it. Or if you want to use something made specifically for boilers, do a search for DowTherm (I think that's the name of Dow's heat transfer propylene glycol mix). It's not a cheap date, though.