glycol in owb lines

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zsteinmetz

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First year with the wood doctor owb and love it. Just wondering if any of you guys are running glycol in your underground pipes to house. If not are you running anything at all? I wanna play it safe say if i leave for a few days and the neighbor cant fill it. Is this necessary or will the circulating pump keep it from freezing?
 
First year with the wood doctor owb and love it. Just wondering if any of you guys are running glycol in your underground pipes to house. If not are you running anything at all? I wanna play it safe say if i leave for a few days and the neighbor cant fill it. Is this necessary or will the circulating pump keep it from freezing?

How deep are they? Does the house still have heat? Is it with forced air?

The forced air stove will heat the coil and then the pump will circulate the warmer water back to the stove....eats more gas.
 
Thanks for the info. They are about five foot deep and yes it is a forced air but my coil is in the return duct so i dont know how well the gas would work considering the coil is not directly above it. Keep the info coming.
 
Glycol

My Dad has glycol in hsi stove to his farm shop but not to his house. Works great but a little $$! I don't have anything but water and boiler treatment in mine and have not had a bit of trouble (i've used mine for the 6th season now) without trouble.
 
I dont own a OWB, but I know a few who do. I'd think if your lines are five feet deep like you say, the chances of freezing are almost nill. Normally, frost doesnt penetrate five feet in undisturbed areas. Under driveways and other traveled surfaces the frost can reach that depth. Ground cover on top of your lines makes a big difference also in added insulation. Also the heat circulating throughout the lines all winter will warm the ground keeping the frost from reaching too deep. And if power was interrupted for a few days or a week in a severe instance, the frost most likely wouldnt travel down to your lines that fast anyway.

I run heavy equiptment for a living here in central Mn. And we do plenty of frost ripping in the winter. Its very rare where I have seen a full 5 feet of frost. But I have, mostly on traveled and unexposed areas. Ground cover makes a huge difference, you would be surprised what difference a few weeds or grass. I'd have to assume your lines are inside some kind of pvc pipe with insulation, also to your benefit. Hope this helps, I know antifreeze isnt cheap, its also hard on pumps, but nothing sucks worse than frozen pipes. If it were mine and I had a concern. I'd try and hold out until next year and dig down a foot or two and add some insulation on top of the area where your pipes run under. A two foot wide piece of 2" pink styrofoam would put my mind at ease.
 
Never mind how deep they are..

Freeze will get em first at the stove where they enter the ground.
 
I'd try and hold out until next year and dig down a foot or two and add some insulation on top of the area where your pipes run under. A two foot wide piece of 2" pink styrofoam would put my mind at ease.
Taking that idea a step further why not box it in with the pink foam and either fill it up with foam in a can or pack it with glass then back fill. Also do not neglect to insulate the pipes where they go under and come out of the ground. This can be done with either pink foam as your form or some plywood filled with foam in a can insulation the key is to insure your lines are insulated with a very thick block of insulation.
 
I did box in where the pipes come out of the stove and where it pops up and enters the house. I used deck board and alot of cans of foam. The canned foam and the insulation around the pipes should be plenty to keep it from freezing my concern is the stove itself. Yes it is insulated but there is 210 gallons of water in which you would think could never freeze with that much volume. Could it?
 
After listening to reaperman maybe a half a foot of chipper mulch over the lines would put your mind at ease. Around here every municipality has a giant pile free for the taking.
Also moving water don't freeze. If the circ pump is running and the one coil is sucking heat - even in the return duct is over 60 - nothing is freezing.
 
For reference to other readers, five feet deep is too deep in most areas. You do not want your pipes anywhere near the water table, or the water will suck all the heat out of them.

But in answer to your question as long as the pumps are still running you should have no problem. In my system if my gas boiler was running it would put some heat in the water lines through the heat exchanger, more than enough to keep them from freezing. How well your pipes are insulated has a large bearing on weather they will freeze or not also.
 
Call it peace of mind or more money than brains but I went w/ glycol for the same reasons...if i want to leave for a week in the winter I can do so w/o worrying.
As long as your still circing w/ the pump shouldn't be a problem (i hate shouldn't - means that it still can).
My concern was the stove and from the stove into the ground.
 
Adding glycol is going to affect your heat transfer efficiency, thus causing you to burn more wood. But your pipes won't freeze.
 
How much is the glycol? RV antifreeze is what, $6 a gallon? For me that would be close to $1000 for over 100 gallons. Maybe half that if I went 50/50 I guess.

Husky 137 is right though, pure water transfers heat much better than antifreeze. Your system is less efficient with a water mixture
 
Hello

I have a OWB in Sask. Canada 40 below will make a differance here. I am currently running non toxic glycol at a 33% blend. I have not tried other types of glycol, anyone tried others.
 
I agree its needed in Saskatchewan but that is a little different than Iowa or mid-Michigan. Has anyone had their lines freeze while their pump was still running, and if so how deep were your lines and how well insulated?
 
This is the seventh year that I am using my Heatmor here in Northern Minnesota. The stove has performed flawlessly so far. I put a 50/50 mix of automotive antifreeze in mine from the start. It isn't the lines that may freeze in the ground, but the pipes above ground or the main tank in the event that the pump quits working. I don't want to take that chance. I replaced the hoses on the firebox door last year and got a good first hand look at the antifreeze and it still looked like brand new. All I do is add rust inhibitor once a year. The stove uses less than two gallons of water for an entire heating season.

If it gets cold where you live, I wouldn't be without antifreeze.
 

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