Indoor boiler piped to an out building??

[MNfarmer]

Here is my idea.. I have a Royall indoor boiler in the basement and I am wondering if anyone has piped hot water out of their house to an out building?? I'm looking to heat my milk house that is about 200 ft. away from my house. All I want to do is keep it above freezing in there as that is where I water my cows from. The boiler holds 35 gallons of water and I was wondering if there would be enough capacity? The milk house is about 200-250 sq.ft. I need to come up with something because it's killing me to keep it warm with electricity. What do you think?? Thanks a lot..

 

[mga]

i see here your boiler has 150,000 BTU's....

http://www.royallfurnace.com/IndoorBoiler.htm

providing your house isn't monsterous, it should be able to handle the additional 250 sq. ft. if both called for heat at the same time.

other considerations are the milk house has to be on a separate zone with it's own thermostat, the pipes have to be extremely well insulated, since the water could be standing in them for some period of time and to consider the possibility of heat loss traveling 400 feet. (back and forth)

 

[GSP]

I dunno about that.Boiler seems to be a bit small.My boiler holds 52 gallons and is in my garage.The infloor heating pipes in my house take almost 30 gallons.It would take a good amount of water for 400' of pipe and the rads in the building.And your boiler may not be able to heat all that water.Guy I know from here had a similar problem.His boiler was to small.That's just my opinion.

 

[MNfarmer]

thanks for the replies. It was one of my crazy ideas for a way to save some money. I'm not sure yet what I'll end up doing, but thanks again for your help!!

 

[aandabooks]

That small of a sq. ft. requirement, why not get a free standing wood stove and section it off in a corner and run that to heat. At only 250 sq. ft. you should be able to run any small to medium woodstove with the damper down to get a longer burn cycle. Especially if you just looking to keep it above freezing.

Matt

 

[MNfarmer]

that's what I would like to do, but it's attatched to a 95 year old barn that's made out of tamarac and has some hay in the hay mow. I got too nervous about burning the place down from a spark that might come out of the stove pipe. As much as I'd like to put a wood stove in there I think it would be too dangerous in that situation. Thanks for the reply!