yeah this is EXACTLY how our next generation needs to learn to do stuff, no apps, no amazon, and definitely no service personnel (no discredit to contractors, I've been an electrician for over 30 yrs., but I'm unable to accept the liability of certain projects simply because the devices weren't UL and I can't imagine what a licensed plumber would say???) Cheers
Great to see! This was the way most houses did it in the UK in the days of coal, inset fires had a back-boiler tank, with thermosyphon connected to a hot water tank above the bathroom. Couple of hints from my dad who worked on these systems: 1. Thermosyphon tube should be 1 inch ID or more for full efficiency, or the fluid drag of a smalller pipe significantly reduces your output (1 inch is almost double the cross-section of 3/4). 2. Any 90 degree elbow in the plumbing run reduces the syphon flow by a significant degree, so always try to use wide sweeping bends. 3. Always have a radiator somewhere in the circuit that will dump heat from the system if it gets too much. I’ve not tried this myself yet and it’s great to see this works well even with smaller tube ...and if you are getting what you need and are running the burner anyway, then good enough is good!
Concur. I lived in the UK and installed a coal stove with a back boiler to drive the radiators with a pumped system. The domestic hot water cylinder was on a 1" gravity loop. The thing that mine had that I don't see here was as the stove had an actual water jacket, the air feed to the stove was controlled by a thermostatic damper to keep the water temp in the stove and cylinder from ever reaching boiling as if it does you risk blowing pipes or worse yet a steam explosion of the hot water loop. Plan for the event that there is more heat in the water than you are using. A heat leakage radiator would certainly help.
This has been a dream for my husband and me. We're finally ready to make that dream a reality! We're going to look at an off grid property thats being used as a hunting cabin. Theres minimal systems in place. Gravity fed water, but no hot water. Been checking out different options, thats what I love about the lifestyle. So many different ways to do it and you are in control of how you do it. This has to be one of the best ways I've seen so far. The tankless hot water way seems like a quick fix, but I'm not sold on still needing propane to run it. I like that this way is 100% self reliant. Thank you for sharing!
Awesome, so nice to hear other people pursuing their dreams! Glad our video could be of use to you. I actually did another updated video of this system as well, you might want to check it out too.
Used to live in an old farm house that had what I think was called a range boiler or piping through the fire box of a wood fired cook stove. The old galvanized tank was in a small room directly behind the wall where the range was set. The principal of course being the cook stove was in service all year round so there was always some hot water in the tank. The system wasn’t in service anymore but all the piping and tank were still there. Even as a kid I found the idea intriguing. Today I’m off grid in the high desert so I use solar for hot water. Works pretty well. One thing caught my eye in your system and that’s the possibility of insulating your coil. Something I’ve used around stove pipe is header wrap. You may have seen it used on custom motorcycle exhaust where there’s no provided heat shield. It’s fire proof to very high temperature and last a very long time. However it’s expensive even in small rolls. In my solar system I found I needed to insulate nearly every exposed pipe to bring the performance up to desired levels. Every part of the system is radiating heat all day and night so radiant heat loses can really cause problems. Most of my system is wrapped with felt insulation. It keeps me from getting burned on the copper pipe when I’m doing my inspections. It’s takes surprisingly little insulation to mitigate the losses. Great video.
@@scottmcintosh2988 ah…yes. But this is the desert. Winter here is almost always clear an cold. Solar works equally well in winter as in summer. One of the trade offs for several months of cooking hot weather in the summer.
Awesome. It reminds me of Great grandparent's wood burning Cook stove, it had a copper tank attached on the right side, it held about 25 gallons of warm water. You just had to fill it with fresh water as needed. The stove had a door that you opened, that had the spout with open & close nozzle. Always had hot or warm water as needed. totally off the grid.
Great concept, a convection hot water recirculation system. The only thing I would change are the pex lines from your heat exchanger coiled around your stove pipe to the hot water storage tank. You will find that these pex pipe will get soft and less ridgid as they are not designed to be hot all the time. I would recommend to continue the lines from the heat exchanger to the hot water tank in either a copper pipe type L or K and try to avoid using type M as it has a thinner pipe wall and is not appropriate for a recirculation system. You should also try to use brass or copper nipples and fittings for domestic water rather then galvanized fittings. Keep up the good work.
I do HVAC Mechanical, and when we do Geothermal systems, we often tie them into the hot water system to improve efficiency of hot water. We normally run copper lines, but I know plumbing code allows you to run pex all the way with no problem and that's on a re-circulation pump. Never heard of an issue where they have failed from being hot on the time. Only failures I know of is when they don't position the pex ring crimp properly .
@@jcarney1987 essentially yes you can run pex for heating but there is pex specifically for heating and pex specifically for domestic water. I made my comment because I can almost guarantee that the pex he was using was for domestic water use only and it was also insufficiently supported, and when insufficiently supported it will sag due to the heat of the water and as well being near the heat source. I don’t take chances nor do I think people should take chances when it comes to potential water damage.
Using pex in this way is fine as long as you support it properly. The only difference between heating and potable pex is the heat pex has an oxygen barrier which prevents air from leaching through the plastic and into your boiler system, which can cause rust and other issues not ideal for heating systems.
ingenius! My friend , who has passed away now, was a bit older than me, and he told me how his family's house was heated with coal thru WW2 in into the 1950's. and they had an "ice box" until the early 1960's. They had a similar system for hot water and that was considered luxury ! nice job!!! thx from New England USA.
Good to see you having a go. Do not use galvanised steel pipe material for water, especially hot water (heating water drives the oxygen out of the of the water and it then combines with iron; rust) and any copper in the system will create a reaction to corrode the iron quickly.
@@joeharvie8362 I hope your right Joe. My experience was to never put steel into fresh hot water (oxygen leaves heated water and combines with steel. Zinc will give very short term protection). The electrical potential difference between dissimilar metals in a water service is another issue that needs to be dealt with (dielectric separation is difficult with fresh hot water flowing between dissimilar metals). None of this is a problem if you can easily swap out parts as they fail. (I am just an old plumber thinking a bit of brass all thread and brass tee would have been the go). Heating water using thermosyphon is good. But great care is required when using a "Uncontrolled heat supply" for the heat. One should not use plastic pipework (PEx). I do not know at what pressure you will have your hot water system operating at. To give an example if the water pressure is 50 psia. at sea level the water temp can/will reach 281degrees F. Their is a real danger of scolding without temp control devices fitted and of non metal pipework failure, particularly between heat and storage and between storage and temp control device(s).
I so enjoyed seeing your kids helping you moving the tanks, too. What a great family! Your system looks good, and I enjoyed watching you work with the pex (a technology I'd like to get familiar with). As a welder fabricator, I make wood stoves as well as stainless steel water coils that go inside the firebox for thermosiphon heating. My place has a stove coil for in winter, as well as a passive solar (out door) collector for the summer season (that must be drained in winter to avoid freeze damage). They both thermosiphon to the same storage tank (which is a standard electric water heater with the thermostats set low, but still there as backup). The HOT outlet from the storage tank should have a "thermostatic tempering valve" on it. These are common in solar systems and mix hot and cold together to prevent dangerously hot water from going to your home's fixtures. Also, your heating coil, being in the lowest part of your water heating system, would be great place to add a T and a drain valve for servicing, sediment flushing, or draining to avoid freezing damage in case you might ever be away and your home be freezing?. Don't forget a T&P relief valve somewhere on that hot side, too. It is good to have them plumbed to a drain because it is quite possible they might forcefully dump boiling hot water sometime. And NEVER have shutoff valves on both sides of that heating coil to insure they never get both accidently closed risking a steam explosion! I've enjoyed your video and am adding my subscription.
A few things. 1) right angles on your lines cause you to need a bigger pump and limit flow - try and avoid if possible. 2) insulate the lines - even the cold ones. 3) insulate the coil around the stack. You are losing a lot of heat to the room.
This looks like a good system that you can make quite easily but if you want more hot water, I would recomend putting just one or two loops inside the firebox. I have that in my Pioneer Princess wood cookstove and it is tremendous! I have too much heat for just hot water so I have a heat exchanger to bring that extra heat to heat my hydronic cement floor. It makes the whole house so much warmer and more comfortable without burning any extra wood.
What about summer? Myself I could see a setup like this working well for us in the winter when we are burning wood to (supplementally) heat the house, but summer is a whole different deal. Any extra heat in the house is unwelcome. Very warm (and humid) here. I'd be thinking a mixed system for where we live: passive solar water heat in summer and wood burning in the winter.
I know someone who used black pipe on the inside of their wood stove to heat their hot water...the water was crazy hot but no electricity needed... I like the copper coil and it is what I have been thinking about doing for domestic hot water and mainly as a way to heat the floor..
Great video! 1 small tip! Maybe at the beginning you could give a quick explanation as to how the hot water rises and takes itself out into the storage tank and also the siphon effect! Just for those peeps who may not be familiar with this idea! Thanks for posting!
Liquids and gasses become less dense as they get warmer. They are displaced upwards by colder more dense liquid or gas. That's it! I always remember a lecturer at college telling us that hot air balloons do not rise of their own accord. They are displaced upwards by colder more dense air around them. As has been mentioned in this thread. The thermosyphon effect is very fragile that is why they were always piped up these primaries using 1" Dia pipework.......depending upon the vertical distance between the stove and the hot water cylinder. (In the UK we call these two flow and return pipes the primaries) Doing a job like this, I would probs wrap 3/4 annealed copper tube round flue, and then reduce up to 1" for the primary pipework to upstairs. Thermosyphon will go like a steam train. Also pull one or two heat sink radiatiors off the primaries for free heat and a means to get rid of the heat if you're generating too much. If steam pockets form in the primaries, (which they can and often) they make a horrendous noise, as the steam pockets rattle up the pipework. Last point, this primary system on a solid fuel stove should be atmospheric, ie there should be an open vent on the system. Failing that, there should be an expansion vessel and a pressure safety valve (PSV). Otherwise you just built a bomb! My credentials.....Served a 4 yr apprenticeship as a plumber/heating eng many years ago. Kept studying. Now a Chartered Engineer with 2 degrees and a Master's in Engineering. Self built last two family homes and loved it! Dying to do it again. 🙂
Do you have any problems with flash steaming when the lines get to hot? A friend was trying to build a system to heat his house in the winter using an outdoor fire pit made of a washing machine drum and copper tubing but couldn't get the copper tube close enough to the fire without flash steaming. I suggested either adding a layer of concrete or bricks, maybe with the copper running through the holes in the bricks. My third suggestion was to use oil instead of water then use car radiators and a box fan inside each room to dissipate the heat. I just use a block heater from a diesel engine dropped in a 55 gallon drum of water.
Great idea! Ya know...I bet you could rig a toilet bowl float to operate as a switch to automatically transfer water from the bins to the main bin of water.
Not a bad idea, I do plan to hook them all together via the pipe at the bottom though. That way I wont need any power to move the water it will just gravity feed over.
Awesome job ! You have to love that hot water System :) I never thought of that when I built, I use the 40 gallon tank as well but mine is propane fired, With a family it would take a 100 pound tank a month, My RV pump like your pulls water from my well under the cabin, I have fully operational Off grid cabin :)
😁 cool! ....but no fair ...🤣 ..that was my clever idea last night for my hotwater issue. lol nice to see it was obviously a good one..... youtube is awesome. nice job/ thnks 4 the vid, excited to see your vid on your overflow hookup ( when tank already too hot, how youll run the rest to heat house) ... cause ya dont want watertank to boil.. but the tank in winter will be hot sooner than the day / fire will still run 4 many hours. i tried to thnk of clever design to hinge the coil..but half wrap the chimneypipe...so when tank hot you could just swing the coiljacket off the chimney..so it would stop heating the water ...instantly... im moving to portugal and ineed hot water ...but not centrall heating during day time...cus its small and fireplace is plenty heat ... looking forward to ur house heating solution video. thanks .
Well done, I loved the video. I use those water tanks for irrigation purposes. One tank for the roof inlet and the other 2 are connected with 13mm flexible pipe. They all gradually come to the same height. It was easy to drill near the base of each tank and attach the fittings. Cheers from Melbourne Australia
also beware to clean the cooled part of your chimney more often due to condensating the woodgass creasote tar etc it's where the deposits should build up in system but totally safe when unignored meaning a regular maintenance plan. i applaud you for your greenness 💚 alternative energy solutions and self sufficiency
Since it is right next to the wood stove, and that the heat was already radiating into the air, it's likely that this won't be an issue, especially if creosote remover is used regularly. But you make a good point, flue temperature is an important thing to consider.
Dude, I am inspired by your videos.. & I'm a single guy who bought 5-acres in beautiful northwestern Wisconsin where I am planning to assemble a shipping container cottage.. actually, 2-side-by-side 20ft containers.. with an A-frame 2nd floor master bed & bath w/tub.. downstairs has small living, dining, kitchen & shower & bath & cozy bedroom/den.. it's not tiny living but, very cozy & to allow affordability.. steel roof, one skylight painted all black & resembles an A-frame cuz, 2nd floor roof is steep.. dimensions:20×16.. & there is a bump out in the dining area w/like window box seating to enjoy morning coffee, etc. All this placed on a concrete block half buried 20×16 cellar/one car garage & work bench/utility room.. if ya can Invision this on a sloping mature wooded couple acres that overlook tiny reflection pond & marsh couple acres.. on a very secluded rural road.. this will be my retirement ace & I got 10yrs to do it.. now that I envision it.. I need a sketch & get a local tech school to do a student architecture design on paper for next steps to begin.. power install from road-(150ft away)-grade the plot area where cellar foundation needs be & then the well-(sand point or, what.. I dunno yet)-& septic options.. I've seen people do the own upon ordering what is needed?.. lots to think about.. I'll be watching all your videos & I do want my property to have back-uo which is off grid.. southern expose & lots of facing windows on 2nd story A-frame type design allows much heat absorbtion & an efficient wall mount wood stove in living room w/open grate in curling above for heat rise to upstairs all outta be good ideas to help with heat.. I'll send some pics if ya got an email(?).. love to bounce idea off ya. Land is paid for & I got a tiny shed/cabin purchased too for weekend stay overs while clearing property of fallen trees, etc etc Wish me well.. I wanna do it all for $50,000 & I do most labor w/no mortgage.. let's see if I can do it.. I want most in place by 2025 & finish the details by 2030 when I turn 60 & wanna retire
Hello, it's great to get warm water fir showeer out from the woodstove, it is more efective and confortise to put a radiator too heat rhe bathroom in the heat cirkulation, so you have a warm Room and warm water together and a high quality of lifetime with your young family. Wish all luck and never has steam in your hoses! Take good care.
Totally awesome! I googled a diagram of the piping. I would think an expansion tank would be needed being that that stove can get real hot! Wondering if that’s been an issue at all? Also, I bet you can incorporate a coil on the roof for summer water heating when you don’t want to be running that stove.
Yes we plan to build and add a solar hot water coil this summer. So far an expansion tank has not been needed, we have a relief valve in the system but the whole thing has run flawlessly for 1.5 years now
You only need an expansion tank if there's a check valve or backflow...which would make it a closed system. An open system the expansion will go back into the source....
I think you appreciate that if you fill the heating coil with water and close the valves at the inlet and outlet the pressure will rise and could burst your coil due to thermal expansion of the liquid or pressure generation when the system is partially filled. If not, please ensure thos doesn't happen or ensure your relief valve is connected to the right place and is sized for the worst case scenario.
@@marksexton1340... the source is an electric pump with a check valve holding pressure. The pressure drop of opening a faucet is what starts the pump. What we seems to be working with here is the flex of all the plastic pipe as the expansion tank.
I love off-grid survival systems. If you could get the temperature of the storage tanks warm enough, they would act like thermal mass to keep your house warm.. If you could find water tanks that fit between the floor (joist??), you would have heated floors at the same time that you are storing water for kitchen and showers.. Is your water too hot for a water bed...or under bed storage tanks?
That works like my solar heaters on my roof. They heat up in coming cold water, dumping it into hotwater heater then the gas only has to heat the water to optimum temperature unless the solar water can keep the whole tank hot. That happens in summer. Winter it needs gas assist. We still save a lot. I would want to coil the whole exshust pipe to maximize my hot water intake. A lot of heat goes up that pipe! But great job. I like the cool look.
You might want to put a relief bow in your copper that goes around the chimney so that it’s something becomes or damage it does not blowout steam on your family members. Great idea for free hot water.
Amazing, here is south africa electricity is getting more expensive by the day and we have load shedding also. Im going to give the copper coil thermo syphon effect a go as we have plenty of hard wood. Thanks for the inspiration and may you have lots of successes coming you and family's way.
This is great! I was just contemplating my future in this world that's getting crazier by the day and thinking I'm in a good position to sell my home and go off grid, leaving society in the rear view. And then your video popped up, like a sign. So here I am, subscribed and ready to learn how it's done. I've learned so much already just from this one video. You give hope to people like myself who don't have the first clue about how it all goes together. So thank you for that. All the best!
Outstanding video and there are some great tips about corrosion as well. From a burn safety standpoint with young children, I would suggest looking into something called a thermostatic mixing valve. It hooks into the hot and cold lines and it mixes the water to a temperature you set at the valve. The hotter the water heater output the more cold it mixes to keep the desired temperature. That way you know the kids are protected no matter what the tank temperature it. Good luck.
Had a friend that did something very similar on an old farmhouse out in the country. Huge fireplace (48" wide). Coiled up 1" copper and put on the inside brick lined chimney. Had *very* hot water in no time. The coil wasn't wound a tight together and was around 3 ' tall. Even ran some copper pipe to the bedroom with a radiator that circulated. Thought that was pretty cool.
Great video. If you ever see this comment, I applaud your courage. I set up to do EXACTLY this, twenty years ago, in North Dakota. Unfortunately, after a little deeper research, I became afraid of the potential pressure problems and, not knowing the science behind it all, I thought I'd play it safe and never fired up the contraption. I wish I had. I knew it would heat my water, I just wasn't sure I knew enough to not blow up my hot water tank. I will be doing some experimentation in the next year or two, using both the copper coil and the passive solar loop.
Poison??? Rain water is likely purer than creek water... We run all our drinking water through a rainfresh filter that removes 99% of all contaminates.
It's wonderful to see people actually trying to live, learn and implement ways to live Off the Grid. I'm slowly getting my family there just on a different level. I've had many back surgeries so getting us there is taking a bit more time than originally expected..lol. We'll get there though and thanks to videos like these I get to learn more and more. Thank you for your time!
Just stumbled upon this video and it piqued my interest as I have thought about doing something like this as an addition to my oil burning furnace in the shop for extra heat. Instead of using to heat the water I thought about putting a radiator inline as a heat exchanger, pretty sure this would work with your setup and i could use antifreeze to keep from freezing when not in use. I know you said your system is running fine but was thinking maybe could control the heat more by making the coils larger than the pipe? just a thought.
We ran glycol in a Clever Brooks fire tube dry back boiler, the glycol eventually became acidic and destroyed the copper coils in the radiators. The boiler was pretty large and the fire box ran at about 2,000 degrees. That may have been the problem.
Grear concept! What happens when the hot water tank reservoir is full from the stove pipe? Is that a manual effort to shut it off? Or does recirculation take care of pump pressure? Sorry I am probably just ignorant on the plumbing idea. Thanks
Arend Ann and the friendly team good morning. The wonderful enthusiasm with which you do the housework. Question - was the length of the heat exchanger tube and the number of windings calculated or done by eye? If there are not enough turns to make, then there will be steam at the output. Intuition or calculation?
I’m new here. I’m very concerned about your use of pex to the coil. Pex is only rated to 180°. I’m sure you are exceeding that and may have a disaster in your future as the pex degrades. Please look into it. Just because it works now doesn’t mean it won’t explode in the future. The cross link polymer will degrade over time with excess temperatures
Very good comment, thank you and welcome to the channel. The higher the PSI in the line the lower the temperature tolerance it has. At 80 psi its good for around 200 degrees but at 45 psi its good for 250 or more. We actually have around 40 psi on this line and it has a pressure relieve valve on it just in case. It would be interesting to put a thermostat on the system to see how hot the water actually gets but at this point we are not worried.
We collect a lot of rainwater as well. Currently we have 4000 liters of rainwater storage, when that runs low we get water from the creek. We only filter our drinking water. Thank you for joining us!
Water over 140°F kills most contaminates. If that's not good enough, he can add another preliminary tank to boil water over 212 F and kill all contaminants.
@@countrysideacreshomestead2008 Water over 140°F kills most contaminates. If that's not good enough, he can add another preliminary tank to boil water over 212 F then kill ALL contaminants.
Great concept and project. I had a friend years ago who created a similar hookup to heat his whole house. In your case, the hot water is only free if you're running the wood stove anyway to heat your space. What do you do when the stove doesn't need to run?
Make you a small boiler room outside next to house using same general idea with tubing. Water tank gravity fed to 12in round casing 3.5ft long, tubing of course around casing with door at end for loading wood another for ash trap at bottom, open shut hatches are the best. Finished off with wooden enclosure plus ventilation system could merge with house furnace. Just trying to help dont take the wrong way that idea popped in my head watching this.
Great off grid setup. Will you be wrapping the coils to make it even more efficient? Or is that not necessary? Also, have you considered installing a longer coil and a larger very well insulated copper hot water storage tank for during the summer when you maybe won’t have the fire lit every day, and won’t want it lit for long? Thank you for sharing Peace
first time seeing any of your vids. The title captured my attention. Very clever. Glad it works. I subscribed because off grid is where I plan to be.. So I'm looking forward to seeing what else you've built.
You should add a little slow flow pump so it doesn't rely on thermal siphon, and can't steam cook off and create a problem! Otherwise that's pretty AWESOME!
Wow great job and learned something new...Thanks Its great you have the kids helping and learning as teaching and interactions between parents and children while growing up is a lost trait these days. All the success to you and family.
Great Vid! As you were installing the coil over ur stove pipe, i was wondering if a larger stove pipe around the coils closed off at the top, if it would heat those coils alot better. But if that was enough? Ill shut up now lol. O u did have a question. Have you made plans to make a out boiler when summer time comes?? Take care Dad😇😁👍
It would heat up faster with a two pipe system but as it was it worked great for our family. We have sold that place and everything we own, we are leaving for Europe in 12 days to start a new life there, please join our adventures and subscribe to the channel!
Photovoltaic / Solar Thermal Technician here. I Love the wood stove set up. they also make DC powered heating element for water heaters hooked up to one solar panel. I applaud you and wish you many warm and cozy time with the family *i Like, OLE'!* 💃
Hard to imagine that thermosiphon would work with those pipes running with so many twist and turns I would think a small energy efficient pump that would turn on based on wood stove temperature and temperature of water heater tank might be more effective
I did this back in the '80s to my Woodburn you have to clean the chimney at least once a week because it creates a lot of creosote and I had problems with chimney fires.
Great idea .just need cleaned up a bit .But its hard when you dont have a well stocked building supply close by. I love to tinker in my shop and love seeing people do the same ..[make kool stuff] .
Thank you for sharing but I have a question why are you choosing to solder the connection wouldn't you need a mechanical connection I would think the woodstove would melt the connection the starter with break?
You'll have to head over to our channel and look around, this hot water video is 1.5 years old already, there has been many changes to the homestead since.
Just picked on on your channel and was thrilled to discover you have are. Brother in Christ. May The Lord Himself bless you as a family. So proud of you efforts to build your place off grid, very brave as well as inspiring. I’m consider solar as gas is literally about to cost double! I’m a joiner/Carpenter now about to retire but with a lot of work to do before ‘going home’. Anyway, I pray you’ll take good care of yourself and your lovely family. Peter Glasgow Uk
Obviously, your plumbing is all done and dusted. But for the sake of maintaining good hot water pressure, you could have reduced the number of elbows used in your ceiling and wall cavities and just curved the pipe. I don't remember the % of pressure loss an elbow gives but added up is significant on 1/2 or 3/4 pipe. Ingenius idea to wrap your pipe around the stove flue. Like the old days and works a treat.
Thank you so much for freeing me of monthly expensive hot water bills. You are my hero. And my family appreciates you and your family. Keep the videos coming.
@5:11, so far looking impressive. Just a hint or two for you, the present bottom take off/feed for the wood stove... The Nipple should enter the bull of the Tee and the drain then facing down for easy access and the stove line fed into the top of the Tee. Makes it all easier should you need to drain/flush the tank! Those SharkBite fittings on top of the water heater have too much stress on them and will surely leak. Suggest that you support those vertical lines and or add a bite of tubing to remove/relax those fittings. Make nice radial bends without stress and support/clamp the tubing. Create an insulated shield around the coil for two reasons. 1) helps prevent scolding/burns and 2) helps to maximize heating on a low fire.
Practical simplicity by a do it yourselfer. The copper needs to be as THIN as possible and then insulated to trap the heat onto/into the supply line. I live in Florida and have ample sunlight. I've dropped a 20 gallon flat tank onto my roof, painted it black and get 140' F water out of it INTO my garage hot water tank. When mixed with cold, it gives about 35 gallons of very warm shower water, however the roof tank reheats in about 15 minutes of sunlight. Everyone should do this...
@@countrysideacreshomestead2008 Thanks. I’m in an all electric double wide with the wood stove. Last two months electric bills were $500 plus. Every little bit could help us here.
In the 70's, I built thermo siphon system with in stove 3/4" black pipe - 15' around inside of fire box. I way over built it . In winter when the stove cranked, if we did not use the hot water enough, the system would blow. I plumbed the relief valve to the side of the house on second floor. It would shoot steam out. The H2O was gravity feed, so we often had to run hot water right down the drain to keep system from blowing. The tank was re-purposed electric tank 50 gal. The following year I installed small RV pump and ran hot water through a couple radiators and reduced from 3/4" to 1/2" black pipe and cut in half length of run inside stove to 6'. That finally gave us just enough heat and steam blowing stopped.
Yesterday I drove 2 hours to help a friend move. Her kids just freaking sat there in their electronics while we moved everything. I started to go home 😂 so I hear u
Haven't seen anyone do it yet but seems having a wood furnace with a boiler above it like one of those outdoor wood boiler systems would work well. Plus you wouldn't lose all that wasted heat by having it outside. Instead of having the boiler heat the home the system itself would making the boiler a hot water source only. Could remove the installation perhaps on one of those boiler units to get more heat in the home less in the boiler above it as they were designed to heat the water only and keep heat in with insulation. Think aloud here.
I did exactly that to my wood stove back in Jan 1972, now had 50 years of endless hot water.
David in the UK.
Wow, thx for sharing
@@countrysideacreshomestead2008 that confirms only one thing = smart people are yet there :)
David, what size coil 15mm? How did you bend it
It's wonderful to see children helping the family instead of setting in front of the t.v or gaming....... Way to go young men.
Thank you
😂building a house dont think tv is installed yet😂🤣
yeah this is EXACTLY how our next generation needs to learn to do stuff, no apps, no amazon, and definitely no service personnel (no discredit to contractors, I've been an electrician for over 30 yrs., but I'm unable to accept the liability of certain projects simply because the devices weren't UL and I can't imagine what a licensed plumber would say???) Cheers
How are some of us supposed to learn. I'm on my phone yes, but I'm watching this which is pretty useful to me.
@@rfpeace that's the opposite of how evolution works but ok
Great job man! Protect this man at all cost. Brilliant!
Great to see! This was the way most houses did it in the UK in the days of coal, inset fires had a back-boiler tank, with thermosyphon connected to a hot water tank above the bathroom. Couple of hints from my dad who worked on these systems: 1. Thermosyphon tube should be 1 inch ID or more for full efficiency, or the fluid drag of a smalller pipe significantly reduces your output (1 inch is almost double the cross-section of 3/4). 2. Any 90 degree elbow in the plumbing run reduces the syphon flow by a significant degree, so always try to use wide sweeping bends. 3. Always have a radiator somewhere in the circuit that will dump heat from the system if it gets too much. I’ve not tried this myself yet and it’s great to see this works well even with smaller tube ...and if you are getting what you need and are running the burner anyway, then good enough is good!
I remember having to light the fire if you wanted a bath.
No such thing as a quick shower first thing.
Concur. I lived in the UK and installed a coal stove with a back boiler to drive the radiators with a pumped system. The domestic hot water cylinder was on a 1" gravity loop. The thing that mine had that I don't see here was as the stove had an actual water jacket, the air feed to the stove was controlled by a thermostatic damper to keep the water temp in the stove and cylinder from ever reaching boiling as if it does you risk blowing pipes or worse yet a steam explosion of the hot water loop. Plan for the event that there is more heat in the water than you are using. A heat leakage radiator would certainly help.
I love my back boiler. light the fire in the living room and it heats the entire house up!
How about a header tank on the closed gravity loop to take up expansion of the fluid and ?
@@johnstidworthy3370 I was wondering where it was.... as it stands, this looks like an unvented system.... with no fail-safes 🤔
This has been a dream for my husband and me. We're finally ready to make that dream a reality! We're going to look at an off grid property thats being used as a hunting cabin. Theres minimal systems in place. Gravity fed water, but no hot water. Been checking out different options, thats what I love about the lifestyle. So many different ways to do it and you are in control of how you do it. This has to be one of the best ways I've seen so far. The tankless hot water way seems like a quick fix, but I'm not sold on still needing propane to run it. I like that this way is 100% self reliant. Thank you for sharing!
Awesome, so nice to hear other people pursuing their dreams!
Glad our video could be of use to you.
I actually did another updated video of this system as well, you might want to check it out too.
Добро пожаловать в Россию 😘. Вы прекрасная семья !
Used to live in an old farm house that had what I think was called a range boiler or piping through the fire box of a wood fired cook stove. The old galvanized tank was in a small room directly behind the wall where the range was set. The principal of course being the cook stove was in service all year round so there was always some hot water in the tank. The system wasn’t in service anymore but all the piping and tank were still there. Even as a kid I found the idea intriguing. Today I’m off grid in the high desert so I use solar for hot water. Works pretty well. One thing caught my eye in your system and that’s the possibility of insulating your coil. Something I’ve used around stove pipe is header wrap. You may have seen it used on custom motorcycle exhaust where there’s no provided heat shield. It’s fire proof to very high temperature and last a very long time. However it’s expensive even in small rolls. In my solar system I found I needed to insulate nearly every exposed pipe to bring the performance up to desired levels. Every part of the system is radiating heat all day and night so radiant heat loses can really cause problems. Most of my system is wrapped with felt insulation. It keeps me from getting burned on the copper pipe when I’m doing my inspections. It’s takes surprisingly little insulation to mitigate the losses. Great video.
Solar water heater on the roof gives you domestic hot water 3 seasons
@@scottmcintosh2988 ah…yes. But this is the desert. Winter here is almost always clear an cold. Solar works equally well in winter as in summer. One of the trade offs for several months of cooking hot weather in the summer.
Great ideas thank you
³333
@@jamespayne8781 can you have a recommend a video for the shower heater setup? Planning to go off grid soon too. Thanks!
Glad to see the kids working along side!
Its a family affair
@@countrysideacreshomestead2008AWESOME! That's a great learning experience for them!
Awesome. It reminds me of Great grandparent's wood burning Cook stove, it had a copper tank attached on the right side, it held about 25 gallons of warm water. You just had to fill it with fresh water as needed. The stove had a door that you opened, that had the spout with open & close nozzle. Always had hot or warm water as needed. totally off the grid.
Growing up my family had that exact same stove! Cool to see!
Great concept, a convection hot water recirculation system. The only thing I would change are the pex lines from your heat exchanger coiled around your stove pipe to the hot water storage tank. You will find that these pex pipe will get soft and less ridgid as they are not designed to be hot all the time. I would recommend to continue the lines from the heat exchanger to the hot water tank in either a copper pipe type L or K and try to avoid using type M as it has a thinner pipe wall and is not appropriate for a recirculation system. You should also try to use brass or copper nipples and fittings for domestic water rather then galvanized fittings. Keep up the good work.
I do HVAC Mechanical, and when we do Geothermal systems, we often tie them into the hot water system to improve efficiency of hot water. We normally run copper lines, but I know plumbing code allows you to run pex all the way with no problem and that's on a re-circulation pump. Never heard of an issue where they have failed from being hot on the time. Only failures I know of is when they don't position the pex ring crimp properly .
@@jcarney1987 essentially yes you can run pex for heating but there is pex specifically for heating and pex specifically for domestic water. I made my comment because I can almost guarantee that the pex he was using was for domestic water use only and it was also insufficiently supported, and when insufficiently supported it will sag due to the heat of the water and as well being near the heat source. I don’t take chances nor do I think people should take chances when it comes to potential water damage.
Using pex in this way is fine as long as you support it properly. The only difference between heating and potable pex is the heat pex has an oxygen barrier which prevents air from leaching through the plastic and into your boiler system, which can cause rust and other issues not ideal for heating systems.
I thought that 2. Copper for the longterm
@@terrygabriel5945 When the PEX softens does it leach BPH into the water?
ingenius! My friend , who has passed away now, was a bit older than me, and he told me how his family's house was heated with coal thru WW2 in into the 1950's. and they had an "ice box" until the early 1960's. They had a similar system for hot water and that was considered luxury ! nice job!!! thx from New England USA.
interesting. Our other home we lived at had coal heating. but it was pretty luxurious. You can watch that video and see that set up was neat.
Good to see you having a go. Do not use galvanised steel pipe material for water, especially hot water (heating water drives the oxygen out of the of the water and it then combines with iron; rust) and any copper in the system will create a reaction to corrode the iron quickly.
A dielectric couple between the dissimilar materials would prevent that galv. Nipple from closing up in two or three years .
@@joeharvie8362 I hope your right Joe. My experience was to never put steel into fresh hot water (oxygen leaves heated water and combines with steel. Zinc will give very short term protection). The electrical potential difference between dissimilar metals in a water service is another issue that needs to be dealt with (dielectric separation is difficult with fresh hot water flowing between dissimilar metals). None of this is a problem if you can easily swap out parts as they fail. (I am just an old plumber thinking a bit of brass all thread and brass tee would have been the go). Heating water using thermosyphon is good. But great care is required when using a "Uncontrolled heat supply" for the heat. One should not use plastic pipework (PEx). I do not know at what pressure you will have your hot water system operating at. To give an example if the water pressure is 50 psia. at sea level the water temp can/will reach 281degrees F. Their is a real danger of scolding without temp control devices fitted and of non metal pipework failure, particularly between heat and storage and between storage and temp control device(s).
i hauled water for many moons ,bet your glad its done
I so enjoyed seeing your kids helping you moving the tanks, too. What a great family!
Your system looks good, and I enjoyed watching you work with the pex (a technology I'd like to get familiar with). As a welder fabricator, I make wood stoves as well as stainless steel water coils that go inside the firebox for thermosiphon heating. My place has a stove coil for in winter, as well as a passive solar (out door) collector for the summer season (that must be drained in winter to avoid freeze damage). They both thermosiphon to the same storage tank (which is a standard electric water heater with the thermostats set low, but still there as backup). The HOT outlet from the storage tank should have a "thermostatic tempering valve" on it. These are common in solar systems and mix hot and cold together to prevent dangerously hot water from going to your home's fixtures. Also, your heating coil, being in the lowest part of your water heating system, would be great place to add a T and a drain valve for servicing, sediment flushing, or draining to avoid freezing damage in case you might ever be away and your home be freezing?. Don't forget a T&P relief valve somewhere on that hot side, too. It is good to have them plumbed to a drain because it is quite possible they might forcefully dump boiling hot water sometime. And NEVER have shutoff valves on both sides of that heating coil to insure they never get both accidently closed risking a steam explosion!
I've enjoyed your video and am adding my subscription.
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A few things. 1) right angles on your lines cause you to need a bigger pump and limit flow - try and avoid if possible. 2) insulate the lines - even the cold ones. 3) insulate the coil around the stack. You are losing a lot of heat to the room.
This looks like a good system that you can make quite easily but if you want more hot water, I would recomend putting just one or two loops inside the firebox. I have that in my Pioneer Princess wood cookstove and it is tremendous! I have too much heat for just hot water so I have a heat exchanger to bring that extra heat to heat my hydronic cement floor. It makes the whole house so much warmer and more comfortable without burning any extra wood.
Those are great stoves!
What about summer? Myself I could see a setup like this working well for us in the winter when we are burning wood to (supplementally) heat the house, but summer is a whole different deal. Any extra heat in the house is unwelcome. Very warm (and humid) here. I'd be thinking a mixed system for where we live: passive solar water heat in summer and wood burning in the winter.
I know someone who used black pipe on the inside of their wood stove to heat their hot water...the water was crazy hot but no electricity needed... I like the copper coil and it is what I have been thinking about doing for domestic hot water and mainly as a way to heat the floor..
I think you're doing an awesome job, your kids are lucky to have such great parents. All the best to you, and yours. Thanks for this great idea.
SKILLS ! VERY NICE ! / Subscribed . AWE That Lil Song At The End :) !
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Great video!
1 small tip!
Maybe at the beginning you could give a quick explanation as to how the hot water rises and takes itself out into the storage tank and also the siphon effect!
Just for those peeps who may not be familiar with this idea!
Thanks for posting!
Liquids and gasses become less dense as they get warmer. They are displaced upwards by colder more dense liquid or gas. That's it!
I always remember a lecturer at college telling us that hot air balloons do not rise of their own accord. They are displaced upwards by colder more dense air around them.
As has been mentioned in this thread. The thermosyphon effect is very fragile that is why they were always piped up these primaries using 1" Dia pipework.......depending upon the vertical distance between the stove and the hot water cylinder. (In the UK we call these two flow and return pipes the primaries) Doing a job like this, I would probs wrap 3/4 annealed copper tube round flue, and then reduce up to 1" for the primary pipework to upstairs. Thermosyphon will go like a steam train. Also pull one or two heat sink radiatiors off the primaries for free heat and a means to get rid of the heat if you're generating too much. If steam pockets form in the primaries, (which they can and often) they make a horrendous noise, as the steam pockets rattle up the pipework. Last point, this primary system on a solid fuel stove should be atmospheric, ie there should be an open vent on the system. Failing that, there should be an expansion vessel and a pressure safety valve (PSV). Otherwise you just built a bomb!
My credentials.....Served a 4 yr apprenticeship as a plumber/heating eng many years ago. Kept studying. Now a Chartered Engineer with 2 degrees and a Master's in Engineering.
Self built last two family homes and loved it! Dying to do it again. 🙂
You rock dude! I'm planning on doing the same thing. I have to find a used water heater first😇😇🤙💯
Thanks
Your house is coming together & I’m excited to see the comfort & necessary projects coming along. Love your videos! Blessings to you!
It sure is, feels more like a home every day!
Do you have any problems with flash steaming when the lines get to hot? A friend was trying to build a system to heat his house in the winter using an outdoor fire pit made of a washing machine drum and copper tubing but couldn't get the copper tube close enough to the fire without flash steaming. I suggested either adding a layer of concrete or bricks, maybe with the copper running through the holes in the bricks. My third suggestion was to use oil instead of water then use car radiators and a box fan inside each room to dissipate the heat. I just use a block heater from a diesel engine dropped in a 55 gallon drum of water.
No issues, it worked flawlessly for almost 3 years
Great idea! Ya know...I bet you could rig a toilet bowl float to operate as a switch to automatically transfer water from the bins to the main bin of water.
Not a bad idea, I do plan to hook them all together via the pipe at the bottom though. That way I wont need any power to move the water it will just gravity feed over.
Awesome job ! You have to love that hot water System :) I never thought of that when I built, I use the 40 gallon tank as well but mine is propane fired, With a family it would take a 100 pound tank a month, My RV pump like your pulls water from my well under the cabin, I have fully operational Off grid cabin :)
when I was growing up in the 80s we had this in a different form. It would heat the water to 130. Superinsulate your tank! it helps.
😁 cool! ....but no fair ...🤣 ..that was my clever idea last night for my hotwater issue. lol nice to see it was obviously a good one..... youtube is awesome. nice job/ thnks 4 the vid, excited to see your vid on your overflow hookup ( when tank already too hot, how youll run the rest to heat house) ... cause ya dont want watertank to boil.. but the tank in winter will be hot sooner than the day / fire will still run 4 many hours.
i tried to thnk of clever design to hinge the coil..but half wrap the chimneypipe...so when tank hot you could just swing the coiljacket off the chimney..so it would stop heating the water ...instantly...
im moving to portugal and ineed hot water ...but not centrall heating during day time...cus its small and fireplace is plenty heat ...
looking forward to ur house heating solution video. thanks .
Great ideas, good luck with you move!
Well done, I loved the video. I use those water tanks for irrigation purposes. One tank for the roof inlet and the other 2 are connected with 13mm flexible pipe. They all gradually come to the same height. It was easy to drill near the base of each tank and attach the fittings. Cheers from Melbourne Australia
Thank you, great ideas!
Thank you for this great video. Very inspirational. It must have been fun to design and put together.
also beware to clean the cooled part of your chimney more often due to condensating the woodgass creasote tar etc it's where the deposits should build up in system but totally safe when unignored meaning a regular maintenance plan. i applaud you for your greenness 💚 alternative energy solutions and self sufficiency
Since it is right next to the wood stove, and that the heat was already radiating into the air, it's likely that this won't be an issue, especially if creosote remover is used regularly. But you make a good point, flue temperature is an important thing to consider.
Thanks sharing your experience, it's a great help. Be bless you and your family.
You're very welcome. God bless your endeavors!
Awesome to see a family doing away with the system.
I just found ya and subscribed 🍀Greetings some Oregon and you're living the dream. Congratulations👍
Thank you for joining us!
Ingenious! Brilliantly laid out. Great concept, I love it!!!
Thank you
The Amish have used a similar system for years. They make a heatexchaner ,stainless steel, that replaces one of the firebrick in the stove.
Dude, I am inspired by your videos.. & I'm a single guy who bought 5-acres in beautiful northwestern Wisconsin where I am planning to assemble a shipping container cottage.. actually, 2-side-by-side 20ft containers.. with an A-frame 2nd floor master bed & bath w/tub.. downstairs has small living, dining, kitchen & shower & bath & cozy bedroom/den.. it's not tiny living but, very cozy & to allow affordability.. steel roof, one skylight painted all black & resembles an A-frame cuz, 2nd floor roof is steep.. dimensions:20×16.. & there is a bump out in the dining area w/like window box seating to enjoy morning coffee, etc.
All this placed on a concrete block half buried 20×16 cellar/one car garage & work bench/utility room.. if ya can Invision this on a sloping mature wooded couple acres that overlook tiny reflection pond & marsh couple acres.. on a very secluded rural road.. this will be my retirement ace & I got 10yrs to do it.. now that I envision it.. I need a sketch & get a local tech school to do a student architecture design on paper for next steps to begin.. power install from road-(150ft away)-grade the plot area where cellar foundation needs be & then the well-(sand point or, what.. I dunno yet)-& septic options.. I've seen people do the own upon ordering what is needed?.. lots to think about.. I'll be watching all your videos & I do want my property to have back-uo which is off grid.. southern expose & lots of facing windows on 2nd story A-frame type design allows much heat absorbtion & an efficient wall mount wood stove in living room w/open grate in curling above for heat rise to upstairs all outta be good ideas to help with heat.. I'll send some pics if ya got an email(?).. love to bounce idea off ya.
Land is paid for & I got a tiny shed/cabin purchased too for weekend stay overs while clearing property of fallen trees, etc etc
Wish me well.. I wanna do it all for $50,000 & I do most labor w/no mortgage.. let's see if I can do it.. I want most in place by 2025 & finish the details by 2030 when I turn 60 & wanna retire
Keep it simple and believe in yourself!
Hello, it's great to get warm water fir showeer out from the woodstove, it is more efective and confortise to put a radiator too heat rhe bathroom in the heat cirkulation, so you have a warm Room and warm water together and a high quality of lifetime with your young family. Wish all luck and never has steam in your hoses! Take good care.
Totally awesome! I googled a diagram of the piping. I would think an expansion tank would be needed being that that stove can get real hot! Wondering if that’s been an issue at all? Also, I bet you can incorporate a coil on the roof for summer water heating when you don’t want to be running that stove.
Yes we plan to build and add a solar hot water coil this summer.
So far an expansion tank has not been needed, we have a relief valve in the system but the whole thing has run flawlessly for 1.5 years now
You only need an expansion tank if there's a check valve or backflow...which would make it a closed system. An open system the expansion will go back into the source....
I think you appreciate that if you fill the heating coil with water and close the valves at the inlet and outlet the pressure will rise and could burst your coil due to thermal expansion of the liquid or pressure generation when the system is partially filled. If not, please ensure thos doesn't happen or ensure your relief valve is connected to the right place and is sized for the worst case scenario.
@@countrysideacreshomestead2008 did you post a diagram of the entire water system?
@@marksexton1340... the source is an electric pump with a check valve holding pressure. The pressure drop of opening a faucet is what starts the pump. What we seems to be working with here is the flex of all the plastic pipe as the expansion tank.
I love off-grid survival systems.
If you could get the temperature of the storage tanks warm enough, they would act like thermal mass to keep your house warm.. If you could find water tanks that fit between the floor (joist??), you would have heated floors at the same time that you are storing water for kitchen and showers.. Is your water too hot for a water bed...or under bed storage tanks?
Thanks,great ideas.
That works like my solar heaters on my roof. They heat up in coming cold water, dumping it into hotwater heater then the gas only has to heat the water to optimum temperature unless the solar water can keep the whole tank hot. That happens in summer. Winter it needs gas assist. We still save a lot. I would want to coil the whole exshust pipe to maximize my hot water intake. A lot of heat goes up that pipe! But great job. I like the cool look.
You might want to put a relief bow in your copper that goes around the chimney so that it’s something becomes or damage it does not blowout steam on your family members. Great idea for free hot water.
Awesome helpers
Amazing, here is south africa electricity is getting more expensive by the day and we have load shedding also. Im going to give the copper coil thermo syphon effect a go as we have plenty of hard wood. Thanks for the inspiration and may you have lots of successes coming you and family's way.
This is great! I was just contemplating my future in this world that's getting crazier by the day and thinking I'm in a good position to sell my home and go off grid, leaving society in the rear view. And then your video popped up, like a sign. So here I am, subscribed and ready to learn how it's done. I've learned so much already just from this one video. You give hope to people like myself who don't have the first clue about how it all goes together. So thank you for that. All the best!
I'm glad we are able to help, may God bless your journey!
I enjoy watching a family living a self sufficient as possible lifestyle. Great job and wonderful family. Keep up the good work. John
Thank you John!
Outstanding video and there are some great tips about corrosion as well. From a burn safety standpoint with young children, I would suggest looking into something called a thermostatic mixing valve. It hooks into the hot and cold lines and it mixes the water to a temperature you set at the valve. The hotter the water heater output the more cold it mixes to keep the desired temperature. That way you know the kids are protected no matter what the tank temperature it. Good luck.
I love to see a regular guy and regular family be successful with something like this. Rhanks for the video
Thank you!
That's a great project !!
Something I've wanted to try for a long time.
Had a friend that did something very similar on an old farmhouse out in the country. Huge fireplace (48" wide). Coiled up 1" copper and put on the inside brick lined chimney. Had *very* hot water in no time. The coil wasn't wound a tight together and was around 3 ' tall. Even ran some copper pipe to the bedroom with a radiator that circulated. Thought that was pretty cool.
Very interesting! You are making great progress!
Thank you!
Great stuff, thanks for sharing.
Thank you.
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5:36 that is brilliant!! much love to you and your huge beautiful family, and the best of luck to you and the wonderful Russian Federation
Thank you so much!
Nice idea I’ll deff keep this in mind.. luv the journey!
Great video. If you ever see this comment, I applaud your courage. I set up to do EXACTLY this, twenty years ago, in North Dakota. Unfortunately, after a little deeper research, I became afraid of the potential pressure problems and, not knowing the science behind it all, I thought I'd play it safe and never fired up the contraption. I wish I had. I knew it would heat my water, I just wasn't sure I knew enough to not blow up my hot water tank. I will be doing some experimentation in the next year or two, using both the copper coil and the passive solar loop.
Shame you didn't ever fire it up. You could easily have fitted a safety valve for the pressure build up.
Yes agreed..this type of fired water tank setup is not complete without that additional pressure valve
Poison rain water...Please be careful my brother... much love and bless you and yours....Amen
Poison???
Rain water is likely purer than creek water...
We run all our drinking water through a rainfresh filter that removes 99% of all contaminates.
It's wonderful to see people actually trying to live, learn and implement ways to live Off the Grid.
I'm slowly getting my family there just on a different level.
I've had many back surgeries so getting us there is taking a bit more time than originally expected..lol. We'll get there though and thanks to videos like these I get to learn more and more.
Thank you for your time!
Wish you all the best on your journey!
Nice project. I mite suggest a heat shield for the pex pipe. But as I always say if it's for free it's for me!
This is so fabulous!!! Thank you so much for filming and posting :-) Question for you- How long does it take to heat back up after a long shower?
To be honest I've never timed it.
Well done brilliant a man after my Owen heart great to something that is a winner for all the family great dad would his wathe in gold 😊🙏♋
Thank you
Just stumbled upon this video and it piqued my interest as I have thought about doing something like this as an addition to my oil burning furnace in the shop for extra heat. Instead of using to heat the water I thought about putting a radiator inline as a heat exchanger, pretty sure this would work with your setup and i could use antifreeze to keep from freezing when not in use. I know you said your system is running fine but was thinking maybe could control the heat more by making the coils larger than the pipe? just a thought.
We ran glycol in a Clever Brooks fire tube dry back boiler, the glycol eventually became acidic and destroyed the copper coils in the radiators. The boiler was pretty large and the fire box ran at about 2,000 degrees. That may have been the problem.
@@Yarrb53 yeah never thought about glycol causing damage.
Grear concept! What happens when the hot water tank reservoir is full from the stove pipe? Is that a manual effort to shut it off? Or does recirculation take care of pump pressure? Sorry I am probably just ignorant on the plumbing idea. Thanks
This is cool but 1 question. Are you gonna have your wood stove burning during the summer months? If not then what can you do to get hot water?
Some morning and nights in the summer are cool enough to run the stove but we hope to build another coil for solar water heating.
Arend Ann and the friendly team good morning. The wonderful enthusiasm with which you do the housework. Question - was the length of the heat exchanger tube and the number of windings calculated or done by eye? If there are not enough turns to make, then there will be steam at the output. Intuition or calculation?
I’m new here. I’m very concerned about your use of pex to the coil. Pex is only rated to 180°. I’m sure you are exceeding that and may have a disaster in your future as the pex degrades. Please look into it. Just because it works now doesn’t mean it won’t explode in the future. The cross link polymer will degrade over time with excess temperatures
Very good comment, thank you and welcome to the channel.
The higher the PSI in the line the lower the temperature tolerance it has. At 80 psi its good for around 200 degrees but at 45 psi its good for 250 or more.
We actually have around 40 psi on this line and it has a pressure relieve valve on it just in case. It would be interesting to put a thermostat on the system to see how hot the water actually gets but at this point we are not worried.
Pretty cool setup. Be careful with garden hoses. They are not all rated for potable water.
So basically you turn river water into warm shower water? Do you filter the river water?
Just tuning in to your channel, very nice!
We collect a lot of rainwater as well.
Currently we have 4000 liters of rainwater storage, when that runs low we get water from the creek.
We only filter our drinking water.
Thank you for joining us!
Water over 140°F kills most contaminates. If that's not good enough, he can add another preliminary tank to boil water over 212 F and kill all contaminants.
@@countrysideacreshomestead2008 Water over 140°F kills most contaminates. If that's not good enough, he can add another preliminary tank to boil water over 212 F then kill ALL contaminants.
Nice I like 👍the idea is awesome 👌
Great concept and project. I had a friend years ago who created a similar hookup to heat his whole house. In your case, the hot water is only free if you're running the wood stove anyway to heat your space. What do you do when the stove doesn't need to run?
Then we have no hot water unfortunately.
We plan to build and add a solar hot water heater this year
Make you a small boiler room outside next to house using same general idea with tubing. Water tank gravity fed to 12in round casing 3.5ft long, tubing of course around casing with door at end for loading wood another for ash trap at bottom, open shut hatches are the best. Finished off with wooden enclosure plus ventilation system could merge with house furnace. Just trying to help dont take the wrong way that idea popped in my head watching this.
@@Oldaker7 that’s a good idea, I still prefer a solar heater with a heat soak as a more “free” option.
Thanks for ending the video with the final results. Great job! ….the final final ending was even better showing the little tyke 👍😃
Great off grid setup. Will you be wrapping the coils to make it even more efficient? Or is that not necessary?
Also, have you considered installing a longer coil and a larger very well insulated copper hot water storage tank for during the summer when you maybe won’t have the fire lit every day, and won’t want it lit for long?
Thank you for sharing
Peace
So far its working great without wrapping.
I'm planning to build another coil for solar water heating. Stay tuned for that.
@@countrysideacreshomestead2008 That’s great. I look forward to seeing your next video. Subscribed.
Thank you, please share
first time seeing any of your vids. The title captured my attention. Very clever. Glad it works. I subscribed because off grid is where I plan to be.. So I'm looking forward to seeing what else you've built.
Thank your for joining us!
You should add a little slow flow pump so it doesn't rely on thermal siphon, and can't steam cook off and create a problem! Otherwise that's pretty AWESOME!
Wow great job and learned something new...Thanks Its great you have the kids helping and learning as teaching and interactions between parents and children while growing up is a lost trait these days. All the success to you and family.
Thank you
Great Vid!
As you were installing the coil over ur stove pipe, i was wondering if a larger stove pipe around the coils closed off at the top, if it would heat those coils alot better. But if that was enough? Ill shut up now lol.
O u did have a question. Have you made plans to make a out boiler when summer time comes??
Take care Dad😇😁👍
It would heat up faster with a two pipe system but as it was it worked great for our family. We have sold that place and everything we own, we are leaving for Europe in 12 days to start a new life there, please join our adventures and subscribe to the channel!
Photovoltaic / Solar Thermal Technician here. I Love the wood stove set up. they also make DC powered heating element for water heaters hooked up to one solar panel. I applaud you and wish you many warm and cozy time with the family *i Like, OLE'!* 💃
Thank you
Hard to imagine that thermosiphon would work with those pipes running with so many twist and turns I would think a small energy efficient pump that would turn on based on wood stove temperature and temperature of water heater tank might be more effective
I did this back in the '80s to my Woodburn you have to clean the chimney at least once a week because it creates a lot of creosote and I had problems with chimney fires.
We have had no creosote issues or chimney fires.
That is a really cool idea!! (Saying this without irony)
That is such a great idea for heating the water, awesome
Try siphon hoses over the tops to transfer
Great idea .just need cleaned up a bit .But its hard when you dont have a well stocked building supply close by. I love to tinker in my shop and love seeing people do the same ..[make kool stuff] .
Things are a lot cleaner now, it's an older video
impressed ya made one of these deals..😮 good job ✨
A man's man! Bringing hot water to your family!
Thank you for sharing but I have a question why are you choosing to solder the connection wouldn't you need a mechanical connection I would think the woodstove would melt the connection the starter with break?
System has been running for over two years with no issues.
Look’n good with the basic structure secure and weathertight! The hot water luxury is a great addition, too. What is next?
You'll have to head over to our channel and look around, this hot water video is 1.5 years old already, there has been many changes to the homestead since.
Just picked on on your channel and was thrilled to discover you have are. Brother in Christ. May The Lord Himself bless you as a family. So proud of you efforts to build your place off grid, very brave as well as inspiring. I’m consider solar as gas is literally about to cost double! I’m a joiner/Carpenter now about to retire but with a lot of work to do before ‘going home’.
Anyway, I pray you’ll take good care of yourself and your lovely family.
Peter Glasgow Uk
Thank you for you kind words, may God bless your hopes and plans!
Obviously, your plumbing is all done and dusted. But for the sake of maintaining good hot water pressure, you could have reduced the number of elbows used in your ceiling and wall cavities and just curved the pipe. I don't remember the % of pressure loss an elbow gives but added up is significant on 1/2 or 3/4 pipe.
Ingenius idea to wrap your pipe around the stove flue. Like the old days and works a treat.
Thank you so much for freeing me of monthly expensive hot water bills. You are my hero. And my family appreciates you and your family. Keep the videos coming.
@5:11, so far looking impressive. Just a hint or two for you, the present bottom take off/feed for the wood stove... The Nipple should enter the bull of the Tee and the drain then facing down for easy access and the stove line fed into the top of the Tee. Makes it all easier should you need to drain/flush the tank! Those SharkBite fittings on top of the water heater have too much stress on them and will surely leak. Suggest that you support those vertical lines and or add a bite of tubing to remove/relax those fittings. Make nice radial bends without stress and support/clamp the tubing. Create an insulated shield around the coil for two reasons. 1) helps prevent scolding/burns and 2) helps to maximize heating on a low fire.
It's all been working great for 1.5 years, thank you for watching
@@countrysideacreshomestead2008 Can't argue with success!
Cheers
I was thinking about doing the same thing for radiant flooring.
Practical simplicity by a do it yourselfer. The copper needs to be as THIN as possible and then insulated to trap the heat onto/into the supply line. I live in Florida and have ample sunlight. I've dropped a 20 gallon flat tank onto my roof, painted it black and get 140' F water out of it INTO my garage hot water tank. When mixed with cold, it gives about 35 gallons of very warm shower water, however the roof tank reheats in about 15 minutes of sunlight. Everyone should do this...
Smart!
Hi, first time visiting. Thanks good show. Wondered how many feet was your soft copper coil? You probably said but I missed that. Humble Thanks
Welcomr to the channel!
I believe it was 25'.
@@countrysideacreshomestead2008
Thanks. I’m in an all electric double wide with the wood stove. Last two months electric bills were $500 plus. Every little bit could help us here.
Ouch, water heater is a great place to start
Sweet system mate. I'm in NZ and about to set up an off grid cabin so the timing of finding your video is perfect! Great stuff!
Glad you found it useful, hope your dreams become reality!
Very interesting video.. I subscribed. 👍
Thank you, please check out some more of our videos and share share share
In the 70's, I built thermo siphon system with in stove 3/4" black pipe - 15' around inside of fire box. I way over built it .
In winter when the stove cranked, if we did not use the
hot water enough, the system would blow. I plumbed the relief valve to the side of the house on second floor. It would shoot steam out. The H2O was gravity feed, so we often had to run hot water right down the drain to keep system from blowing.
The tank was re-purposed electric tank 50 gal. The following year I installed small RV pump and ran hot water through a couple radiators and reduced from 3/4" to 1/2" black pipe and cut in half length of run inside stove to 6'.
That finally gave us just enough heat and steam blowing stopped.
I was thinking the same thing as far as the children helping out the old man.:) Good for the whole Familia..
What will you do in the summer? Do you have to keep the stove on constantly? That seems like it would be a lot of wood to chop every day.
Yesterday I drove 2 hours to help a friend move. Her kids just freaking sat there in their electronics while we moved everything. I started to go home 😂 so I hear u
That's sad, society has really gone down hill
Haven't seen anyone do it yet but seems having a wood furnace with a boiler above it like one of those outdoor wood boiler systems would work well. Plus you wouldn't lose all that wasted heat by having it outside. Instead of having the boiler heat the home the system itself would making the boiler a hot water source only. Could remove the installation perhaps on one of those boiler units to get more heat in the home less in the boiler above it as they were designed to heat the water only and keep heat in with insulation. Think aloud here.
So many options out there, its good to think outside the box!