Home-Built Boiler Warms Shop Floor

Home-Built Boiler Warms Shop Floor FARM SHOP Miscellaneous 30-5-34 Furniture maker Rod Adams needs lots of ventilation in his shop when he's applying lacquer and other finishes to wood. Thanks to his wood-fired water heater and radiant floor heating system, he can open all the windows, even in the middle of winter. It can get down to 20 degrees inside and yet when he shuts the windows, the shop warms right back up to 70 degrees in a few minutes. "When I built the shop, all my friends beat me over the head to put in a radiant floor system," recalls Adams. "I thought it was crazy, but I only had to spend about $200 on tubing." He assembled his wood-fired boiler from scrap. The firebox is a 16-in. diameter diesel fuel tank. It sits inside an old air compressor tank that serves as a water jacket. Adams' storage reservoir is an old water pressure tank that stands behind the boiler. Fifty feet of copper tubing inside the reservoir acts as a heat exchanger for the closed loop, in-floor heating system. "The reservoir is higher than the water jacket so hot water thermo-siphons on its own, automatically circulating within the system," explains Adams. "When the thermostat calls for heat in the building, water is pumped through the coils in the reservoir and out to the lines in the floor." He says the hardest part in constructing the system was to weld it tight so it wouldn't leak. He adds that the domed shape of the fire box aids in distributing the heat. Adams recognized that the door he cut in the end of the firebox that extends beyond the water jacket could be subject to heat stress. "I tack welded a 1/8-in. thick fire plate to the inside of the door, leaving an air gap between the two," he explains. "The plate acts as a blast panel to protect the door from the heat. Air enters through holes in the door and through holes in the blast panel to reach the combustion chamber." He adds that unlike a wood stove that you have to damper down when it gets too hot, the water-heating stove can burn as hot as it wants because of the cooling effect of the water. "I like a quick fire that produces a lot of heat, captures it and stores it," says Adams. Contact: FARM SHOW Followup, Rod Adams, 11508 S. Hunt Rd., Lone Jack, Mo. 64070 (ph 816 690-3423; rodshomeplace@hotmail.com).

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