Anyone ever used a barrel and a coil to make a wood fired heater? I’m still on the hunt for a cheap way to get the water warmed up. I made a $35 solar setup yesterday that’s getting 6 degrees of temp rise but it’s way to small. Was thinking about getting a barrel and a coil and starting a fire under that and running the water through that coil to really get some hot water. Thoughts?
Wood fired heater
- Thread starter Rumbleehockey03
- Start date
Almost everyone underestimates the HUGE amount of btu's required to heat large volumes of water.
Wood fired heaters just won't do the job unless you own a logging company!
Wood fired heaters just won't do the job unless you own a logging company!
there are a thread or two around here somewhere, and of course you tube vids, but it really isn't very practical.
www.troublefreepool.com
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www.troublefreepool.com
Looked into this several years back. There were at the time 2 companies that I had literature from. For one, they were expensive and remember the guy telling me he had 300 linear feet of stainless pipe to get out the btu's it was rated for. Everything was good until I realized even if I had unlimited wood at no cost it still couldn't work. The fire box was large but the max it was able to burn was 2 hours and I'd be busy all day throwing wood in to keep it going. That's not what I call a pool heater. And was gimmicky with a built in pizza oven. I guess they needed to dress it up somehow.
The Only USA Made Wood Fired Burning Swimming Pool Water Heaters - The BEST Wood Pool Heater available with longest reputation
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What about a wood pellet stove? They do make pellet stoves with a built-in heat exchanger to pump water to radiators. These are automatic also/ you load it up with about 20 kigs of pellets and it feeds the pellets into the burner - very little smoke/ash and efficient. But the stoves are not cheap and are designed for the interior of houses.
Be ready to burn up a bunch of wood with minimal results. You’re much better off with a solar cover, which will be necessary to keep any heat in at night anyways. I used it the first year a few times, hauled it up the second year and never even fired it.
cfherrman
TFP Guide
Run the numbers first, if you can't get above 100k btu don't bother unless you want to have fun