fish safe wood water heater?

[orry william fisher]

If copper is a no go for a heat exchange coil in an AP system then what material can i use to hold and direct my wood heated water(tube or tub)? I am thinking of using a small rocket heater to heat water but i am stuck on materials what should i use? Any help here would be great i am kinda pullen my hair out on this one.

[Shelia Hoyt]

 Hi Orry,

Stainless steel. I had my husband build me a heat exchanger and it works great. Temps have got as low as 9 degrees and when I keep the wood heat the water temp stays in the 70's. My system is over 600+ gallons.  I have a picture of mine on my page...

[mark gordon]

Hi Sheila,

can you give me an estimate on how much wood/fuel you're using to heat your hoop house. say for one month,  I've been mulling over adding some type of wood heater to help us get back to growing again.

thanks

chef mark gordon

[Ross Williams]

Orry,

Our setup is in NH and we have had months of temps below freezing. We have a Froling wood boiler which heats two 400 gallon storage tanks. I have a temperature sensor in the filter tank set to turn on at 69F and off at 70F. When the sensor calls for heat 120F water is pumped through 3/4 pex to my sump tanks where it passes through a 30ft coil of 3/4 inch ribbed stainless tube. During spring and fall it takes about 1hr to raise the temp 1 degree. During this cold weather it is running almost non stop to maintain 69F. I am currently heating about 15,000 gallons. The greenhouse it's self has been falling to freezing at night but because the plants are sitting in the warm water they are still growing.  I am currently circulating about 8 gallons a minute through my deep water tanks and the same going directly to the fish tanks. I also loose a lot of heat to the greenhouse through the NFT and Zip towers.

If you want to see it go to

https://www.facebook.com/victoryaquaponics 

If you want to heat the greenhouse its self you are going to need a lot.

[David - WI]

There is a pretty cool greenhouse heating calculator here; it will output btu/hour plus watts of electricity, gal of propane, and cf of natural gas... and you can convert from btu/hr to cords of wood pretty easily.

http://www.littlegreenhouse.com/heat-calc.shtml

[Shelia Hoyt]

Hi Mark,

  It depends on the weather.  Recently it has been around a rank of wood or just under with Zero temps and sub-zero wind chills, of course in Missouri our weather patterns go up and down like a yo yo. I do not burn any wood through the day if the temps are in the 30's or 40's. My system is around 650+ gallons I also utilize passive solar by placing glass on top of my pond, fish tank, and I have three- 55 gallon drums that I use to top off the system and water my plants in the GH. When it is sunny the water temps can increase 15 degrees or more through the day.

My  water temps stayed between 68-73 degrees at night and around 50 in the GH even when it was zero. One night I let the fire go out and the green house temp dropped to the 30's and the water temp stayed in the 60's I do cover my tanks at night with Styrofoam to hold in some of the heat....  I also plan to get a magic heat re-claimer; however ,it has been on back order since December.

mark gordon said:

Hi Sheila,

can you give me an estimate on how much wood/fuel you're using to heat your hoop house. say for one month,  I've been mulling over adding some type of wood heater to help us get back to growing again.

thanks

chef mark gordon