Add Indirect Water Heater?

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ChuckH000

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Hi,

I live in Northeast PA. I have a New Yorker FR173-W fuel oil boiler. I also have a Marathon add-on wood boiler that is tied in with the New Yorker. My house is less than 3000 square feet--a converted barn type structure, fairly well insulated.

The New Yorker never seems to be able to keep up with hot water demands and I'm also hoping the addition of an indirect hot water heater will provide some greater efficiency in the system over all.

I'm wondering if there is a way to tie in the indirect water heater to both the New Yorker and Marathon systems? The Marathon regularly produces excess heat (in the winter) that is set to circulate to a blower in the basement at a specific temp. I'd like to be able to draw the heat for indirect water heater from the Marathon when it is hot, or the New Yorker at any other time. Is that even feasible? I'm having my plumber come to have a look at the system soon. But he didn't originally install the two boilers--that guy is now departed.

Thanks,

Chuck
 

Dana

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The FR173 is almost certainly at least 2x oversized and possibly 3x oversized for you space heating load, and was probably sized for it's domestic hot water output (?). Is the primary hot water performance issue flow related?

A heat pump hot water heater in series with the output of the Marathon's coil would give you a buffering thermal mass that gets at least half it's heat from the boiler-room surroundings putting those standby losses to good use. An indirect would give you the full boiler output for hot water if needed. Depending on exactly what you are trying to achieve here the solutions may differ.

Also, without a better description of how the wood boiler & FR173 are interconnected & controlled it's hard to say how messy a dual-source indirect solution would be. With a plate type heat exchanger for one source and the internal heat exchanger for the other it might not be all that bad. The issue then becomes configuring controls to always draw from the Marathon when it has heat available, with the FR173 as the second-stage only.
 

ChuckH000

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The FR173 is almost certainly at least 2x oversized and possibly 3x oversized for you space heating load, and was probably sized for it's domestic hot water output (?). Is the primary hot water performance issue flow related?

A heat pump hot water heater in series with the output of the Marathon's coil would give you a buffering thermal mass that gets at least half it's heat from the boiler-room surroundings putting those standby losses to good use. An indirect would give you the full boiler output for hot water if needed. Depending on exactly what you are trying to achieve here the solutions may differ.

Also, without a better description of how the wood boiler & FR173 are interconnected & controlled it's hard to say how messy a dual-source indirect solution would be. With a plate type heat exchanger for one source and the internal heat exchanger for the other it might not be all that bad. The issue then becomes configuring controls to always draw from the Marathon when it has heat available, with the FR173 as the second-stage only.

Thanks. I was reading about my boiler yesterday and it apparently it is an on demand hot water heater. There is no storage for hot water use in the FR173. I wonder if this still makes sense to consider the indirect water heater then? Will that provide efficiency over what the boiler is doing now?

If you are interested here is a pic of my current setup. It is pretty typical for this kind of thing, I guess.

20150428_075008.jpg
 
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