oceanjunkie
New Member
I had a drainback solar hot water system installed and running for a while, but due to a recent renovation I took it down and don't plan to put it back up. I still have the 120gal drainback tank sitting in my basement. It is designed similar to an indirect fired hot water tank, except the internal coil is mounted high in the tank.....the domestic water would flow through the internal coil and get heated up by the 120gal of water in the tank which was heated by the solar panels. So what I'm considering doing is adding the 120gal tank of water to my existing single zone baseboard heating loop. That loop is setup for constant circulation through the heating season. If I add the 120gal to the loop, it should reduce the amount of times my burner has to fire, while increasing the amount of time it runs when it does fire.....which I think is a good thing for efficiency? And then the domestic water would run through the internal coil preheating it before it goes into the hot water heater (which is the same thing it was doing when setup for solar) which will add some capacity to our little 30gal indirect tank. We haven't had any capacity issues, but we just added a new full bath to the house so it could be an issue in the winter when the incoming water is real cold.
What do you think? Would this work? I wouldn't expect much of a decrease in oil usage, but since I already have the tank sitting there unused I just wonder if I should plumb it into the loop. Thanks in advance.
What do you think? Would this work? I wouldn't expect much of a decrease in oil usage, but since I already have the tank sitting there unused I just wonder if I should plumb it into the loop. Thanks in advance.