malcom st. peter

I found this http://www.superior-industries.com/dsf_5000_product_122.html. I was thinking of mixing it with copper powder, then packing it into a drum of sorts with copper tubing. I am thinking that this would make for greater surface aria for heat transfer.

Just wondering if anyone has thought about making there own high temp thermal conductive grease.

That would be the simplest

Think about this for a second, In stead of having a presser valve on all the tanks make a system out of cheap piping black iron pipe or what ever you want. have all the small holes on top facing the same direction plum it all up and have one for all of them.

Soft copper tubing is your best bet for heating water, depending on how big of a system you want and how quickly you want to heat the water will determine how big you will go with it. simple facts takes 8.34 btu to heat a gallon of water 1 degree 60-180 is going to take you 1000.8 btu to heat it. You want to be thinking of what to use and where to put it to make every thing work as a unit and make it as efficient as possible. From what I have seen concentrated heating of water is the best way to go. take a little bit of water, heat it as hot and quick as you can and put it back into a insulated storage tank. Just my two cents but it makes common sense.

needing a blow off valve? try looking at radiator caps. there cheap and last a good long time.

If you are worried about rusted tanks look for sacrificial cathodic anode rods they are what are in most water heaters today.

I c what you are saying and thank you for your input. From what you have explained to me I have made the best decision that I think will work the best with the least amount of headache. Cold water off the bottom and hot water in on the top. Thank you again for your input.

I am thinking more along the lines of thermal storage. My way of thinking is if you take a volume of water and try to heat it would it make more sense to heat continually or do it in stages. The way I see it is if you heat water off the top it is going to be warmer than off the bottom. Adding hot water to the bottom of the tank will with out a doubt heat the water above it, in doing so you are going to raise the temp of the water going into the heating part of the system quicker than trying to do it in stages bye drawing water off the bottom of the tank and adding to the top. In a regular water heater cold water is added to the bottom of the tank doing so keeps the hot water up top, doing this allows you to remove water from the top of the tank with out much temp drop from adding cold water. This is just my observation of how it works, if it works another way please let me know.

Most of the hot water heaters that I see being made with the rocket stove have the water being fed to them from the bottom of a storage tank. My question is what if you took the water to be heated from about 5 inches from the top of the tank, (this water should be at least 1 degree warmer than the bottom) heat that and run the return into the bottom of the tank heating the water in the tank from the bottom up? Thank you for your time.