posted 4 years ago
I got a mobile home several years ago and I also got a new 104,000 BTU wood stove. The property was in bad shape so I did not install the wood stove until I could fix the place up. a couple years later I got the trailer next door. I spend about $300 a month just to heat these trailers and i decided to use the wood stove as the heat source for both. I have a knack for problem solving and a lot of experience in many trades but I am not sure exactly what would work the best as a heat exchanger at the stove, what kind of pipe or tubing to circulate the fluid and what temps I would be dealing with in the system. I was thinking a copper coil on top of the stove with some thermal mass around it to heat the fluid, a two zone manifold with circulator pumps, and buried line to the other trailer, 40ft from the heat source with base board passive heat of another heat exchanger with forced air.
I am on a fixed income so doing this a cheaply as I can is important. Would CPVC work as the conveyance or would PEX work? What would be the best fluid, water with antifreeze or something else? I do not know what kind of temperatures each stage would likely have.
Is a boiler type heat exchanger at the stove a better choice than directly pumping to the other house? I am planning to set this up this summer because I can't afford electric heat and I need a more reliable heat source as the failure of the Texas power grid left us without power for four days.
Any thoughts on this would be appreciated.
It's only useless if you can't find a use for it.