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So what are the fittings on the titanium evaporator coil? How did people get the titanium coil to mesh with PEX or copper lines from water heater?
Curious if anyone has done this for cooling as I’d be quite happy to dispense with my chiller. I use a well and incoming water is around 50 degrees with very little variation between Summer and Winter. Easy enough to get to the cold water, but where does it circulate back to?
I've added a loop from my hot water supply through a Taco brand circulation pump to push water through 100' of 1/2" PEX sitting in my sump then back to the water heater through the drain valve. I was previously running two 500 watt Finnex titanium heaters. One was plugged directly into an EB832 outlet to run 24x7 and the other was plugged into a controller to maintain temperature between 77-78 degrees. I now have the circulation pump plugged into the controller. Below are screenshots of my power usage for the two outlets. Only one outlet is used now as I don't have a backup electric heater plugged in.
Using the weekly time frame, my average cost for electric heat was $65 a month. Using the water heater, my electric cost is less than $1 month. I have yet to see the gas costs but I'm anticipating just a small increase in usage. The circulation pump comes on about ten times a day for less than ten minutes each time. So far I am very happy with heating my tanks with gas!
Nice! My sump sits on my concrete basement floor in Minnesota. The unfinished side of the basement never drops below 60 degrees air temp but the concrete gets cold. I haven't considered flushing the system with my Apex since the pump has a rating of 0-10 gpm and 100' of 1/2 PEX holds less than a gallon. The water in the plumbing just gets pushed back into the water heater to mix with new water and gets used throughout the house.Here’s a screen shot with outside temps dropping below 10
Nice! My sump sits on my concrete basement floor in Minnesota. The unfinished side of the basement never drops below 60 degrees air temp but the concrete gets cold. I haven't considered flushing the system with my Apex since the pump has a rating of 0-10 gpm and 100' of 1/2 PEX holds less than a gallon. The water in the plumbing just gets pushed back into the water heater to mix with new water and gets used throughout the house.
Would you share your code for this?Yes, the problem is the summer. My heater use is non existent during the summer months and PEX can grow some nasty bacteria if the water is allowed to stagnate for a long period of time. Considering the water is the same water we drink, I’d rather flush the line every 4 hours then risk it. The virtual outlet will cancel the recirculation if the heater outlet was on within the 4 hours, btw.
Heat exchanger plumber into return and PEX lines.
Would you share your code for this?
I’m interested in using this method to heat my 180. I would also like an update on how this build has held up.
I’m using this on a 300 gallon system with zero issues. Spending roughly .20 cents per month on heating costs in northern NJ. I have redundancies in place such as multiple temp probes to remove heat. A fail to closed valve in case of failure. Leak detectors to detect a leak in the event of a heat exchanger leak. I have additional electric heaters in the sump in case this system fails to open. These heaters are individual turned on for 2 min a day so my APEX can determine if they’re still drawing current and give me an alarm when it’s out of range. I run water through the system once every 12 hours to ensure bacteria doesn’t build in the line and affect my drinking water. I feel incredibly confident in this set up and would say it’s a heck of a lot more reliable then electric heaters alone. I look at it from a different perspective and that’s “why would I trust a $30-50 piece of equipment that’s known to fail to protect $3000 worth of live stock”.
One year in this and it’s been flawless
Thanks for the reply. I look at this setup as you do. I feel I can build a more perfect heater than the commercially available ones. The only thing I am worried about is a heat exchanger failure where the fresh tap water could leak directly into tank/sump. I know this is probably unlikely short term but even the best manufactured parts fail eventually. Maybe a 3/5 year preventative maintenance replacement could work?
It certainly would. I don’t know if people realize these things were built for pools. POOLS! They’re meant to work with water volumes 100s of times that of our tanks. The titanium exchangers are built specifically for salt water pools.
My preventive maintenance is simple, beginning of the summer when there’s no demand for heat and just before there’s a demand for heat, I flush the thing with a pressure washer... that’s it!