Domestic Hot Water

One of the many uses for a Burnrite outdoor wood stove is to heat your water in place of a gas fed water heater. A Burnrite representative can explain how our installers can set up your outdoor wood furnace to also heat your water ,using our advanced heat exchangers.

The domestic water line connects to a heat exchanger on the Burnrite outdoor wood furnace. The pressure on the supply line forces water through the heat exchanger when you open any hot water faucet inside your home. The water is heated as it passes through the heat exchanger, and then goes in the cold water input on your hot water heater. This way your stove is preheating all your domestic hot water and providing hot water for all your household needs, which in return will produce a decrease in your hot water heating cost.

Interested in using your Burnrite stove for both domestic water and in-floor heating?

Normally, the Burnrite outdoor wood stove is plumbed to a heat exchanger. This allows the outdoor wood furnace to heat a tank of potable water, which in turn can provide domestic hot water and floor heating.

When using the outdoor wood furnace for just hot water, the water from the outdoor wood stove to this heat exchanger flows 24 hours a day in a closed loop, making the heat exchanger "continuously active" (i.e. always hot). Whenever needed, the storage tank draws heat from the heat exchanger and maintains a constant tank temperature. The advantages of a continuously active heat exchanger loop are twofold:

1. The pipe from the outdoor wood stove to the house can be buried in a shallow trench (normally about 1 ft.), saving a lot of labor and/or expensive excavating costs (obviously, with constantly circulating hot water in the supply and return lines, freezing is impossible).
2. By keeping the water in the outdoor wood stove constantly circulating, the temperature of the water is even throughout the system.

When you are using the outdoor wood stove for both hot water and in-floor heating, it will not run constantly, it will shut off the circulator when the in-home heat hits the point set by the thermostat. So, if you want to run a radiant system directly off your outdoor wood stove, always bury your supply and return pipes below the frost line. As explained above, the water to and from your house will only be flowing when a radiant zone calls for heat. And because many outdoor wood outdoor wood stoves are 30 to 100 feet away from the home, a lot of water can be sitting in a cold trench for a long time. If that trench is above the frost line, you could have frozen and bursting pipes.