OT Outdoor wood furnace install

I have an oil fired boiler in my basement with baseboard heat--this is a pressure system. I am installing an outdoor wood furnace--NON PRESSURE SYSTEM. Using a PLATE EXCHANGER to keep the two water systems apart, but able to fire either system.

Does it matter where I install the PLATE EXCHANGER----Can it be anywhere between the two systems??? Or does it need to be close to the oil fired boiler in the basement. I would prefer to install on the ground level floor in the attached heated area in the garage.

I think you will find your system is designed to supply the heat from the boiler area. Meaning the better systems take into account the water cooling the further away form the boiler it goes. So the baseboard area can be different. I found this out the hard way when I installed an outside boiler into a house we owned 20 years ago. Rooms heater different depending on the heat source. One room would be hot when the wood stove supplied the heat and then cooler when the oil fired boiler supplied it. Also the pumps and such are usually located around the boiler so setting up the controls is easier close to there.

Lenray, is your heating system a forced air? If so, you can mount the heat exchanger anywhere that is convenient for you to get to. Your system will be most efficient if the exchanger is close to the plenum, and the lines from your boiler are adequately insulated.

How is (or will be) your system set up in the event you have to switch over to the oil system? Will it be automatic or will there be manually controlled valves?

Back when we had an outdoor boiler, it was tied into an LP system in a double wide. The LP system was set to kick in automatically if by chance the water from the wood boiler became too cool for some reason. There was no anti-freeze in the boiler lines as at that time, the anti-freeze used was pretty corrosive to parts of the system, so if the LP were to kick in, it would have heated the house as well as keeping the water in the boiler system from freezing.

I've seen systems with the heat exchanger at either end, and don't see what would the be issue with either way, or in the middle, for that matter.

I have outside wood/inside oil. Both of mine are under pressure. Mine is inside right next to the boiler.

I would think it would be best to have it in the heated area, then the heat it gives off is not wasted.

My heat exchanger (hot water baseboard) is in my basement.

The larger pump (Taco 011) circulates water from the OWB to my basement, and a smaller pump (007) circulates to the plate exchanger.

JDSeller's post brings up something interesting that I have noticed as well but never really looked into.

We have an OWB and an oil furnace as backup. Our house is heated in 3 zones. One zone is in the back of the house, the other two are in the main part of the house, upstairs and down.

When the OWB is running, the front two zones tend to run warmer than the back, when the oil furnace runs, the back zone runs warmer than the front two. After living with this, I just adjust thermostats accordingly but have always wondered why that is.

I know that the oil furnace circulates water that is considerably hotter than the OWB but that still doesn't, necessarily, explain the heating difference.

The only major differences are:
loop for the zone.at the back of the house is longer than the front two.
Back half zone "pushes" water to circulate, front two "pull" - installed differently in loops - years' later, recommendation of HVAC friend.

Thoughts?

Here is what I did but with a coal stoker instead of a wood burner. I have a oil fired boiler with domestic hot water and baseboard hot water radiation. I have a automatic coal boiler in my detached garage. I piped the hot water from the coal boiler to the oil boiler in the house. I didn't want the oil boiler to set and rust because of moisture. I set it up so that when the thermostats call for heat the aquastat on the oil boiler sends the request to the coal boiler and the circulator then sends the hot water from the coal boiler into the oil boiler and the circulator pumps on the oil boiler sends the hot water to zone requesting the heat. I can use the oil boiler by just flipping a switch and closing a valve.
However both the coal and oil boilers are closed systems so I don't know if this would work for you.

Your oil boiler is probably set to maintain hot water at 160-180F heating appliances/radiation equipment are rated and sized in your home for this temp range. The water from your OWB is probably not this hot so heating efficiency is way lower.
Also take note to this. Todays modern OWBs are set up with controls to maintain a minimum of 140F boiler temp. If operated below 140F you get condensation in the boiler and they rust out much sooner. Minimum temp is just as important as water quality/PH level. That is why you hear about so many of the older OWBs rusting through. The control on the modern OWBs simply shuts down the circulator pump going to your conventional heating system until the temp in the boiler recovers back above 140F.
Loren