Couple things ... You need to be able to cool the barrel if your power goes out or you may split the 3/8th pipe. You should use a separate pump for the heater system (for many reasons that you will discover) . If you want a lot more heat cover the top of the barrel with 4" of rock wool insulation and drop a metal shield on top. I am into year 3 now and my system works like a charm.
What if u put the coils on the inside and on the outside and on the vent pipe? Haha and made the vent pipe tall enough that the smoke coming out was like room temperature 15 feet up lol. Now thats efficient
There is a practical limit. The most you can heat the water is 100 degrees. In a single pipe the water will quickly reach its max temp and unless you can pump the water through faster it just doesn’t make a difference.
Nice! Did you compare it to an inside barrel set up? Currious what would be better I run 50' of 3/8th inside right now but have a roll of 50' 1/2 inch on the way.
Hi, Thank you. I built the same barrel and put 3x 50' 1/2" copper tubing. I used 1" copper coupler to parallel the 3 coils of 50', but there is a loss of heat between the steel barrel and coil. Any ideas on how to transfer more heat?
Best thing you did was put the coil on the outside. I have the same setup with 250' (5X 50') of 3/8 inch copper. I use a manifold system with 4 branches. One branch carries 100' the rest 50' each. We are on our second season now and this thing is fantastic all the way up to 103 degrees F if you wish to experience a hot tub/pool.
Bruce, how is the flow with 4 branches of 3/8, are you using separate pump or in your main pump circuit, I'm debating pipe size, was going to do 2-3 branches out of 50' 1/2 or 3/4, worried about getting tight wrap with 3/4..
I'm wondering if a 30 gallon drum with the same length of copper would possibly be more efficient. The reason I'm thinking this is that a 30 gallon drum has a circumference of about 4.75 ft (vs about 6' for a 55 gallon drum), so for the same 50' of copper, you would get more complete wraps around the barrel and more of that copper would cover the areas above and to the sides of the fire inside.
@@boxerbrock7595 did you ever add an additional 50 ft of 3/4 ? That video update has comments turned off. I'm looking at doing 100' myself, was wondering if you did and how the output was.
