Proheat/Engine Heat

[captain ron]

I just finished cobling my Pex manifold for my Proheat system. I want to heat my engine with my Proheat and have a Zone built into my manifold for that purpose. I want to run it as 1 system with my PH and just use the winter/summer valves when not in use. I'm told I should make them 2 separate systems and just use a flat plate heat exchanger to heat the other system. I also want the bus system to supply my heat rather than running my PH while driving. Have any of you done what I want to do and if yes how? Any planning on the same and how?
I have a total of 6 zones or loops built in my manifold. bath heat, bed heat, lr/k heat, WVO, genset and bus system. Off of the bath room system I plan on making a towel warmer and a shaving cream warmer that will have a shutoff valve for each of them.

[Duallydude]

Dont take this wrong but are you serious about the Towel warmer and shaving cream warmer?..Is your coach a rolling barber shop?..My granpap was a barber and I havent heard the words towel and cream warmer since he passed..But boy did they feel great

[captain ron]

Dont take this wrong but are you serious about the Towel warmer and shaving cream warmer?..Is your coach a rolling barber shop?..My granpap was a barber and I havent heard the words towel and cream warmer since he passed..But boy did they feel great

Yep I'm serious. Love Hot shaving cream and warm towels.

[JackConrad]

Ron,
  We are planning to install the expansion chamber part of our sytem in the linen cabinet. This will serve 2 purposes. First it will put the fill at the highest point in the system and radiate some heat into the cabinet to warm the towels.  Jack

[captain ron]

Actually that's a great idea I could move mine to my sink base in my bathroom and put an expanded metal grill in the door panel and heat my bathroom, towels and shaving cream by sitting it on or against it.

But how about my original question? any comments or ideas?

[Lee Bradley]

I just finished cobling my Pex manifold for my Proheat system. I want to heat my engine with my Proheat and have a Zone built into my manifold for that purpose. I want to run it as 1 system with my PH and just use the winter/summer valves when not in use. I'm told I should make them 2 separate systems and just use a flat plate heat exchanger to heat the other system. I also want the bus system to supply my heat rather than running my PH while driving. Have any of you done what I want to do and if yes how? Any planning on the same and how?
I have a total of 6 zones or loops built in my manifold. bath heat, bed heat, lr/k heat, WVO, genset and bus system. Off of the bath room system I plan on making a towel warmer and a shaving cream warmer that will have a shutoff valve for each of them.

I like the towel warmer idea; I have been thinking about having one to warm the towels and the bathroom. Just bought a 80K BTU unit and I plan on having a 60 gallon hot water tank under the bathroom looped to the boiler with a similar manifold system with loops to the engine, bedroom, bath, kitchen and driver's heater. The engine loop can transfer heat from or to the engine. I plan on using engine coolant through out the system; no heat exchangers. I know it will be a lot of dollars to fill the system.

[Ednj]

Cobbled up setup.

Sense it's already Cobbled up just add another circulating pump for the real Franken system. ROTFLMAO
>

[bobofthenorth]

Something to keep in mind on these house/engine systems is the length of the runs & the tendency of water to flow through the path of least resistance.  If you have a long "parallel" system the heat will tend to be released at the radiators closest to the pump and will never make it to the extremities of the system.  This is a critical detail that the PO (and designer) of my system failed to consider.  I recently added an inline pump at the extreme front of the bus - time will tell whether or not that is going to help the situation.  My theory is that, as long as it retains its prime, it will force some of the coolant to travel through the extreme end of the system.  I don't have any trouble warming the engine and the central rads are always hot but there isn't much heat makes it to the defroster and the front rad.  It already appears to be helping but the big test will come next week.  Stay tuned.

Another potential solution would be to have electric ball valves controlling the flow to the central radiators.  That way the system could shut down the centre of the house and still pump heat to the extremities. 

[Stan]

bobofthenorth: If I read your post correctly, you have a problem in the installation. Parallel loops are not the problem. One secret of hydronic heating is that the pump must have enough volume so that the water only loses about 10F before returning to the boiler. The other secret is that the total radiation system cannot exceed the output capacity of the boiler.

When you are warming up a cold engine, it is impossible to get good heat from the remainder of the system since the engine is capable of radiating the entire boiler output, even with a high flow rate. To get fast engine warm-up it is common to allow full flow (unrestricted large pipe) to the engine. On the other parallel loops you need restrictor Ts (at the manifoled) to balance the flow with the radiation capacity.

[bobofthenorth]

I'm not saying that parallel loops can't work but unless you have some means of forcing flow through the higher resistance segments of the system then you won't have even heat.  We don't have that means.  I think I've got a work around in place that will solve it but, if I were doing it from scratch, I would use 3-way electric ball valves on each radiator so that I could control each section of the system absolutely.

[Ednj]

Bob,
That's why the larger gpm pump and the thermostatic controlled zone valves.

[captain ron]

And the cobbling continues: Remember the post where my Ex-Wife bought me that 2 1/2 gallon compressor? Well it took a crap a while back and I just couldn't toss it, I'm going to install a second expansion tank in my vanity with winter/summer valves to eliminate the problem Ed brought up. I was also just given a 12 volt zone valve so I can keep on cobbling. Wow this is funner than toilet tippin  When I'm done with all this cobbling I can make shoes or cobbler.

[captain ron]

I think I might have screwed up    I bid on a White Rodgers 1127-2 Hot water control valve. I am the only bidder so far and it ends tomorrow. I believe it is for high setting only and not high/low like I need. Can I still use it for something?
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&rd=1&item=110196873959&ssPageName=STRK:MEBI:IT&ih=001

[donnreeves]

What you describe should work fine. On my bus, the engine coolant and heat system are combined. It will pre-heat the engine and run the heat with no problem with a 45,000 btu Pro-Heat. The PH circulator pump easily handles both. When on the road, with the pre-heat zone valve closed, an aux circulator pump in the engine bay sends the coolant to the heater defrosters. As long as the zone is closed that flow dosen,t interfere with the heat system.I designed it so that the engine heat should circulate through the heat loops while on the road, but haven't tried that let. In the future I plan to isolate the engine and heat systems with a flat plate heat exchanger. The only problem I see with what you are doing is with the number of zones. It would seem to me that the PH would be constantly cycling as one zone or another called for heat. Most,just run one zone with  themostats to control the fans on the kick heaters. You have already addressed this with your idea to put in an additional storage tank, but I still think you will get a lot of cycling. You seem to have it pretty well thought out, good luck    Donn