Deadly CO Generators vs Prius Inverter

There are "booster" devices available, typically for communications equipment, that will add a volt or two to the output of a lead-acid battery so that the equipment gets closer to it's nominal 13.8V desired power input. This would be a lot more efficient in your case than buying a new battery, using an inverter to get AC, and then using the AC to power your boiler ignition system. An even better solution would be to contact the ignition system manufacturer and ask them if there's a dropout adjustment on their product. It should be about 10V; 11.5 is much too high for something designed to work on 12V.

Richard

 

This issue was that the inverter would drop out at reduced battery voltage. This makes sense since the typical use of an inverter is for something like powering a laptop and the alarm would warn the user to start their car well before the battery become discharged. One cannot use DC to directly power the boiler igniter since there's a high voltage transformer that provides a spark.

 

Gravity based hot air systems exist (generally very old systems).

 

They aren't all that badly designed. I had two in my former house, the heat was quite even. My current heat is provided by the standalone wood stove you malign, which is great. Nice even heat generally, but a place to go to warm up when I am feeling cold. Very cheap (about $1600 per decade), but a bit work intensive.

 

And one more time when you carry the wood to the stove. But a wood stove (I have a fireplace insert) is a great excuse to have one room that is warm in these energy conscious times.

JeffD

 

I submit that if your wood stove only heats one room, you are doing it wrong. Mine heats my whole house, at about a 40% duty cycle on the coldest days (i.e. 1 fire for 8-9 hours will keep it warm when it is below 0°F outside).

 

My fireplace insert is a small, efficient, one from Quadrafire that supplies heat to the whole house, but my recreation room (The room where it is located) gets nicely warm so that convection (and some fans) distribute heat to the rest of my home. Our oil furnace then only runs intermittently on cold days when I fire up the wood.

JeffD

 

"Hydronic" is the key word in the OP's description. I've had both hot water and steam hydronic (aka "gravity") systems; no circulators or pumps are used.

 

'Hydronic' in heating contractor speak just means 'water' (hot or steam). Gravity fed is another issue.

 

Yeah, good point. I've never had one of them new-fangled hydronic systems with circulators, and I'm assuming the OP has a similar (old) system to mine, which will run on 20W or less.

 

In my case, it's a hydronic boiler with (4) zones. If you just open up all zone valves manually, there's quite a bit of gravity flow. The duty cycle is of course 100% unlike a thermostadt-regulated flow. In fact, with this arrangement the master bedroom got too warm so I had to throttle back one of the zone valves. I'm in NJ, and the boiler's in the basement which does help. Boiler is not ancient --- circa 1991.

 

Finally - something that I know about! I design emissions control systems for natural gas engines (compressor stations on gas wells). Starving the intake would make the air/fuel mix more lean which reduces CO but spikes NOx through the roof. With a correct AFR, these engines can run very clean with low CO and NOx simultaneously.

 

Not sure someone mentioned this or not, it's not very good for a car's engine to idle for a long period of time. It was not designed to idle unlike generator's engine.

 

Whoops - I interpreted this incorrectly. Starve the system for Air and AFR is rich which is high CO. Starve fuel and NOx is high. In my defense, the systems I deal with on a daily basis are controlled by fuel, not air. My reference is fuel starvation, not air starvation!

 

In your area, I'm surprised they didn't make you locate it in Newton. Here in Central IL, we've more options. A Prius is of no use to me as a standby generator, because it has to go into action even if we're not at home. So- a Generac 5871 running off the 1K gal LP tank in the back yard was the solution we adopted. The generator sits about three feet from the house (new standard is 18" from wall), and exhausts past a window four feet away. Secret to the window not causing a problem with the generator exhaust = close the window. Some regulations make sense, some are just bureaucratic lunacy.

Also, a note about standby generators and exercise- they do it automatically, once a week, and let you know if anything goes awry.

 

This solution does not work for me either. I went the route of a natural gas powered 10K generator for $1,099.00. I can power the entire house including central air. It can run indefinitely and I when I need to use the car to go somewhere the house keeps getting power.