Outdoor Boiler Domestic Hot Water Kit

This best-selling kit will give you endless hot water. If you have any ladies in your home who like to shave their legs in the shower, you will be their hero.  

The Outdoor Boiler Domestic Hot Water Kit (PEX) is a pre-assembled kit of all the components needed to connect an outdoor wood boiler to a domestic hot water system to provide endless hot water to the home.  This kit is the PEX version, and it contains all the fittings needed, along with the water-to-water plate heat exchanger.  The kit does not contain the parts needed to interface with the domestic water system, since those vary (copper, PVC, PEX, etc.). For homeowners using a wood stove hot water heater, this kit’s plate heat exchanger provides a simple, efficient way to deliver domestic hot water while keeping the boiler loop separate. Adding a wood fired hot water boiler to your system enhances energy efficiency, allowing you to use renewable wood fuel for both heating and hot water. An outdoor wood burning water heater provides an eco-friendly solution for heating your home and water, utilizing heat generated from wood combustion. The ports on the heat exchanger interface with the domestic water are 1" MPT connections for both the domestic side and the outdoor wood boiler side. It is also worth noting that indoor wood burning hot water boilers can benefit from similar setups when connected to the proper domestic plumbing systems, providing versatile heating options for both indoor and outdoor applications. Additionally, a stove pipe water heater can reclaim heat from the flue to preheat domestic water, which complements the plate heat exchanger in the kit.

This kit meets the specifications for all outdoor wood boiler installations.

Easy-To-Follow Installation Guide and Instructions

Why Does the Kit Include a Mixing Valve?

All of our Domestic Hot Water Kits include a mixing valve. For safety reasons, building codes require a mixing valve so that super hot water does not come out of a faucet and harm an unsuspecting child (or anyone) who gets a blast of 180-degree water. A mixing valve (also known as an "anti-scald valve") prevents this by tempering the hot water to a set temperature by mixing in some cold water into the hot water stream. Most homeowners set their mixing valve to provide hot water at 120 degrees.

Where Does the Mixing Valve Go?

The mixing valve needs to be installed on the domestic hot water side of the plate exchanger. It does not interface with outdoor boiler water, and only mixes fresh, clean, potable water for domestic home use - cooking, bathing, etc. The Domestic Hot Water Kit comes complete with installation instructions that show how the installation should be completed.

Why Does The Mixing Valve Have 3/4 Inch Ports?

Almost every home in America uses 3/4 inch pipes in its plumbing for domestic water used in bathing and cooking. But that is where the similarity ends...because some homes have copper tubing, some have PEX tubing, and other homes have plumbing using PVC pipes.

Why Does My Outdoor Boiler Have ONE INCH Tubing?

Great question! Outdoor boilers are hydronic heating systems and so their purpose is not to provide water for cooking or bathing, but rather to transfer heat. Your experts at OutdoorBoiler.com have done tremendous research and development and have discovered that in order to transfer the ideal amount of heat from your outdoor boiler to your home, a one-inch PEX tubing line needs to be the industry best practice, and that is how we have established this "Best Practice" for our industry.

What Fittings Are Needed To Connect The Mixing Valve?

This depends on the type of plumbing that was used originally when the house was built. Since your home could have five or more different types of pipe for the domestic plumbing, you will need to purchase separately the required fittings to interface your mixing valve with your specific type of domestic plumbing tubing - either copper, PVC, PEX, black pipe, or whatever. We only normally provide the one-inch parts and fittings on the outdoor boiler side that bring the heat from the outdoor boiler to your building(s).

Remember, a mixing valve is required by building codes, and that is why we include it in our Domestic Hot Water Kits. But the fittings required to interface with each individual home will depend upon what type of plumbing tubing already exists in the home, again either copper, PVC, PEX, or whatever.