Outdoor Wood Burners

[Chad2660]

Does anyone have any experience with outdoor wood burners? We have a fairly small home (approx. 1,900Sq/Ft) and we are currently all electic. I have no experience with this and I'm wondering if investing in an outdoor wood burner would be a good option for us to cut our heating bills. The cheapest units appear to be about $3,000-$4,000, and I'd like to know if anyone could tell me their experience with these units.

Can anyone provide an estimate of how long it would take to get a return on the investment. I dont have access to cut my own wood so I'll need to purchase the wood as well. Also, how often do you need to re-load these with wood? Thanks in advance.

 

[Rustyiron]

Jump over to hearth.com It's a good forum for wood burning. You'll find that there are lots of ways to scroung free wood. You should look for a "Gassification" type wood boiler. They are much more efficent (less wood) and don't spew the nasty smoke that are slowly making the non "gassers" illegal. Do your homework and reasearch, it will pay off and you will not just cut your heating bills, you'll mostly eliminate them, particularly if you don't have to pay for your wood. It is a commitment (cutting, splitting, stacking and feeding) but It's good honest work that will keep you fit in body and soul, and somehow it provides a special warmth knowing that YOU made this heat! Just like a eating veggie's out of your garden.
If your heating with elec. now, your installation will require more than just your wood boiler.You'll need a way to distribute the heat thru baseboards or radiant tubing. If your elec, is forced hot air, you could add a "coil" and that will use your existing ductwork.

 

[Pete Judd]

New a guy about 20 miles from us, that had one made in Spokane Wa, that was over 1000 gallons of water. He had it in a out building about 50-75 feet from the house. He used it to heat the house, heat the hot water, and heat his greenhouse. I think it was 6-7 feet tall, and about 12 feet long. It had a very large fire box, and many 4 inch dia tubes running through the water. He had access to lots of large firewood, as many of us here in the PNW. He also burnt all kitchen waste, and a couple of times a month he cleaned out the fire box, and only the tin cans didn't burn. In the winter time, a fire every 2-3 days was needed. In the summertime maybe a fire a week for hot water. all of the waterlines where below ground in a 8 inch insulated pipe.

As for cost, it was around 4-5k, and with the free fuel, Paid for itself in 4 of years. Did not notice where you are located, but around here firewood, if you have to buy it costs 150-250 bucks a cord. And I would think that you could go through a cord pretty quick. Don't know how much you are paying for heating right know, but it may be cheaper to make your dwelling more eficent.

 

[scesnick]

I had one for three of the longest yrs of my life. I hated it and it absolutely ate wood. I thankfully sold it and bought an indoor wood/coal boiler and it is way way more efficient, ASME stamped and actually cheaper.

My burn time with the outdoor unit was no more than 8 hours. Now I can easily get 14-18 hours depending on the outside temps. The best part is that it is inside my garage and I no longer have to freeze my tail off while tending the boiler. The wife was no fan of feeding the outside unit when I was working because of this..

My boiler is wood/coal with an oil burner backup for when we are gone for an extended period of time.
I agree with RustyIron about the gasification unit. They are a bit more than the multi fuel unit i bought but they are highly efficient if you are burning strickly wood. i burn 90% coal.

AN outdoor unit is around $8,000. with that same money you could easily buy a multifuel boiler like mine and go to Lowe's and buy a nice shed to put it in. That way you would have all the mess outside still. A boiler that is way more efficient and ASME stamped and STILL save about $2,000. Not to mention the outdoor units are being banned left and right. This way you don't have to worry about that.

I bought my multifuel boiler here http://www.alternateheatingsystems.com/ They also have VERY efficient gasification boilers.

 

[Chad2660]

Thanks for the advice...this is definitely good information and gives me a good place to start researching.

 

[WayneB]

I would think you would be much farther ahead looking into a coal or pellet type boiler instead of going with an outside wood boiler.

If you research the gasification boilers the cost is right up there, but they are clean burning and extremely efficient. I believe, but not sure, that if you were to go with the gasification boilers you would also need a water storage container to store the heated water. Then it is sent to the different zones in your home. I researched them earlier but just could not justify the purchase price and space to install the unit and water storage. The company I talked with did not have a multi-fuel gasification system and did not recommend them. It is the leading edge technology for wood burning, but for our home we were looking in the low 9.000 dollar range and they had to do the installation on top of that.

Not sure what the cost of wood in your area is, but here I would have to pay around $100 a cord in grapple load (log length). To buy wood dry cut and split I would think the cost would be around $200 to $250 a cord (that is a full cord 128 cubic feet). We cut it off the our land so it only cost me the tool purchases plus maintenance items and operating cost. We burn about five full cords a year and I have ten or so cords cut and split that has been drying for nearly two years. We are right now working on our wood for 2013 so it is an on going process to stay ahead of the heating season. Heck we do call it heating season, believe it or not and it runs from October till May.

I would suggest you check around your area and find some people that are using wood or coal for heating and see what they are using and how happy they are with it. I think some of the coal furnaces with auto loading might be a good solution as long as you have a place for storage of the coal and want to deal with the waste product. My Nephew added a coal boiler onto his oil furnace about four years ago and he only uses the oil in the spring and fall as maintaining a coal fire is difficult during warmer days. He buys his coal locally and hauls it home himself. Not an easy or clean task.

Pellets are more popular around here, but most of the people I know that have them are small in room radiant heat units and are space type heaters. They seem to work fine with outdoor temperatures down to about zero degrees F. Again here the cost for pellets is around $259 a ton delivered. Need a place to store the 50 pound sacks.

We have a Vermont Castings Defiant wood stove that is our primary source of heat. The only time we turn on the oil furnace (forced hot water) is when we are going to be leaving the area for more than one day. Our house is pretty much an open concept design so the heat will get around to all the rooms. Further away we are from the room with the stove might require wearing a sweater on sub-sero days.

Up side we do not have an oil bill coming monthly, we are really warm in the room with the stove, I keep warm many times during the winter, cutting wood, splitting wood, stacking wood, hauling it in and then hauling it out, We love the smell of the wood burning.

Down sides include the learning curve on just using wood heating, chance of chimney fires (we have had a few of them), having to plan trips away from the house to make sure we have ample wood in the stove to maintain the fire, constantly having to keep a flow of wood dry inside for feeding the stove, the list of down sides could go on and on, but I think you get the idea.

Start adding up the cost of operation and it doesn't take to long to realize that turning up that thermostat isn't to bad of a deal either. You might even consider going with a large on demand hot water heating system (propane operated and adding radiant heating to the floors if your house is a single level and you can get to the floors from beneath. You would be running low temperature hot water to the radiant floor heater elements and it would also provide all of your domestic hot water needs.

Just food for thought, sorry for getting carried away...

Wayne

 

[IndyIan]

If you are buying wood or don't want to spend alot of time getting "free" wood, I wouldn't go with an outdoor furnace. Maybe some of the new ones are more efficient but a couple neighbors have them and they smoke up about 40 acres each on a still night while they are wasting wood with the long "burn" time. :confused2: There are advantages to them but everyone I talk to with one uses 3 times the wood to heat a roughly equal house.

I heat with a indoor mid size regency stove and go through about 2 to 3 cords a year in a similar size house to yours doing 95% of our heating. Its a bit messy bringing wood inside but its near the back door so its not too bad. We also went with a pro installation with the chimney inside I have almost no creosote in the chimney at the end of the year.

Anyways, you might want to crunch the numbers on spending $5k on making your house more insulated. Maybe then electric heat is cheap enough and you don't have to fool around with wood or coal or pellets at all. I like sawing and splitting but even with a forest 100' from my house, it does take time to do.

 

[dmccarty]

Firewood in my area is $200-250 per cord.

If I had to buy my own firewood it would be cheaper to run the heat pump.

There are quite a few outdoor wood burners in my area. Some of them are horrible. They smoke up one area pretty bad. I drove through this one area last night and it was a smoke fog for a good 1/2 mile. I WOULD not be happy if I had to live with that mess. There are four outdoor burners in that one area and they really can smoke up.

They are old burners though.

A guy up the road put a burner in a few years ago. He put it in an out building. If I had not seen what he was doing when he was building you would not know he had an outdoor burner. That thing smokes VERY little and I am sure 99% of the people who drive by his house have not clue he has an outdoor burner.

Since we have free firewood, seems like the trees are always dying, , all I have to do is make cord wood. We have a wood stove that we used to heat 2,500 sf house with LOTS of windows and 10 foot ceilings. I figure heating with wood saves us about $100 a month during the cold season.

As has been mentioned, there are indoor burners that work well, but they can be expensive and take up space.

It bears repeating but if I had to pay for firewood it would just be cheaper to run the heat pump. During December and January we burn a cord a wood a month. I do not think the heat pump would cost us $200-250 which is what a cord would cost if I had to buy firewood.

Later,
Dan

 

[KYErik]

In terms if economics (how long will it take to pay itself off). Take a look at your old electric bills.

Add your 4 cold winter month bills and then average your fair weather month bills (when you likely had no electric heat or AC running).

Take the fair weather average bill amount times 4 and subtract it from the 4 months of winter bills- you should then a have an approximate cost of how much you spend on the electricity you use to heat your house all winter.

So if it comes out to be $400, then it would take 10 years (winters) to break even on a $4k woodburner if you got the wood for free. Since you'll be buying wood, you'll need to calculate the cost of the wood.

Also keep in mind that electric rates might increase- especially if your area switches over to time of day pricing.

A few years ago, my dad installed an older Hardy unit. The house is about 1700 square feet and is insulated a fair amount and has good windows. He loads it every morning and evening and burns at least 3x the amount of wood that he used to burn when he heated with an indoor wood stove.

 

[elroy]

Take a look at this gasser.

Multi Fuel Stove | WoodMaster Flex Fuel Furnace Series | WoodMaster

They have a $2000 rebate going on right now. You can burn wood or wood pellets in the same unit.

Nice looking, lots of options.