Experience with outdoor woodburners?

[scruffy]

Cannot say exactly how an outdoor heater would be different from a quality indoor wood stove, BUT green wood will cause a lot more carbon particulate glazing/buildup in your chimney than dry wood. As a safety factor, this would necessitate more frequent cleaning of your chimney and or fire box.

 

[Vermonster]

Creasote does tend to build up on the walls. An occasional scraping (or simply stoking the fire to burn it off) takes care of the problem. I have yet to clean the chimney but do look at it and haven't had any significant build up yet. I also haven't experienced any flaming chunks of creasote (or anything else) flying out of the chimney. As for safety, the stove sits by itself about 100' away from the house. I'd never burn green in my indoor Vermont Castings.

 

[Anonymous Poster]

In a cord of wood there are only so many BTU's. If you look in your furnace or stove any time you are burning green wood you will see that moisture is comming out the end of the log or stick. It takes a number of BTU's to dry out this wood prior to burning thus causing more wood consumption,more smoke less heat. After all the object is to get as many BTU's into the building as possible. I am sure that if you do any research into wood burning that you will find that dry wood generates more heat and less wood comsumption. I think if you will check with any University that has a forestry division it will back up these assumptions. I have found that I use less wood when I burn dry wood, but I burn a lot green wood as well. If I had the option I would burn dry wood exclusively.

 

[Vermonster]

I'd not argue that burning green takes up BTUs to dry the wood. I'd also not argue that burning green creates more smoke. My research and experience confirms this.

My stove spends a lot of time with its air feed vent closed and the fire smoldering. It does this because the stove water is hot enough to satisfy the heat load of the house. I've found--in a very unscientific fashion--that when I feed my stove dry wood, it runs out of wood sometime in the middle of the night and its temperature drops. However, the stove makes it through the night when I feed it green. This was done with an approximately equal amount (in cubic size, not weight) of the same type of wood on relatively equally cold nights. The folks around here have argued it's because green wood 'smolders better' than dry wood. The logger than supplies some of my wood has a 500K/btu Central Boiler unit and says the Central Boiler distributor that sold him the unit told him it's better to burn green.

My question wasn't whether dry put out more usable BTUs than green, but rather--recognizing that the stove fire will cycle on (raging fire) and off (smoldering)--which would supply the necessary BTUs better over time?

 

[cowboydoc]

Boy this is really strange because I get just the opposite. If I have green wood and dry wood they will both burn at about the same rate. But unless I have a really good fire going and shut down the damper at night I can't keep green wood going. With dry wood I can shut it down and it's still going in the morning whether I start it late at night or early in the day. I sure would like to know the answer though. I would suppose it also has to do with what type of wood a person is burning too. I do know for sure, as I tryed this tonight, that if I put dry wood or wet wood in you can definitely feel that the heat being blown out the blower is hotter with dry wood. Which would make sense as when I put in wet wood and you open the door awhile later you can just hear the water steaming off of the wood and see it oozing out of the wood. I would think that that would cool the fire off, but then again maybe the steam makes it hotter and does let it burn longer in some instances. Have to do some more experimenting I guess.

 

[heehaw]

it seems the company that makes/sells the hardy wood furnace will sell it without installation for @ $3500; and if you pick it up at the factory, you can save the shipping charges, $200-300..if your pretty handy, that might be the way to go. i don't know what kind of warranty they have.
heehaw

 

[gmason]

I thought I'd step in here and and a few comments/questions as well. I'm a new waterstove user and have a older Taylor 750 with hot water and air heating our house. The stove is 200' away from the house under a small shed. I rebuilt most of the stove since it was involved in a fire and sat outside afterward for 3 years. All the insulation was burned off as well as the fittings and blower. Had to weld up some small leaks and reinforce the cleanout door(backside).
I've had it fired-up and running here in NC for a few weeks now and the last few nights have been rather cold(20's).
I've been putting in whole logs of the size that were as much as I could lift. Mostly oak. They were't green but not totally dry. And on most occasions, the stove has worked fine, but when the system was really stressed the logs didn't burn(hot/fast) enough to keep the water in the 160-180 range, and often took 1-3 hours to "catch-up". I've started mixing dry/split pieces with the logs on these colder nights and when I come out in the morning most all the split pieces are totally burned-up and the logs are mostly still there, but mostly charcoal and ready to go when the fan kicks on.
I'm wondering what to do when the weather gets warmer and we don't use the central heat just hot water. The fan will only kick on maybe once a day, the logs probably won't fire back up without some help.
One of my questions, is getting the ashes out from under the burning word. I find that there are coals under the white ashes on top and I'd hate to throw the coals out with the ashes. What is a good way to keep these?

Wow, the creosote dripping out of the pipe is some powerful stuff, I got some on my hands yesterday and I've used everything but Clorox to get it off and the smell is still there.
Are there any good uses for this black liquid?
gary

 

[Vermonster]

A difference between my stove and yours (and CowboyDoc's) is that I don't have a blower--mine's natural draft. I should probably also clarify that my wood isn't "wet-wet", it was cut in September and has been sitting out in the open since. However, I've used stuff that was cut two weeks before and obtained the same results.

My stove has an ash grate and ash pan. I've covered the grate with some stiff metal. I was having decent size coals falling into the ash pan--I wasn't getting a complete burn. Now before I load the stove, I stir up the ashes a bit to encourage a complete burn. Generally, it requires that I move around any remaining chunks of burning logs. I don't take ashes out of the stove except once every 45 days or so. Generally, I know it's time when most of the ashes are small, thin, and white puffs. I never empty all of the ashes (except at the end of the season).

I've found in my situation that the stove doesn't burn well (even with 1 year old wood) when temperatures are above 40 degrees. Hard to keep a fire going in it as the heat load demand from the house becomes very sporadic. That (and a neighbor who's house is generally up-wind) keeps me from burning during our 6 months of non-winter.

 

[Anonymous Poster]

I have run my Central Boiler at the house for 6 years, year around. I use it to heat pottable water in the residence.as well as base board radiation. My boiler does not have a blower on it. How ever it will cycle perhaps two or three times a day during the summer months. I don't have a very big fire in it as I just burn dry limbs that fall of the trees in the tree farm I own. The would be two or three inches in diameter. We pick them up in bags and just throw them in once every couple of days. The tempature will crawl up to perhaps 200 degrees during the hot months in the boiler but it just makes the water hotter in the house. I think the biggest reason to have a Central Boiler is that the water contained in the boiler is such a large amount that plenty of heat is stored up in the boiler so I don't have any trouble with wood burning all night and maintaining a constant temp. We usually fill the furnace once every 24 hours in the cold weather. This will carry us through the entire day no matter what the out side temp is. As far a shoveling out the ashes I wait untill it is a relatively warm day when the fire is down to coals and then rake the live coals to one side then shovel out the ashes which are just white ash then rake them to the other side and finish the job. It helps if you have a shovel that has a handle several feet long, about 8 feet then you can get to back of the fire box. I burn 4ft. cord wood,sometimes pine and some times maple,birch and beech wood. The hard wood gives me more ashes than pine. With pine I can almost get by with removing the ashes 3 or 4 times a year while the hard wood will have to clean out 6 to 7 times a year.

 

[heehaw]

they don't make an outside "water" furnace, but lynndale makes a good wood furnace for putting in your house, basement or wherever; they're made in Harrison, Arkansas; my inlaws installed one in 1979 and its preformed with no problems, ..they do have an option to heat water, but not a whole house water heating system.
heehaw