outdoor furnaces the good the bad?

[just_sawing]

Yes I own one and I believe that my wife would get rid of me before she would give up the Hardy.
The wood problem. Most people use to large of a wood stove. That does effect efficiency. The other part is that there is two schools of stoves. One is a on demand that when you need heat it turns on a pumps hot water to you. The other is a continuous loop. The pump keeps hot water in the condenser. This has the advantage of keeping the lines hot in the ground for cold climates.
I run a sawmill and use the slabs for heat. I burn trash to good and love the heat

 

[MACDABS]

I talked to AHS in Harrisonville PA today. The wait for boiler is now late Sept. . I guess the wood coal combo units are not as efficent as the coal only, but still better than the outdoor burners. Price range is around $6500.00 for the combo and 500.00 less for coal only. The sales rep said to heat two buildings I could figure on feeding the combo unit 2-4 times a day, and the coal only has a 400 lb hopper that needs feed every 3 days.

Has any one purchased a unit from AHS in Harrsonville?

Macdabs

 

[DavidVT]

I have a mid size Hardy. We live in a debt free 160 yr old farm house with a partial stone basement and less than perfect insulation in some areas.
We burn about 10 cords per season and for the past two winters we also used only 100 gallons of heating oil mostly for domestic hot water and keeping some areas above freezing.

I have a 5 zone hydronic oil fired system that is about 10 years old.
We valved off the one zone in our living areas (not bedrooms nor basement).
That one zone is now fed by the Hardy during the winter. All other zones are set to 50 and rarely demand their oil fired supply due to heat leakage from the 'living space'.

The wood fired zone from the Hardy has it's circulator remoted to the basement of the house rather than on the Hardy itself. My water fill for the Hardy is also located in the basement and simply adds water to the running zone rather than plumbing a makeup water line across the yard.

I run the Hardy setpoint at 180 while the demand is high and lower it to 160 once the snowpack melt off. This seems to keep the water consumption down when the demand is lower. I suspect the 180 overshoots too much when the weather is warmer.

We buy our wood which works against the cost savings. We have had log length delivered or cut and split delivered.

Maintaining the damper and controls is critical to proper wood consumption and to prevent runaway. Nothing like waking in the middle of the night to hear the overheated circulator growling in agony when the the water loop climbs over 200F.....

If planning for this and having to pay for someone to do the work, IMHO you should 2x the price you see on the boiler. Especially if you are planning a complicated system in the house.

You should include a wood shed or some kind of covered storage if you live in snow country. There is nothing worse than having to chip your wood out of a frozen wood pile. Actually there is, that being when your wife has to chip the wood out while you are enjoying the middle east heat on a buisness trip in January..... OUCH

We used up two indoor pellet stoves (motors,circuit boards,fans,etc) before moving to the outdoor stove. The smoke is not bad in the cold season but I will not move my domestic hot water 100% to it as I don't want to run the wood boiler all summer.....

I did purchase a big hot water/hot water heat exchanger and hope to setup to directly transfer heat to the oil system once that is finished. I have a small hot water/hot water heat exchanger that I am considering putting on the input side of the domestic hot water to preheat the spring water as it enters the oil fired hot water heater. I also have a large hot water/air heat exchanger that I plan to put in the basement so as to stop using oil to keep the basement above freezing. I am traveling too much to get all this done but someday...

Good luck.....

 

[SpringHollow]

Pretty easy to set up boilers to heat multiple systems including domestic hot water. I personally would not own a boiler that can easily run out of control.

Ken

 

[scesnick]

I talked to AHS in Harrisonville PA today. The wait for boiler is now late Sept. . I guess the wood coal combo units are not as efficent as the coal only, but still better than the outdoor burners. Price range is around $6500.00 for the combo and 500.00 less for coal only. The sales rep said to heat two buildings I could figure on feeding the combo unit 2-4 times a day, and the coal only has a 400 lb hopper that needs feed every 3 days.

Has any one purchased a unit from AHS in Harrsonville?

Macdabs

I have the AHS multi fuel boiler. I burn bituminous coal in it. Jeff at AHS is a rarity in the boiler world. He will actually tell you the truth about the performance of his boilers.
I LOVE my AHS, it is very well, built, ASME stamped and just plain built like a tank. The burn times of any boiler will vary depending on the fuel ( coal ) quality used.
I had a OWB for 4 years before I sold it and bought the AHS. Best decision I ever made.
The big difference between the two boiler you described is one is a stoker and one is hand fed. You do have to remember that anthracite coal is around $200 a ton for the stoker boiler.

 

[MuncyBob]

A wood/coal combo boiler would be something we would look at but I'm concerned about storage of the coal for easy access in the winter. Ideally I would have it stored in my basement but the problem is the closest a delivery truck could get is apprx. 50' away. The truck would be uphill from the basement but isn't that too far?