Outdoor wood furnace

[RichZ]

We presently heat our two story, 200 year old farm house with a woodburning stove in our family room, which is in the middle of the house. Surprisingly, it heats both floors of the house well, even in the coldest weather. We do have an oil burner, but it almost never comes on, last year we used about 5 gallons of oil!
My wife and I have been thinking about getting an outdoor wood furnace to heat the house, and even heat hot water in the winter. That way we can also turn off our electric hot water heater during the winter.
I figure that many of you guys have one of these. Does anyone have any advice about them. Best brands? Best way to hook them up, etc.?

Thanks!

Rich

 

[Knight9]

Check out this earlier thread. LOTS of great advice... Outdoor Wood Furnace

Kevin

 

[kcbarnes]

I am on my fourth season with a central boiler brand outdoor furnace and I am very pleased and would recommend it to anyone. I will try to post some pics later

Kevin

 

[kcbarnes]

Here it is with the shed I built to store wood in. Like I said, I am very happy with it. I add wood to it in the morning and again in the evening and will cut my consumption down even more when I get some stuff buttoned up on the house.Check the other thread and you will find a lot of info/oppinions to help you

Kevin

 

[RayDiers]

Look at the site below. This ouside heater uses the thermal mass of 15-tons of sand to store heat. The fire is always burned hot.

http://www.hahsa.com/

Ray

 

[Henry]

I've got a Taylor outdoor wood stove. See http://www.taylormfg.com/heaters.htm

For the domestic hot water, the unit has a seperate coil, so you just run your hot water lines staight out of the back of the stove.

For the indoor heat, we've got a plumbing loop through the house that runs the hot water through hot-water base-boards in each room. Your thermostat controls the operation of a small pump that circulates the water.

Good points:
- very steady, even heat in the house
- you can take a 2-hour shower and never run out of hot water !
- low cost ... just your wood-chopping labor

Bad Points:
- very very hot domestic hot water.. warn your guests!
- smoke...

Advise:
- keep the wood dry
- insulate (heavily) any exposed plumbing outdoors
- put your stove down-wind from the house
- run the plumbing so it's easy to drain (if you leave home for awhile)

 

[HR_Mutt]

Henry
One of those units at that site is 3.2 MILLION btu/hr.!!! What would you do w/ all that? Wow, I would not want to keep wood in that one/w3tcompact/icons/wink.gif!
regards
Mutt

 

[beenthere]

Probably wouldn't need that much for a house, but if you had a wood business, and had 'wood to burn', and a large shop to heat --- then maybe a 3.2 million btu/hr would fit the bill quite nicely. Some tractor shops heat with used oil, and have 'oil to burn'. Works great.

 

[Henry]

<font color=blue>One of those units at that site is 3.2 MILLION btu/hr.!!! </font color=blue>

Sounds like that model would heat a Wall-Mart ! I don't think the one I've got is quite that big... /w3tcompact/icons/wink.gif

Henry

 

[gmason]

I've got a older Taylor 800gal stove located about 200' from our house. It heat our air and our water. I've heard the whole set-up can be upward of 5k+.
I tell folks that I show my system too that ask the same questions you ask, is that basically if you have a easy limitless supply of fire wood then it's worth it. But if it takes either big $$ for the wood or lot and lots of work to get good firewood then think again.
Most of my wood I burn is not split. I saw limbs to 6' length to fit in my FEL and bring them to the stove where I cut them in half. They then fit perfectly into my stove. The only time I saw them into smaller pieces is if I can't left them into the stove in the 3' length.
I have borrowed a splitter in the past for a few weekends to split some really big pieces, but I'll put in 1-2hrs a weekend hand splitting pieces. A good workout, and I don't have to go to the gym.
On warmer days, it gets filled once in the evening, on colder days/nights, like last night it got down into the low 20's I'll fill it in the morning also. I'm heating ~4000sq/ft though.
Locating it far away from the house, means it's out of site(wife's condition), and the smoke rarely get's into the house.

One of my pumps was "frozen" at the start of this heating season and I had to tap it with a hammer a few times to unstick it.
I'm in the process of building a barn around it that may help to keep the heat in a little.

good luck
gary