supplemental wood heat

[gerard]

See if you have a coal supplier near you. I have a dual use furnace (oil or wood) and I burned wood the last two winters. Nice even heat BUT cleaning the flue and heat exchanger every 6 weeks, hauling the ashes AND dumping 10 cord of wood down the garage shute to the basement and then stacking was too much. This year I'm going with straight oil. (This leads to the coal) As a "test" one year I bought a few hundred lbs of coal. Worked great, nice steady even heat and only had to add about every 18 hours. Problem was without the shaker greats the clinkers would build up and you had to let it burn down after a few days and clean it out. Thye make stoves just like the pellet stoves but that burn pea coal. Same idea - fill the hopper and forget about it. Don't think you get the creasote buildup with coal either. I would have bought the shaker grates and went to coal but they wanted $300 which was too much. Just something else to think about........../w3tcompact/icons/smile.gif

 

[JohnS]

Agree on the work aspect. I grew up in a primary wood heat home (boiler), and it required 12-15 face cord, a season. My dad still uses wood, put gets a load of logs delivered vs dropping trees on his or others property. I have a low-end forced hot-air wood furnace, in my basement. It esentially is just a box within a box, with a small sqiurrel cage fan on the bottom, and round plenium on top. I ran the plenium upstairs to a standard floor vent. My 1st floor, has a rather open floorplan, and the heat can be evenly distributed via a box fan. We only burn 1-3 face cord per season. We use the wood furnace only on cold weekends (20 degrees and less) to make the house nice and toasty. Primary heating is via oil baseboard heat, that runs 69 degrees for the hours we are home/active and drops to 66 at night and when we are away. I have an access to my basement through the garage, so most of the dirt and mess is contained outside of the main living space. Having the stove in a living area, makes for even more work.

 

[looch]

All I know is that they're supposed to be very good. There are a few places around here that use them. I could be wrong, but I think one guy is burning straw bales in his - 1 or 2 bales a day. A bit involved ($$) to install - running underground conduit from the unit to wherever you're heating. Advantage is you can use it to heat all of your buildings.

 

[MossRoad]

I've also heard that they are cheaper to insure as compared to a wood burner in your house. If it burns down out in the yard, your house is still OK. /w3tcompact/icons/smile.gif

 

[gmason]

Check out Water Stoves or Taylor Stoves in previous topics.
I've got a large 800gal outside waterstove that I've had going for about 1 1/2 years. It's about 200' away from the house and I pipe it into 2 central air systems.
It works great around here as long as the temp doesn't stay under ~30 deg for 2-3 days in a 6000 sq ft home. The temp coming out of the register is around 130 and it takes a longer cycle to get the house warm than the LP backup system.

The firebox is 2'x3'x52" and I can put just about anything I can lift into it once it gets fired-up. No spliting of the woos unless I can't lift it into the box.

I fill it usually once a day and check it before I go to bed. Once in a while I have to top it off at night too.

gary

 

[skent]

Last year I did lots and lots of research on using an outdoor stove to supplement out heat. I typically spend $1000 in heating our 2200 sq ft house using a heat pump. We have several acres of woodlot that has lot's of oak so the wood (at this time) is free. I figured (after actually doing several cords) it cost me $20 a cord to cut (chainsaw gas/oil/wear&tear), transport, split (tractor powered log splitter) and stack the wood, along with a weekend to process each chord). Others in my area said it could take 8 to 10 cords to fill my needs for a winter. Thats $200 and ten weekends. Now the cost of the equipment: the cheaper models, using rolled steel boilers, and usually have no more than a 3 year warrenty, go for $4000 plus the equipment to connect to a house (coil and underground pipe) $400. If you do it yourself, the labor or time to put everything in. Anything with a longer warrenty (8 years was the longest I found) can be as high as $8000. Basing my labor on half of minimum wage, by using an outdoor furnace I can save $320 a year, so payback for the cheapest unit is somewhere around 13 years - and thats if nothing goes wrong.

I really wanted to give it a try, but the numbers just don't work for me right now. So I just cut the wood I can a sell to someone who can use it to their advantage.

 

[b249]

Thanks to all who have responded. I appreciate the input. The outdoor boiler would cost about as much to get up an running as having a ducted forced air furnace installed. Cost prohibitive at this point (not to mention too labor intensive).

Now the wifes sister has included her 0.02 said that "your clothes and whole house will smell like wood smoke." I can't see this happening unless your standing over the fire when lighting it/maintaining it.

I will go to Home Depot to check out their stoves and maybe hit a fireplace shop too (although they will probably be more expensive there).

Thanks again,

Mark

 

[s1120]

<font color=red>"your clothes and whole house will smell like wood smoke." </font color=red>

Not true, and if it was, I kind of like the smell of wood smoke./w3tcompact/icons/smile.gif The modern stoves are so well made, you will hardly smill anything.

 

[b249]

Paul,

I figured the new stoves were better than the ones she's using as a comparison. I too like the smell of a wood fire.

Mark

 

[Anonymous Poster]

If you are serious about burning wood for a number of years,I believe a soapstone stove is the way to go.They burn very eficient,using less wood,but store and radiate heat for a number of hours.By burning the wood gases in the stove they also do not create alot of creosote.This means less chimney cleaning and less chance of a chimney fire.One of the most important thoughts is you had better enjoy working the wood and fueling the fire. if you dont,it will be a passing thing for you.You get what you pay for in a stove.I have been heating our home for 25 years with wood and will not stop until I am forced to. Good luck!