boiler fired kilns

[Norwiscutter]

All this talk about kilns has got me thinking about building one as one of the many upcoming summer projects that are in the works.  I deal mostly with soft woods, the large part of which are air dried before seeing the kiln.  Right now I have a home made 400 BF dehumidifier thing a ma jigger like the ones talked about in other posts.  What I want to do is build a two chamber unit that I can also use to dry longer stuff. (20 ft. or so) I was thinking of using my outdoor wood boiler to run a heat exchanger in the unit, allong with fans, vents, etc.  What kind of controls are available for such a unit?  I would probably be useing it mostly to set the pitch but could also see useing it for full cycles in the winter when the outside temps slow the air drying down.  What do you guys think about wood fired kilns?

[Den Socling]

Someplace at our forum is a thread that I wrote about using outdoor furnaces to heat kilns. It can be done very well with a proportional diverter valve. The controller automatically compensates for the ups and downs of the boiler temperature.

[Don_Lewis]

Some people use a dry bulb (regular temperature) and humidity (or depression or EMC) control as a wet bulb dry bulb does work that well in that setup. the humidity control operates the vents and the temperature control runs the pump, or as Den suggests, runs a diverting valve. But if it is softwood and air dried, you are really only interested in getting the kiln hot and keeping the humidity under control.

[Norwiscutter]

I 've gotta look up that thread... yes I pretty much just need to get the temp. up and control the humidity, but the more I think about it, having full controls of the system would be a good thing to plan from the beginning, rather than to want them later. Do you guys know of any standardized plans that are designed specifically for this method? Or pretty much am I just talking about a standard kiln chamber with different "moveing parts" than DH kilns and such? Who would be a good resource for the controls,vents, etc. that I will need? I can take care of all the standard plumbing/heating stuff like a modeene(spelling) or hydronic heat exchanger. 

[Norwiscutter]

Found the thread from last month, so if I will refrain from asking any more dumb qustions here that are answered on the conventional kilns thread.  Thanks for your patience.