New constrution wood boiler advice

[MyLabHunter]

I was getting some great advice from one of the other areas here and i thought i would throw this out and see what kind of info i get back.

I am now owner of my grandpas property he bought almost 60 years ago with 31 acres of woods. We are building a house on the property and was assuming on using some wood stoves. A few weeks ago my dad told me about a friend of the family who installed an outdoor wood boiler. So i googled it and watched a few videos on youtube. It has my attention. Im having a hard time getting a hold of our family friend for some 1st hand info. Some basic questions to start this off if you guys dont mind.

What are the brand names i should be looking at?

Pros and cons of experience with indoor wood boilers and outdoor wood boilers?

Price.


If you guys can help me out that would be great. I have free fuel and i would like to get utilize this advantage for the long haul. Thanks again!

[thecfarm]

Depends on the size of what you want to heat. Others will be on to comment. I have an older Heatmor,one that smokes,and before everything took a HUGH jump in price. The OWB are kinda pricey,but it's an investment. Now they burn the gassers and don't smoke much. The Heatmor has a very simple design. I burn any type of wood in mine. Be it dry cedar to oak. That is why I brought it,to get rid of all the wood that is hard to burn in a wood stove. Give the placement of the OWB some thought too. I am very happy with my OWB.

[talldog]

I have a newer E-classic 2300 that is a gasser. It generally does a good job but there was a learning curve. It does burn more wood than I thought it would. You must also plan to be at home or have someone reliable to tend it for you. They must be cleaned out of ashes regularly. The air holes need to be kept clear as well. I think the newer 2400 design might be better in that regard. They are not for everyone, but for some of us that have out own woodlots,like to cut wood, and don't travel away from home too much it works well. There is no mess in the house. My wife likes to turn the dial when she is cold. If she's happy, everyone's happy.

[VTwoodworker]

I have an OWB that heats our house and MIL apartment and three car garage.  The house and apartment total about 4500 sf.  Prior to the OWB we were at about $4000 per year in propane and oil to heat the spaces.  We had a woodstove in the basement to supplement and used about 2 cord per year. 

With the OWB I cut most of the wood on my land which is a lot of dead stand or blow down spruce and fir.  I supplement with 2-3 cord of hardwood fire logs.  We still use oil and propane in the summer for hot water.  Not counting my time for cutting the wood we are now about $800 per year for heat and hot water.  The math worked out that I had about a 4 year pay back for the installation of the OWB.  If you are building new, the OWB will be more up front but the delta cost may have a similar pay back depending on fuel type.  There are some differences in how indoor and outdoor boiler systems are designed and backup heat considerations.  I suggest that you consider the costs of the entire system and not just compare the sticker price of the two boilers when doing the comparisons.  I did also get a reduction on the homeowners policy premium when I removed the indoor woodstove.

I have burned wood all of my life and now that I am used to the OWB, I would never want to bring the wood and associated mess into the house again.  No more bugs, bark, and dust and overall I spend less time loading the boiler than I did the stove.  Site the OWB with a woodshed close by and truck tractor access so you can limit the handling.

[MyLabHunter]

Thanks guys this is what i am looking for. My father and i live about 6 blocks from each other here in chicago. We must be the only 2 that have wood stoves in the area. I have been burning my whole life as well. I dont want to bring wood in the house either which is why the outdoor stove is so nice. I was really thinking about doing pex in floor heating in the main house, garage, Sidewalks around the house, and a big maybe on the equipment building. But now i am thinking twice because we will be going back to Chicago once a month so kids can see both sides of grandparents. I dont think i can get anyone to tend to the OWB. That puts me back at using the OWB with forced air so i can heat while we are gone.

Its a big investment for me. The most expensive extra im doing on the whole house (garage included). I would like to put it close to the house but i see in all the videos i have watched its quite far from the houses. Is that a safety thing that is required?


Thanks for the great tips so far.

[talldog]

Its distance from the house is mostly for convenience. Also prevailing wind direction should be considered. You should also check local zoning to see if they are even allowed in your area. You will lose a little heat the further away it is. Mine is only about 20 feet from the house. Sometimes it can smell like smoke if the wind is right.

[VTwoodworker]

I would not change the plans from radiant floor heat.  There are ways to design backup heat with the OWB for the times when you are away.   Some manufacturers have gas as a secondary fuel source in the boiler.  My system uses the indoor oil boiler that I had as the backup.  I have two hot water loops circulating water constantly.  The inside loop is presurized and the outdoor loop through them OWB is not presurized and they transfer heat through a thin plate heat exchanger.  Most of the time the heat comes from the outdoor loop to the inside when the OWB is up to temp and that provides the heat.  However, when the OWB is not up to temp because the fire is down the system calls for heat and the oil boiler heats and heat is passed to the outdoor loop so the boiler would not freeze.

I am not sure what is the most cost effective way to design a new system from scratch but the point I am trying to make is that with some thought you can make the system work. 

When you install the boiler make sure you buy the best insulated pipe that you can get.  This is going to run you upwards of $25 per foot so the distance from your house or other building is one of convenience and economics.

[MyLabHunter]

I went up to the property and walked and walked trying to pick the build site. With the 10 hours of driving this was an exact question i had. What if we wanted to go visit family at Christmas time? Your response was exactly what i was looking for. Lots of great tips. Thanks guys.

Has anyone used OWB with infloor heating? I was thinking about just heating my all my floors and since it gives all the hot water i can use i was going to heat my walkway and driveway. Radiators would be my next choice if the infloor was not the best way to go.

[Randy88]

In floor heat is great, but it does have limitations, after last winter, around me everyone who had infloor heat was having issues with it keeping up in their shops, me included.   I've lived in about three houses in my life that had radiator heat, and I loved it, if you can find old radiators to install, I'd do both, it gives you backup and options along with forced air if you want ac in the summer.   

The biggest advantage with in floor heat, if your putting it in the cement in the basement is the insulation under it, it helps to prevent the cement floor from sweating in the summer, a big bonus in a shop environment or if your planning on ever using the basement for anything, or even living space.   

I have a wood doctor, I like the furnace, but the company sucks, don't ever buy one of their owb's, look instead for a company that has far better reviews.   

I've burned wood off and on all my life, I'd never consider ever putting a wood burning anything back inside the house, maybe inside an outbuilding to keep myself out of the snow, ice, and wind while filling it, that seems to be a pretty common thing around me, put up a small building and put the owb and wood pile inside of a make shift shed or lean to keep everything dry and handy.   Just a thought and yes I'd love to do that.   

Anything you do, heating is fast becoming a very expensive ordeal, even if you use natural gas/propane, oil, electricity, wood, solar or whatever, you need to sit down and do some studying on what system you want, and the long term payback of each or cost however you want to look at it.  If you've burned wood before we don't need to give you the speech about the time and costs with gathering it up, you know about that already.   

[jdonovan]

Pros and cons of experience with indoor wood boilers and outdoor wood boilers?

Comes down to a few things...
Ease/convince of filling the wood burner
location of the mess

If you have to fill it 3-4x a day, you want it close. If you can fill it 1-2x a day, then a bit of a walk is OK.

Do you want to have to get dressed in your mid-winter outside gear 4 times a day to go fill your stove?

Where do you want the dust, wood chips, bugs, etc... ?

For me, the ideal setup would be an indoor wood burner, in an out building < 100 ' from the house. All the pluses of an indoor burner, without having it inside the house. The building would have a roll up door so I could move palatalized wood from the wood pile to the burner without having to hand-handle it.


Several people have mentioned radiant flooring.  There is some growing evidence that they work less-well in super-insulated homes. When the overall heat need is low, the floor doesn't have to be that warm to input the BTU's needed to keep the home comfortable. So the 'warm feet' promise doesn't materialize even tho the floor is a few degrees warmer than the air.

In slab heat is slow to respond due to the thermal mass of the slab. If you want to raise the temp 5 degrees it could be 4-8 hours to make it happen. A forced air system isn't going to heat the slab any faster, but it WILL heat the air, and that will make the humans happier, sooner.

I'm still a believer in in-floor heat for a less-well insulated shop, that is kept above freezing all winter, but might only get heated to 60 degrees on weekends. In the house I want to have built, I'm strongly considering putting a water to air heat exchanger in the forced air system vs in-slab.

Give thought to how the system will work when you don't want to, or can't feed it wood. We may love wood, but not all the wives do, and over time priorities shift, and many people move away from wood heating. Also an injury, or illness might keep you from collecting enough wood, even if you want to. Also consider keeping the system simple enough that the wife can operate it. I've seen some systems that are setup with multiple heat inputs, and valving, and control systems so complex that only a power plant operator would feel comfortable running it.

i was going to heat my walkway and driveway

The heat input required for snow melt is massive. 100-200 BTU/sq-ft. Now you only need to put this into the driveway when you want to melt snow... but for a moderate size area... 20x100, 2000 sq-ft, you would need 200,000-400,000 BTU plus your home/shop heat demands. If you do not insulate below your driveway/walks that you want to melt, then the heat inputs are even more!

[Tug Hill Walt]

I have a central boiler in use since 05 heating 4500 ft of home. There is an oil fired furnace in the cellar for back-up. Heating is with baseboard radiation. We may not get as cold as WI. but we do get cold and snow. I set the unit on a slab and then built a 400 sq. ft. building around the front half of it which is wood storage. The wood stays dry and snow free, lighted at night, and no blizzards to fight. I run straight water to the heat exchanger on the oil unit. When we have to leave for any long time, I let the fire go down, turn off the power to the cb, which closes the draft, and run the pump, which has a plug to the boiler, from another plug. Then set my T-stat to 50. It keeps the house warm enough and I am not heating the ail flowing through the cb.  Think about in-floor and baseboard heat.

[Holmes]

 A big advantage for radiant heat in concrete floors is it takes a lot longer for the house to cool down compared to baseboard radiation.   I have lost power in the farm house for up to 12 days , radiant heat , spray foam insulated,. After 3 days the temp dropped enough that I put the generator to the boiler to warm the house up.  If you are willing to put up an OUT building look into the Garn boilers, that might get you thru a long weekend without being fired off. {OUT building = man cave to some} ;D

[den]

You might want to check out
http://www.hearth.com/talk/