comments on outdoor wood burners?

[Engineer]

Need to buy one of these for the new house, with all the wood I got from both the mill and from clearing.  No point in wasting oil and gas when there's me and four kids and a tractor on the property to do the labor.

Have narrowed down to Central Boiler or Heatmor.  Local Heatmor dealer seems to be almost defunct, it's September and he has no new stock in.  I don't trust him.  The Central Boiler dealer is further away but has been an established dealer for many years and has onsite service, etc.  Notwithstanding the dealer issues, who's got either one of these makes and can comment on it (good or bad)?

[karl]

We have a Central Boiler- works well for us as we have lots of construction and mill scrap to burn- would really hate to BUY wood to feed it though- sure beats having burnpiles to deal with.

Made 1 cord sheds that we move with forklift for scrap and open racks for slabs from the mill and odd pulpwood/tops

We heat 1800 sq.' house, Hot water, 2200' shop, kiln, and planning to heat greenhouse if we can figure how to get through solid ledge :

The only complaint I have has more to do with our location than fault of the boiler- we (and the neighbors) get lots of smoke when it has been on idle and starts calling for heat. We added more chimeny and it has helped, but we still shut 'er down for the warm month :(s) and use oil to heat hot water.

[junkyard]

engineer

Get the cenral with soft start. It fires with oil on startup less smoke. Also can use as backup if you go away for the weekend.
                         Junkyard

[ElectricAl]

Engineer,

We have 2 Heatmor burners. A 200 and a 400.

We have customers that have Central and others have Heatmor ;D

Both have big Pros and little Cons ;)

Either unit will save you money.  


We have thought about selling the 200 and getting a Central that matches the 400 just to see what unit rises to the top of our list. ;D




ElectricAl

[Corley5]

Dad's got a Heatmor that heats the house, shop and hot water.  He's more than happy with it.  The selling factor for me on a Heatmor is that it has grates and the Central Boiler doesn't.  I'm in the process of buying a Crown Royal 7200 http://www.northlanddistrib.com/royal.html for my house.  The reason I'm buying it is it has shaker grates while the Heatmor's are stationary.  It also has a 20 year warranty instead of 10.  

[neslrite]

  We got one of them Heatmor units and are very satisfied, as far as the service goes we have had the unit 4 years with out a problem so there has been no need to call them. I chose the Heatmor over the classic because at the time it was the only unit with a forced draft, that fan is the key to burning any thing. As I tell people when they ask what I burn, I say If you could get enough dead cats together you could heat your house.

    We burn about 15 cords a year, heating 4000sqft house 1000sqft inlaw apartment and a 800sqft garage. I also hooked it to the swimming pool, mostly as a place to dump heat when I burn sawmill scraps in the summer.

      The only down side to any outdoor wood boiler is the smoke, when the unit is cold or the wind blows the wrong way I stick to dry hardwood. We have 15ac. and so far have not had any problems with neighbors.

[wiam]

I have had a Central CL40 for about 6 years.  I have had very little problem with it.  The lack of grates is the big reason that I went with Central.  EVERY  furnace I have had before burned up the grates.  But having said that,  the dealer   that I bought mine from stopped selling them because the newer ones with the circulator in the side were not putting out as much heat.

Will

[DanG]

How many dead cats are there in a cord, anyway? :D :D :D

[Percy]

How many dead cats are there in a cord, anyway? :D :D :D

Uhhhh 12. Its in THE DEAD CAT CORD WOOD MANUAL...page 16 ;D

[OneWithWood]

We have a had a Central boiler CL40 for six years now.  Heat the house, domestic H2O, and a greenhouse with it.  No complaints.  Both the company and the local dealer stand behind the product and are easy to work with.

[HORSELOGGER]

Speakin of cats and boilers.... We have a aqua therm boiler in a small shed , and for the last 2 winters an old white colored tom cat would find his way to the shed because of the heat, and jump up on the boiler and snuggle up to the chimney pipe at night I know it was the same cat because he still had the patch work of brown singed hair from the first year when he came back last winter. I made a deal with him that as long as he does business outside the boiler house , he wont find himself inside the boiler. Wonder if he'll make it back this year ???

[Corley5]

We've never had a problem with grates burning out in any wood stove we've had.  My grandpa's said to "keep the fire off the grates" by leaving some gray ash between them and the hot coals and burning wood.  Don't shake them clean.  Seems to work.  The wood furnace Dad just replaced still has the original skaker grates in good shape after 15 years of use.