New Here with some questions

Bruce M. said:

Hi, I live in a 1300 sq. ft modular home with an oil furnace and HW baseboard heat. I want to supplement my heat with a stand alone wood furnace with forced hot air to floor registers in each room and eventually get rid of the oil supply all together. I only say this is what I want because this is what I had in my old house 20+ years ago and it worked well. Wood is very obtainable where I live and if something were to happen that there wouldn't be any oil deliveries for some time I would still have heat. I spend around $2500-$3000 per winter on oil now so I think a good wood furnace placed down the basement and then running the duct work would pay for itself pretty quickly. I just haven't figured on how to get hot water if I want to get completely off oil, right now I get the hot water off the oil furnace also.
my question to start with is is there a unit in which I can have forced hot air and eventually make hot water for the taps, shower, laundry and dishes. I can spend a few thousand and believe in buying once rather than cheap once and good the second time around.
Thanks for any and all replies.

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Welcome to Hearth, My advice would be to put the wood furnace in the basement & forget about the boiler part. I have a very inexpensive boiler setup & I have $6500 in mine. You could try a coil/air to water exchanger placed on the furnace to temper the water for DHW some. It will never be a decent boiler though, at least anything I have seen. Good luck, Randy

Try this site Bruce. http://www.lamppakuuma.com/Vapor Fire 100.html. This is a direct forced hot air, wood gasification furnace, if that is what you are looking for. Dont know if it can be rigged to heat your DHW, but the cost isn't that bad, relatively speaking that is. I imagine the installation would be fairly straight-forward.

Mike

Bruce M. said:

Hi, I live in a 1300 sq. ft modular home with an oil furnace and HW baseboard heat. I want to supplement my heat with a stand alone wood furnace with forced hot air to floor registers in each room and eventually get rid of the oil supply all together. I only say this is what I want because this is what I had in my old house 20+ years ago and it worked well. Wood is very obtainable where I live and if something were to happen that there wouldn't be any oil deliveries for some time I would still have heat. I spend around $2500-$3000 per winter on oil now so I think a good wood furnace placed down the basement and then running the duct work would pay for itself pretty quickly. I just haven't figured on how to get hot water if I want to get completely off oil, right now I get the hot water off the oil furnace also.
my question to start with is is there a unit in which I can have forced hot air and eventually make hot water for the taps, shower, laundry and dishes. I can spend a few thousand and believe in buying once rather than cheap once and good the second time around.
Thanks for any and all replies.

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Have you for some reason eliminated a wood boiler either in series or parallel to your existing oil burner? Doing it that way, you can keep your existing heat distribution system and DHW intact. Many folks here do this - I have mine in series, others favor parallel, but both methods work well. You wrote that you would like FHA, but is there something wrong with your existing BB? Although a furnace may be less expensive than a quality boiler, I think that installing a new distribution system would push the total cost for the furnace higher than a boiler + connecting piping and maybe some controls (unless you're planning to DIY everything).

Bruce M. said:

Got it, Keep it simple would probably be the best bet and if $6500 is "very inexpensive" than my idea of expensive is way off.
What could I expect to pay for a good hot air furnace, also the few that I have looked at on the net had either one or two fans and they are wood/coal burners. Are the two fans for separate zones if you wanted to split the house up and can I burn pellets in these if i decided to go that route some day. These might seem to be glaringly dumb questions and I apologize if they are but I just am now starting to look into this and have zero knowledge of any of these units beside the old beast from long ago.
Thanks for the advise.

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The price of a hot air furnace varies a lot. I would suggest checking Craigslist for a good used high quality unit & let someone else take the loss from buying new. Should be around $500 or less for a real nice furnace. These won;t be pellet burners. I'm not sure about the 2 fans as the ones I see are natural draft or forced draft with one fan. Randy

What about putting in a wood stove in the basement instead of a whole furnace setup? My parents have a house thats about the same size as yours, also a modular, and their only heat source is a wood stove in the basement. The far end of the house gets a little chilly, but thats where the bedrooms are, and they like it cooler there to sleep.

You could get out a lot cheaper with a wood stove than a whole furnace setup. Here on this site there are all sorts of stove reviews, and you can even hit up the Home Depot and grab one of the "Englander" models. Made here in the US, have very good reviews, and probably going on clearance here soon.

One other thought, do you have another chimney for the additional flue you would need? I doubt you can put both the wood burner and the oil into the same flue, so thats some additional cost if you need another chimney.

I think most furnaces will run you out of your home. My parents have a 1600 sq ft ranch that they heat from the basement with a wood stove. I would invest in some insulation for the basement walls and a nice wood stove. For what a good woodfurnace will cost plus ductwork it could get expensive. We have a Caddy made by PSG and it's a nice furnace, but I think around 2800.00 now, a Kuuma would set you back around 3500.00 or so. There is a smaller furnace on the market called the Mini-caddy made by PSG. It's EPA certified and has the option for a plenum that has 5 or 6 outputs for ductwork. It's made for smaller homes. The ductwork would be very simple and fairly inexpensive.

A furnace puts the heat into a ductwork system. Might be OK for you if you already have it in place. A wood stove works like a big space heater, throwing heat via convection and radiation.

If you can pull it off, my vote would be wood stove, since it works if you have power or not, its cheaper, and there is nothing like standing next to a wood stove on a cold day.

The furnace is also going to have other controls for fan cycling and potentially combustion air as well.

I cant help you with the idea of hot water and hot air out of the same unit, as I havent ever looked into that idea.

But it sounds like you are on the right path!

If you go oversized, you may find that the furnace (or boiler) wants to sit and idle. When burning wood, this idling is NEVER good, it what leads to creosote. And chimney fires. Read the thread about "had a chimney fire....now what". Granted, wet wood will make this much worse....so dry wood is the key. This means split and stacked for a year, minimum, and for oaks....more like two years or more.

A gasification burner (furnace or boiler) should greatly help reduce creosote and is more efficient...but will cost a bit more up front I'm sure. And again, if you idle (i,e, the burner tries to shut down the air and the burn, becuase there is no call for heat), you'll likely run into problems....

On here, you'll read a lot about storage, The idea here is to have a big tank of water, say 1000 gallons or more, that when you burn the fire, it burns hot and fast, heating up the water in the tank and supplying the house demand. When the house demand ends, all the heat goes into storage....so you never idle.

That said, many people have wood furnaces, non-gasification, and heat their homes fine. They key here is dry wood....and don't overload the furnace with more wood than you will need!

A 145,000 btu boiler on a 1300 sq ft home? I dont know anything about boilers, but that sounds like creosote city. Those boilers don't have the same technology as a gasification boiler. Maybe put in a nice electric water heater and a woodstove for heat? I know in a forced air world going with something that's oversized that much will cause problems. You would idle probably most of the time causing creosote to accumulate. I would try a stove, if it doesn't work sell it and go with something different.

My local Home Depot has a simple hot air wood furnace with a glass door by Englander for $1100. My daughter's considering it for her new house and I think it just might be a very good choice.

Bruce,

Im just a little fuzzy... do you currently have a furnace or a boiler? Furnace = hot air, Boiler = hot water.

I only ask because that could make a heckuva difference in any advice you get.

Im guessing that you actually have a boiler currently, not a furnace (based on the fact that you heat the garage). Now that you have stepped up to heating 3200 SF, that would put you out of woodstove range I think.. Unless you wanted to keep several of them going at once, which I doubt...

You will want to think about a boiler with storage, or one of the units that can operate without it. However, your wallet might be surprised by the time you are all done.....

Bruce,

I think it is good that you are taking your time. If you are going to do it and would like to get away from oil, I think you should go with a boiler. You already have the baseboard in place and could then heat you hot water with wood as well. You would be able to get your house and garage as warm as you want it as long as you size it correctly. If you are looking to stay in under $6000 there are ways to do this. You could go with an inexpensive gasser with storage. I would highly recommend storage with a wood burning boiler. Another consideration would be to go with a used wood burning boiler. HS Tarms have an outstanding reputation. Here is a link to a used one. http://www.ebay.com/itm/TARM-MB40-1...481?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item3a7095a8f9 It is not a gassifier, but it could keep you in your price range. A new, inexpensive gasser would also be wise. And you could add storage later. But, many times people buy wood boilers and realize they do not want all the work that comes with wood heating. Sometimes you can buy a used one that is barely used and save thousands. A friend of mine just bought a used gassification boiler that had been used two seasons. Bought it for $3500. Installed it and is done for $5000. A little cheaper than my $13000 set up. The one I linked you to may be a little small for your application. But, these things depend on how much you are home, or your wife is home. Someone who can tend to the fire. If there is someone home fairly often, you could get away with a smaller boiler. Burning it hot the entire time. That link is to a guy who sells reconditioned boilers on ebay. Just an idea. Other options out there for used boilers on craigslist, ebay, etc. Just be very carefull what kind you buy! Having a completely pressurized system is nice. You could use an indirect hot water heater like a Triangle Tube Smart series and have endless hot water with wood heating it. Just one type you could look at. If you found a used boiler, for say $3,000. Then add a nice new indirect water heater in to the system. ($1000) Find a used propane tank(s), or a used air reciever tank(s). ($1000) Then add pumps and plumbing supplies. Pipe the wood boiler in parallel to your existing oil boiler. You could get away with doing it for around $6000. Depends on how much you can do yourself or have connections to people who could help you. There are lots of knowledgeable people in the boiler room who could help you design your system. New or used.

Thermo- Control is about 2 hours north of you (Cobleskill). They will use more wood than a gasser but may be in your price range and should last. They have stoves with DHW coils, boilers etc. Check out their website. Another option.

No need to apologize, as its hard to know whats relevant to everyone else when you are just starting.

Good luck with your searching!

Bruce M. said:

Thanks all for the replies and information. I apologize for not being clear with what I have and what it is I want to do in the first place. I will check out the links provided and do a lot of home work before I buy one bolt or fitting, thanks again you have gotten me off to a good start.

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To answer your earlier question, the main differences between a wood stove and wood furnace is the furnace has a large dedicated blower which blows through a heat exchanger for more efficiency. Wood furnaces are basically 'convection' appliances and unlike wood stoves release very small amount of 'radiant' heat (called Jacket loss for furnaces).

To save money you could do the following. Dont buy a furnace with the built-in blower but use the blower from your current furnace. Also look for a furnace where you can put in a water loop to pre-heat your water tank to save on overall energy cost.

For example the PSG Caddy (which we make) is one of the few EPA rated furnace on the market and should do your house comfortably. It retails for approximately $2,900. http://www.psg-distribution.com/product.aspx?CategoId=16&Id=325&Page=description

Whatever the furnace you purchase, download the installation manual first and ensure you have the clearance and will follow the recommendation for venting (chimney) and you know how to balance a system with a magnahelic. The performance of the furnace will be greatly affected for the better if you can put it within the MFG's recommendations.

Rob H said:

Thermo- Control is about 2 hours north of you (Cobleskill). They will use more wood than a gasser but may be in your price range and should last. They have stoves with DHW coils, boilers etc. Check out their website. Another option.

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I have heard good things about them and their boilers, and I think that they are working on a gasser.