Options for tying wood and existing furnace together

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skidud

Member
Oct 17, 2010
48
Northern Ohio
I'm looking at installing a wood furnace but am not sure on the best option for tying it into my current duct work. I would like to have it so that my existing furnace can run it's fan 24/7 and help move air and also be able to run on it's own should I be unavailable to load the stove. My current system runs at 1400 CFM on low and 2000 CFM on high. The furnace I'm looking at is the Drolet Tundra which is rated for up to 1400 CFM. My home is two stories and 2500 sq. ft. which doesn't include the basement, which is where the furnace is installed.

I saw in the Daka manual that they recommend that the wood furnace ducts are ran into a set of 90s installed into the main plenum off the existing furnace. The idea being that the main furnace runs it's fan and creates a draw which will pull the air from the wood furnace. Sounds doable but I'm not sure about how those 90s installed into my plenum are going to effect my performance when I want to just use the furnace. Just teeing into the side of my main plenum might be an option but I would be afraid that running the main furnace would create a back pressure on the wood furnace and cause it to overheat.

Just wondering how you guys that still occasionally use your existing furnace deal with tying them together. I'm sure there is a way to do this with well placed dampers, using natural draw and playing with fan speeds. Hoping someone can lay out some ideas.
 
I have a blower on my caddy but I just cut some sheet metal and cut a slot for it to go into the main gas plenum but if you want to use gas furnace you have to pull it out and put it in the wood plenum
 
The setup for the Tundra will be different than I run with our Caddy. Ideally you would build a simple damper that would open and close in the plenum or the main trunk of the central furnace. If the blower would kick on, the damper would open, once it shuts off, it closes. This would isolate the wood furnace from the central furnace. The 2-8" ducts could have manual dampers that would open and close. Running your central furnace blower while running the wood furnace would reduce hest from the wood side. Having a large cold central furnace only tempers the air from the woodfurnace. As far as the central furnace running and backfeeding, if your wood furnace supplies 99% of the heat, then shut off the central furnace.

Our setup is different due to a large plenum opening. I built a preweighted butterfly damper above the wood furnace that opens and blocks the plenum of the central furnace. If the central furnace runs, the blower pushes down the damper and blocks the woodfurnace. I built things that could be manually opened and closed in case of an outage. Our woodfurnace supplies 99% of our heat, so the LP furnace remains off the entire winter. Last year I did fire our central furnace a few times, and that was due to -35°F and below windchills. We kept up most of the night and in the A.M stopped fighting it and fired the furnace.
 
Essentially, I'm wanting a way to keep my main furnace's fan running and "inject" warm air from the wood stove into that flow. I don't so much want total isolation but rather need collaboration of the two systems without either adversely effecting the other. Having a vacuum strong enough to satisfy the output of both systems should achieve this, I'm just not sure if that could be expected or even possible.

Perhaps a quick note on how my furnace operates. I have a two stage geo-thermal system which has three fan speeds. I can adjust it to flow anywhere from 750 to 2400 CFM with max external static pressure of .75. Low, is for "fan only" mode and for the first 30 seconds before and after the pump runs. Medium, is for first stage heating and cooling and high is for second stage heating and cooling. I can determine each fan setting based on a set of dip switches. There is a range where medium and high should be set and low can be anywhere lower than the medium fan speed. All in all, I have a wide range of options and can make adjustments quickly and easily.

I guess I probably need to start by figuring out what my static pressure is and play with the fan on my current furnace.
 
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