Anybody switch from a wood Stove to a Boiler?

I've used a wood stove in our house for 18 years (electric backup when we are away), now second season of a Tarm gasification boiler in my shop, and prior to that 8 years of a traditional OWB to heat the shop. For me, the answer to your question is a no-brainer.

With radiators in place, I would add a wood boiler without question, and equally without question I would make it a gasification boiler. Gasification boilers are cost-competitive with OWB's as to purchase cost, installation procedure is about the same and you have these very positive options:

1) Indoor install, if you have room; no need to go outside to feed the boiler; all heat from the boiler itself goes to the heated space, for a significant addition of heat at no extra cost.
2) Great increase in efficiency, which means you will be burning from 1/4 to 1/2 the wood that an OWB would burn; saves lots of time cutting and stacking; saves lots of money if you buy your wood. I get wood from our land, but I can't over-emphasize the labor, time and space saved in cutting/stacking only 3-5 cords/yr rather than the 10-20 cords I used in the OWB.
3) Almost no smoke, smell, or other bother to neighbors; just wispy steam, like from a gas or oil burner.
4) With storage, additional burn efficiency, plus likely only need to fire the boiler once a day or less often most of the time, and the ability to go away for a day or longer and still have heat without using a backup heating system.

Disadvantage of a gasification vs OWB: the only one I have found of any consequence, which also has a plus side, is that wood is split into smaller pieces (for the Tarm, I cut 18" and split no larger than 5-6") and needs to be well-seasoned, like for a wood stove. The plus is that the wood is easy to handle and move, makes indoor use easy and relatively clean, like for a wood stove.

When the facts are laid out side-by-side, I would be hard pressed to find that the scale tips in favor of an OWB.

We switched to a wood boiler this season and love it. Up until this past few weeks when the temp got down to -20 and lower it has been heating the house and keeping the oil boiler from kicking on. Our oil boiler is rated at 85K, because gassifiers are so expensive I decided to try a used standard wood boiler by Marathon Co, a Logwood boiler. Its rated for 70k btus and heats the house and DHW except for a few days this month so far.

We used to use about 400 gal of oil and burn about 4-5 cords of wood (wood stove was in the basement and not very affective at heating the second floor). Thus the wood boiler can heat the second floor directly via the baseboard heat.

I expect to use about 7 maybe 8 cord, alot more wood but id be shocked if we use 50 gals of oil, the only reason we will use a large amount of oil is to heat the house when we go away on snowmobiling trips (one more next month) I started this summer with half a tank of oil and I still dont see a difference in its level. I have an hour meter on my oil burner so I know how much it runs.

Would like like to have a gassifier YES but I just cant afford the cost. Im building the system around a used standard one and after its all done if I can Ill upgrade to a gassifier. My next in diver is a heat buffer tank so that in the shoulder seasons I can run the wood boiler once in a while (once a week, twice a week??) and be able to heat my DHW.

Good luck.

~ Phil

After heating several seasons with a Pacific Energy wood stove, which is one of the high efficiency "gassifier" wood stoves, I have been heating so far this year with an EKO boiler. The pros of the boiler outway my cons of the boiler relative to using a wood stove:

Pros:
- more uniform heating of the house
- option to heat domestic hot water, which I do
- option to heat multiple buildings, which I do
- more automated control of draft and heat output
- option to use storage any burn only when needed, which I do

Cons:
- Comparing the EKO and my PE stove, I get a more consistent clean burn out of the stove than I do the boiler. The EKO puts out much less smoke than outdoor wood boilers, but it is not as clean burning as my wood stove. I can get the EKO to burn super clean most of the time, but not all the time, whereas my wood stove can take the same wood and burn it clean all the time.
- The EKO is more fussy about wood diameter than my wood stove. The EKO needs the wood to be split down to less than 5" to get a good consistent burn without bridging, whereas my wood stove seems to burn larger size splits (6-8") very cleanly. Even with smaller splits, the EKO still does not burn clean as consistently as my wood stove.

Just as a comparison of how clean my wood stove burns, I have not cleaned the chimney in three years and there is only a very fine dry ash buildup inside the chimney, and the rain cap is bright and shiny. My EKO chimney has a much heavier buildup after just 1/2 a season and the rain cap is brownish. I spent some time learning how to burn the EKO efficiently, but after 4 months of tweaking I'm pretty sure I'm getting about as clean a burn as I will get.

Used a forced air wood furnace in the basement for almost 10 years. It heated the house fairly well, but always had to run some propane through the forced air furnace in the early morning and first thing in the afternoon when I got home from work... a load of wood wouldn't last more than about 5 hours if you planned on keeping the house warm when it got really cold out.

Switched to an EBW200 Econoburn this season and would never go back to traditional wood stove or boiler again unless I absolutely had to. The 3700 sq ft of space we are heating is 72*-74* for 24 hours a day regardless of what the temperature is outside. Burn times are much longer, so the house never gets cold towards morning or early afternoon, and I don't use a single ounce of propane any more. Not to mention wood usage dropped drastically.

Good luck with your decision

Cheers

shawnmd

I had the same stup as you, and this year I made that change. But I replaced my 21 yr. old Oil boiler with a very efficiant propane boiler that hangs on the wall and I kept the woodstove in the basement. A few times my wife still likes to get afire going in the woodstove and sit in front of it a read, see is cold a lot.

I have been using my Eko 25 w/ storage for over 2 weeks and loving it. The silence at night is very noticible. The 4th night on the new system was -24 and the Eko worked like a charm, kept the house at an even 68, I did have to put some wood in it at 3 AM but nature called so it was no biggy.

Good luck, this is the place for great advice.

We heated our home (a two story cape) for 30 years with a Riteway wood stove tied into the hot air system with oil backup. Some years we burned more than others depending on the oil prices. The years where we heated mostly with wood we burned around 8 cords of wood. This season we installed a Tarm Solo 30 with a 600 gal storage tank and a water to air heat exchanger. We used to have to babysit the wood stove all the time. Now I build one or two fires a day depending on the temperature and am looking like we will be just under 4 cords including DHW for the season. The last couple of weeks have been colder than normal so I have been chewing into the pile at a good clip but that should subside pretty soon. Up until then I would build a fire in the evening after work that would heat the house and recharge the storage tank in 5 or 6 hours, that would hold until I got home from work the next evening.
So far I would rate the new system as Awesome!

shawnmd said:

What burn times are you getting with a conventional indoor boiler? Do you just fill and walk away, or do you have to repeatedly adjust the air and draft? I was specifically looking at a New Yorker style wood boiler.

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Burn times without storage tend to be around 8 hours when it's really cold for most of my costomers. Once the temp gets in the 20's most people see at least 10... above 30 and it's pretty easy to get 12 hours with decent wood. This varies of course by system and heat load of course.

like others have said... if you have storage and enough of it you can fire your boiler once per day.

Yes... just fill it and walk away.

cheers

shawnmd said:

What burn times are you getting with a conventional indoor boiler? Do you just fill and walk away, or do you have to repeatedly adjust the air and draft? I was specifically looking at a New Yorker style wood boiler.

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I get about 12 hours of "heat" out of one load of wood. That's stretching it too. The boiler burns for about 4-6hours then my 500 gallons of storage takes over. If I had 1000 gallons of storage, I would still probably burn once, but twice as long.
It's all relative. The more storage, the longer you have to burn to heat the storage.

I seem to be going in exactly the opposite direction. I have a conventional water-jacket boiler in the basement (memco 100), and an old Difiant woodstove in the livingroom that has been a great bookshelf and table top for 10 years. But this year we disabled the oil burner, and since this is a big house, we are asking alot of the wood boiler. We tend it like your woodstove -- feed it every 2 or 3 hours; fuss with it; set aside 'keepers' for the 12-to-4 watch -- I'm sure you know the drill! And like you, when the temperature gets below 0(F), the boiler has a hard time keeping up. So for the first time ever in this house, we crank up the Defiant and are reminded just how much quick heat a woodstove in the right place can provide. Just like Florida!

Now, I don't have much experience with a modern gasification boiler, but I do have a lot of experience with the Memco. And if I could start over again, I would definately go the gasification or maybe Seton-type route. Less wood consumption; higher efficiency (same thing); less smoke and crosote; very much more convenient (with storage tank)... ultimately cheaper after the initial expense is amortized... If you are going to be burning wood in that house for more than a few years, it definatley makes sense to 'bite the bullet' and shell out the intial (large) investment for a mondern efficient wood boiler.

How much do you spend on heat and hot water in the course of a year? This would give you some idea of how long it would take a gasifier to pay for itself. Also, what kind of wood do you have? Do you cut it yourself, or do you buy it all worked up? One thing about European boilers -- they require 'European' wood -- nice hard wood split down to about the size of a large table leg. This can mean ALOT of extra processing on your part. This is not a problem if you enjoy working up a year's worth of wood. Bot not everybody does (e.g the Mrs), or has time for it. And if that's the case, why spend 15 grand to buy yourself another job? After all, the boiler is supposed to work for you, right -- not the other way around. If you don't actually enjoy the whole wood-heat game, then the whole thing might turn into a burden -- especially as heating oil prices trend lower and lower...

However, despite all the caveats, if I could start fresh, I'd skip the Memco stage, and go straight to a modern gasifier or refractory-mass boiler. I'm sure it would save me work and money in the long run. And I wouldn't be in the basement all the time tending the fire.

shawnmd said:

I have a 2 storey house with wood stove in the basement. The wood stove works great in heating the house down until a certain temp, like -10 celsius, and then it just can't keep up and my oil boiler kicks in and heats the house through our cast iron rads. I am also finding the wood stove (regency) much more lablour intensive. I am down there at least every two hours adjusting the air, adding wood etc.
I'm wondering if anyone here has switched from a wood stove to a wood boiler and what their opinion is now? Do you regret switching? Are you happy with your decision? I'm thinking of a conventional boiler as opposed to a gasifier. Tell me about your experience.

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We went from a wood add on to an EKO40 gasification boiler. The only time I look back is to see just how much bigger the wood pile is this time of year compared to when we were using the wood furnace. With hard woods (cherry, oak,elm, hard maple and black walnut) we've taken everything this winter has thrown temperature wise and not had less than an 8 hour burn. Oak maple and elm have netted 9-10 hour burns coal bed to coal bed so there was still more time available. My house is warmer than with the wood furnace too! This is our third season since the change.

Hi Shawnmd

10 cords sounds like alot to shove through a wood stove! What kind of wood? How old, (i.e. green or seasoned); and what did it cost? Burning that much wood, plus a thousand bucks (US) worth of oil... Seems like quite a margin there for you to save some BIg Money!

Atlantic Canada is a big place. By any chance do you live in S.E. New Brunswick? I live near Eastport-Lubec.

Cave2k, can you tell us what to expect if we were to go from a conventional IWB (that's 'indoor wood boiler') to a gasifier in terms of wood consumption? How much wood did you burn with the old wood furnace in the course of a year? And how much now with the gasifier? Any other changes? Who splits up all that nice hard-wood? Is that part of the process significantly more work than the old furnace?

I think our Marathon Logwood conventional wood boiler is similiar to a New Yorker.

When its cold, like now, getting in the -10 deg range we are filling it alot, Basically when I get home around 4pm, again before bedtime 9pm, I usually when its cold Ill drink a soda before bed to remind my body to get up and visit the boiler and bathroom around 3am and then stock it full in the morning before work, so 4 times a day when super cold, I can skip the midnight run when in the 20s and above.

We are using more wood like I said but Ive barely burned any oil, the only reason we have alot of useage now is because we left for 3 days and let the oil beast take over.

Id love to have a gassifier, its benefits of using less wood, generating more BTUs, and with storage being able to more selectively pick when you fill it are great but the cost was the only CON that matter, just cant afford it. I have a used boiler, all the piping, pumps and fittings and set up a Indirect DHW to it for under $2000. We have 50 acres of land so wood is basically free, and we like working in the woods so..... Convential for us it was.

I will say it generates alot of cresote, we clean the chimney once a month.

~ Phil

I have an old Burnham SFB wood/coal boiler and a VC Defiant woodstove sitting right next to each other in my basement. The boiler was used and the coal grates are long gone so the boiler is strictly wood fired. I do not have heat storage on the wood boiler. During spring and fall, the Defiant is the way to go as the wood boiler basically only runs efficiently when its putting out full load, and it doesnt carry a fire for long. When its cold out, the boiler gets used, as its uses less wood to maintain the living area of the house at a constant temperature. When I use the Defiant in cold weather, I have to overheat the basement to get the heat into the main floor and there are cold corners that are tough to heat. A big plus with the Defiant is that it doesnt require electricity to run and I have kept the house warm during an extended power outage. In order to heat the house with the wood boiler, I have to run one circulator pump continuously and a zone pump when calling for heat. I also have solar hot water and during winter conditions, the wood boiler acts to top off the temp in my water tank as the solar doesnt get hot enough due to my type of collector. If I had a big water storage tank, I would probably run the boiler for more of the heating season, but I dont see a tank in my future.

shawnmd said:

I have a 2 storey house with wood stove in the basement. The wood stove works great in heating the house down until a certain temp, like -10 celsius, and then it just can't keep up and my oil boiler kicks in and heats the house through our cast iron rads. I am also finding the wood stove (regency) much more lablour intensive. I am down there at least every two hours adjusting the air, adding wood etc.
I'm wondering if anyone here has switched from a wood stove to a wood boiler and what their opinion is now? Do you regret switching? Are you happy with your decision? I'm thinking of a conventional boiler as opposed to a gasifier. Tell me about your experience.

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Your quest is just where I was last year. I also have a 2 storey house with a full basement, last year 2 cords wood and 1/2 ton pellets and 644 gal oil (Oct.-May). If I'm going to heat with wood I want the heat where I live, the top 2 floors. I went with a gasification boiler, I felt conventional boiler would equal to much chimney cleaning.

Storage storage and more storage don't even think wood boiler without storage. You don't have to spend $4-6 grand on storage there other options, my storage was about $1000.

As for fiddling with it very two hours, you don't have to. You can make some adjustments when you are going though the learning curve and that's about it.

Look at what I used last year for heat, this year I'm on track to burn 3 cords by March 1 (plus 10 bags of pellets) and NO oil.

shawnmd said:

I'm wondering if anyone here has switched from a wood stove to a wood boiler and what their opinion is now? Do you regret switching? Are you happy with your decision? I'm thinking of a conventional boiler as opposed to a gasifier. Tell me about your experience.

Click to expand...

For what its worth since you've already had as much advice as our economy situation-
Had an old 80's woodstove last year, used 5 cords and 500 gal of oil
Have gassifier this year used 3.7 cords so far and 15 gallons of oil- This year I have even heat through house and I am getting dhw
Storage is nice but not a necessity, I run mine like an owb and normally get 10 plus hrs out of one load - it all depends what your expectation is
Burn times are long enough my wifey hasn't touched the thing yet- the way I like it
worth the extra money to do it right the first time

Tree farmer said:

shawnmd said:

I'm wondering if anyone here has switched from a wood stove to a wood boiler and what their opinion is now? Do you regret switching? Are you happy with your decision? I'm thinking of a conventional boiler as opposed to a gasifier. Tell me about your experience.

Click to expand...

For what its worth since you've already had as much advice as our economy situation-
Had an old 80's woodstove last year, used 5 cords and 500 gal of oil
Have gassifier this year used 3.7 cords so far and 15 gallons of oil- This year I have even heat through house and I am getting dhw
Storage is nice but not a necessity, I run mine like an owb and normally get 10 plus hrs out of one load - it all depends what your expectation is
Burn times are long enough my wifey hasn't touched the thing yet- the way I like it
worth the extra money to do it right the first time

Click to expand...

Assuming your cord wood averages 23 million btu, it looks like you historically used about 184.5 million btu each year. Since we are just now a hair over the half way point of this heating season, it looks like you're on course to use about 170 million btu. I would have thought you would be using considerably less fuel now going from an old smoke dragon to a new gasification boiler, but at first glance that doesn't seem to be the case. If this is correct (and it probably isn't), you're only saving about 15 million btu now, which is about 2/3's of a cord of wood or 108 gal of oil per year. That's still a savings and I'm sure you have more even heat with less hassle, but I still would have thought there would be more of a savings.

From Wikipedia

Jevon's Paradox

In economics, the Jevons Paradox (sometimes called the Jevons effect) is the proposition that technological progress that increases the efficiency with which a resource is used, tends to increase (rather than decrease) the rate of consumption of that resource. It is historically called the Jevons Paradox as it ran counter to popular intuition. However, the situation is well understood in modern economics. In addition to reducing the amount needed for a given output, improved efficiency lowers the relative cost of using a resource – which increases demand. Overall resource use increases or decreases depending on which effect predominates.


William Stanley JevonsThe proposition was first put forward by William Stanley Jevons in his 1865 book The Coal Question. In it, Jevons observed that England's consumption of coal soared after James Watt introduced his coal-fired steam engine, which greatly improved the efficiency of Thomas Newcomen's earlier design. Watt's innovations made coal a more cost effective power source, leading to the increased use of the steam engine in a wide range of industries. This in turn increased total coal consumption, even as the amount of coal required for any particular application fell. Jevons argued that increased efficiency in the use of coal would tend to increase the use of coal, and would not reduce the rate at which England's deposits of coal were being depleted.[1]

My sister has a new yorker style wood furnace. It burns a lot of wood for the amount of heat it puts out. She has to fuss with it every 2 hours. You can't leave the auto draft hooked up because when it shuts there is so much creosote production you need monthly chimney cleaning.

The huge fire box is a plus if she was burning softwood.

She always worries about power failures too since you have to shut it down or you can warp it.

I'm gonna try to get her setup with a Jetstream from my spares collection.

Smee said:

From Wikipedia

Jevon's Paradox

In economics, the Jevons Paradox (sometimes called the Jevons effect) is the proposition that technological progress that increases the efficiency with which a resource is used, tends to increase (rather than decrease) the rate of consumption of that resource. It is historically called the Jevons Paradox as it ran counter to popular intuition. However, the situation is well understood in modern economics. In addition to reducing the amount needed for a given output, improved efficiency lowers the relative cost of using a resource – which increases demand. Overall resource use increases or decreases depending on which effect predominates.


William Stanley JevonsThe proposition was first put forward by William Stanley Jevons in his 1865 book The Coal Question. In it, Jevons observed that England's consumption of coal soared after James Watt introduced his coal-fired steam engine, which greatly improved the efficiency of Thomas Newcomen's earlier design. Watt's innovations made coal a more cost effective power source, leading to the increased use of the steam engine in a wide range of industries. This in turn increased total coal consumption, even as the amount of coal required for any particular application fell. Jevons argued that increased efficiency in the use of coal would tend to increase the use of coal, and would not reduce the rate at which England's deposits of coal were being depleted.[1]

Click to expand...

Perhaps I wll have to rethink my earlier thoughts on the economics of firwood supply and demand.

interesting.

cheers

Smee said:

From Wikipedia
Jevon's Paradox
In economics, the Jevons Paradox (sometimes called the Jevons effect) is the proposition that technological progress that increases the efficiency with which a resource is used, tends to increase (rather than decrease) the rate of consumption of that resource. It is historically called the Jevons Paradox as it ran counter to popular intuition. However, the situation is well understood in modern economics. In addition to reducing the amount needed for a given output, improved efficiency lowers the relative cost of using a resource – which increases demand. Overall resource use increases or decreases depending on which effect predominates.
William Stanley JevonsThe proposition was first put forward by William Stanley Jevons in his 1865 book The Coal Question. In it, Jevons observed that England's consumption of coal soared after James Watt introduced his coal-fired steam engine, which greatly improved the efficiency of Thomas Newcomen's earlier design. Watt's innovations made coal a more cost effective power source, leading to the increased use of the steam engine in a wide range of industries. This in turn increased total coal consumption, even as the amount of coal required for any particular application fell. Jevons argued that increased efficiency in the use of coal would tend to increase the use of coal, and would not reduce the rate at which England's deposits of coal were being depleted.[1]

Click to expand...

Thx for the reminder about Jevon's Paradox; haven't thought about that in years. Apropos to our LP Rinnai "tankless" water heater:
no money saved on the efficiency of the on-demand unit. It turns out that because it produces unlimited hot water, we stay in the shower longer. No $$$$ saving.........sure feels good on the old tired bod. Coal be damned.