Total newbie with Portage & Main outdoor wood heater question

Mcbride said:

I am not terribly up on new stuff, and just grew up with old fashioned wood stove heaters.
To solve the wood mess in the house problems, and to keep all smoke outside, etc. am thinking of going to a Portage and Main outdoor heater to warm water lines in the floor of a new house we plan to build in the spring.
Is this a good route to go.
The house will be about a 3500 square foot shop at ground level, for me to work in, and put a house for our family to live in on top of that.
It will total about 7,000 feet, and i like over height ceilings in both.
Its in a colder climate, a town called McBride BC, in Canada.
Lots of wood, so thats easy.
Its on a small acreage.

Is this a reliable, effecient way to go?

Thanks

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Floydian said:

If your set on an outdoor unit then the optimizer or econoburn seem the best choices IMO. I would like to know the performance R-value of any outdoor wood boiler BEFORE dropping a bunch of $. I say this because stand by heat loss could mean burning a substantial amount of wood just to heat the great outdoors. Also don't go cheap on the underground lines as this could be another area of BIG heat loss. A shop in the basement could be a great place for an indoor gassification boiler+thermal storage. This way you can take advantage of all the heat loss that is going to happen anyway. When efficiency is the goal I think it is very important to consider this aspect.

Good luck,
Noah

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kabbott said:

With a new structure you could plan a small room with direct outside access to cut down on mess in the building but heat loss would still be
inside the building envelope. Not to mention much more "fun" to load boiler inside when it's REALLY cold out. No heat loss in long underground
piping runs either.

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Mcbride said:

bigburner said:

I don't worry about losses as some do here. mine is is in a separate building. I don't store wood in there either, its on the ground out side, just the boiler & tank inside. I enjoy walking out there and it's got to be 500 ft [several buildings daisy chained together] It's always warm. and allows me to admire my work & check on status. got no mess in any of the buildings that I'm heating. all the original heating appliance are set to come on automatically if the water temp falls below the set point. here it's 200 + dollars a year for insurance to have a wood burner indoors. I don't insure where the boiler is.

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Thanks.

Here it would lower my insure if its outside, and more than 50 feet from the house.
Also can heat my sidewalk and stairs if i want with a seperate loop to melt them clear of snow and ice.
Heat my domestic hotwater to, saving me electricity.
Where we are building has no natural gas or such, and electric gets pricey, but the wood i get is nearly free.
I can get the left over wood from ym friends logging company, same as he and his crew heats with.
As its an acreage, he can drive a logging truck onto my property, and trip the stakes to dump it.
Any logs that don't roll free, and trap the stakes, I can tie onto with a chain and pull off with my truck or backhoe.
should from the sounds of it need to just walk out at most 100 feet to the boiler, or however far from the house we put it, and stoke it up with wood about every 12 hours. just fill it and close the door, and hope the power does not go out, as it needs electricity for the fans and pump.
Will figure out how to wire a plug to it, so i can use my little honda generator to provide power, when the electricity goes out due to say a bad storm.
They say with the insulated pipes underground, they lose about 1 degree in temp every 200 feet, so even if 100 feet away, thats just 1/2 a degree heat loss due to lines to the house.

In really cold weather, say minus 30 or minus 40, if the shop doors get opened and closed lots, with heated concrete floors, at least they are still warm, even if the air gets coled off.
And i plan to have electric baseboard back up heat in the shop, and house as well, for when we go away, or may need supplemental heat.
I had the blaze king stoves in my last house, 1 up, and 1 down, great heaters, but not as nice as warmed floors IMO, and very messy carrying in wood, and ashes out.
Plus it sucks carrying in wood from the wood shed.
I can put the wood shed this time 6 feet from the front of the outdoor unit, so its 2 steps with the wood.
I just want to buy the best quality unit made, so its hopefully trouble free for many years.

So if the Portage and Main is top quality, then i will be happy.
That ML 36 looks pretty nice.

http://www.portageandmainboilers.com/wood.html

But wonder if I should opt for the larger ML 42 instead.

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Mcbride said:

Thanks again to each and everyone of you for the input.
I am going with a Portage and Main....likely an ML 42.
And will also use their pipe and manifolds, as well as domestic hot water arm, and the piece that will help heat the hot tub in winter to.

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