Anybody switch from a wood Stove to a Boiler?

[LeonMSPT]

Have a New Yorker... it's definitely and "old style" wood boiler, but I am not doing anything to it every two hours unless I am burning coal in it... and then it's only for about two hours, then leave it for 8 to 10 hours purring away on demand... with a full load of coal in it.

Going back and forth from wood to coal is a bit "messy"... condensate mixed with fly ash will definitely burn, so the chimney connector pipe has to be cleaned more often if you're mixing a few days of burning coal during the week in with a few days of burning wood on the weekend. Burn times on wood are relatively short, 4-5 hours once it's up to temperature.

You have to have a "power failure zone" above the boiler, and it has to be monitored closely and closed up to prevent overheating and blowing off the relief valve and making a mess. But it shouldn't damage the boiler to have a fire in it during a power outage, so long as you control the fire and don't allow it to overheat.

Performance? Combined with the VC insert in my living room, the little 90K btu boiler is heating a 3,500 sf, three unit apartment building, with 750 sf basement as 60 degrees... Oil man came last week, it had been 32 days and he delivered 50 gallons. He must have been standing out there scratching his head... last year it would have been 250 gallons, at least.

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.

 

[chuck172]

Then according to Jevon's paradox, the more energy efficient we make automobiles, the more we will drive, therefore we will end up using more gas in the long-run.
Interesting.

 

[shoeboxlen]

I used to run 2 wood stoves in our cabin. We still have our stoves but we dont use them (good backup heat source) we switched to an eko 25 and I loveit asside fromt eh smell issues we had with it at first which were corrected with tightening the hinges and adding the high temp silione to the gasket. we heat our whole house evenly via baseboard heat without storage. I have been singing the gasifiers praises to evryone! Go for it you wont regret it.

 

[Piker]

Have a New Yorker... it's definitely and "old style" wood boiler, but I am not doing anything to it every two hours unless I am burning coal in it... and then it's only for about two hours, then leave it for 8 to 10 hours purring away on demand... with a full load of coal in it.

Going back and forth from wood to coal is a bit "messy"... condensate mixed with fly ash will definitely burn, so the chimney connector pipe has to be cleaned more often if you're mixing a few days of burning coal during the week in with a few days of burning wood on the weekend. Burn times on wood are relatively short, 4-5 hours once it's up to temperature.

You have to have a "power failure zone" above the boiler, and it has to be monitored closely and closed up to prevent overheating and blowing off the relief valve and making a mess. But it shouldn't damage the boiler to have a fire in it during a power outage, so long as you control the fire and don't allow it to overheat.

Performance? Combined with the VC insert in my living room, the little 90K btu boiler is heating a 3,500 sf, three unit apartment building, with 750 sf basement as 60 degrees... Oil man came last week, it had been 32 days and he delivered 50 gallons. He must have been standing out there scratching his head... last year it would have been 250 gallons, at least.

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.

For boiler protection, A power failure zone (gravity fed) can be replaced by a battery backup that runs the circulator when the power goes out. As long as the water around the firebox is moving, the boiler shouldn't boil over. The battery backup is usually quite a bit cheaper than adding a gravity fed zone, especially if your boiler is above the radiation in the house... ie an outdoor install in a shed or garage. Most folks don't want to spend a bunch of money hooking up baseboard in a shed that doesn't already need heat.

Anyways... it's an option if you go with a gasser.

cheers

 

[lancegillette]

We used a Blazeking Princess for six winters and on average used about 4 cords of wood per winter. I'm in Fairbanks, Alaska, so our winters are long--October-April. Our oil boiler continued to heat our domestic hot water and we averaged 300 gallons of fuel oil each year for heating domestic hot water over a 12 month period. Our house is about 1300 square feet. The Blazeking was more than adequate to heat the whole house, but of course the temperatures were not even.

We built a detached garage last year and sold the Blazeking woodstove and bought a Greenwood 100 wood boiler. So it heats the house, domestic hot water, and 670 square feet of our garage.

We are going through a lot of wood--probably 12 cords since October 1. If I had put in another BlazeKing in the garage instead of the Greenwood, I'd probably be burning another 3 cords of wood per winter, making it a total of 7 cords per winter.

I estimate that we'll need another 5 or 6 cords of wood for the Greenwood for this winter.

When we were heating our domestic hot water with oil I turned the hot water thermostat down low and my wife always complained about the water not being hot enough. With the Greenwood I make the water nice and hot.

We won't be heating domestic hot water with the greenwood during the summer. So we will probably use 100 gallons of fuel oil. So maybe the Greenwood is saving us 200 gallons of fuel oil per year? Is it worth it? I'm not sure yet.

The Greenwood provides even heating in the house. The woodstove provided very fast heating of the house and made the air very dry. I was always getting the carpet dirty with tree bark and sometimes getting some woodsmoke in the house.

It is hard to know if we made the right choice. So many variables to consider. It would have been very simple to just put another Blazeking in the garage.

 

[Wet1]

Slightly OT... I'm thinking about buying the larger BK for my finished/insulated basement and it would also heat the 1st floor. I'm really looking for something I can load once or twice a day, any thoughts on if this is realistic for me to do (I'm in CT)?

 

[Eric Johnson]

If you have cast iron radiators, a wood-fired boiler is really the way to go. And of course, get a gasifier if you can.

 

[lancegillette]

Slightly OT... I'm thinking about buying the larger BK for my finished/insulated basement and it would also heat the 1st floor. I'm really looking for something I can load once or twice a day, any thoughts on if this is realistic for me to do (I'm in CT)?

I used to load our Blazeking Princess twice a day--early in the morning and again at bedtime. How many square feet are you thinking of heating with a BlazeKing? We heated about 1300 square feet. When we had mild weather (15 F or above) I'd make a small fire in the morning and a small fire at night. The fire would go out in a couple hours but the BlazeKing would provide heat for the rest of the day or night.

 

[kenny chaos]

If you have cast iron radiators, a wood-fired boiler is really the way to go. And of course, get a gasifier if you can.

How about just real old aluminum fin baseboard?

 

[Eric Johnson]

Any hydronic radiator will work, including old aluminum baseboard. The thing about baseboard is that it likes higher temps than ci rads or in-floor radiant, but high temps are no problem with a gasifier. It's just that cast iron radiators really sing when you fill them with 180-degree water. It's like having a bunch of little wood stoves in each room that you can warm your tush with or put your mittens on to dry out. And they hold their heat a lot longer than finned baseboard.

 

[Wet1]

Slightly OT... I'm thinking about buying the larger BK for my finished/insulated basement and it would also heat the 1st floor. I'm really looking for something I can load once or twice a day, any thoughts on if this is realistic for me to do (I'm in CT)?

I used to load our Blazeking Princess twice a day--early in the morning and again at bedtime. How many square feet are you thinking of heating with a BlazeKing? We heated about 1300 square feet. When we had mild weather (15 F or above) I'd make a small fire in the morning and a small fire at night. The fire would go out in a couple hours but the BlazeKing would provide heat for the rest of the day or night.

I'm looking to heat about 1800 sq ft with it, but there are two addition floors above the first floor which would be benefiting from the some of the heat as well... but for talking purposes, let's just say 1800 sq ft w/o including the two additional stories. Our lows are typically around your "mild" weather temps (about 15°F). It does get down to around zero from time to time, but low 20's at night and 30 or so during the day is probably about average. It sounds like I should be able to load the larger BKK only once or twice a day and still be okay based on your experience...

 

[lancegillette]

I think you might do better with the smaller Princess and load twice daily. It is better to work the woodstove harder and it will burn cleaner and your chimney will stay cleaner. You can turn the BlazeKing down so that it has a very long smoldering burn but your catalytic combuster probably won't last as long. A new catalyst in our area was selling for $274 last summer. When it was 15 F outside I had to be careful not to overheat the house, so for 1800 square feet at that temperature the Princess will probably be fine. Better to work it harder than to get the bigger Blazeking and make it smolder.

Slightly OT... I'm thinking about buying the larger BK for my finished/insulated basement and it would also heat the 1st floor. I'm really looking for something I can load once or twice a day, any thoughts on if this is realistic for me to do (I'm in CT)?

I'm looking to heat about 1800 sq ft with it, but there are two addition floors above the first floor which would be benefiting from the some of the heat as well... but for talking purposes, let's just say 1800 sq ft w/o including the two additional stories. Our lows are typically around your "mild" weather temps (about 15°F). It does get down to around zero from time to time, but low 20's at night and 30 or so during the day is probably about average. It sounds like I should be able to load the larger BKK only once or twice a day and still be okay based on your experience...