Newbie Needs Advice

[nh10ring]

Like everyone else, I am sick of paying high oil prices. Our 1400 sq. ft. ranch in New Hampshire sits on a full foundation and the house (not the basement) is heated via forced hot water with an oil fired burner (I refer to it as the furnace). To help keep the furnace from running too much in the winter, we run a Jodul wood stove. It does a pretty good job of heating the floors and 3/4 of the house, but we rely on the furnace to heat 2 bedrooms that are furthest from the wood stove. Just heating these two rooms causes the furnace to run more than I would like. Not to mention how much it runs when we use hot water.

In the summer, the furnace kicks on to heat the hot water. Again, more than I would like it to. With spiking oil prices, I go ballistic when I hear the furnance come on on a hot summer's day. It makes me want to pull my hair out.

So now I am wanting to minimize our oil usage. I have access to unlimited firewood, and ultimately would like to use it to my benefit to heat my home and my water. But in what little research I have done, it looks like my options are 1) outdoor wood burner, 2) Multi-fuel boilers (wood/oil) and 3)Wood gasification boilers.

I am reading a lot of cons regarding the OWB's, thus am leaning towards the Multi-fuel and gasification boilers. But I just don't know. I am feeling lost.

What do you advise???

 

[muncybob]

I'm guessing the more experienced folk here will tell you to use a wood boiler in conjunction with your oil unit as back up and probably steer you away from a combination/all in 1 set up which makes sense to me in that if 1 unit breaks and is down in the middle of a freezing cold winter you have the other unit as your immediate back up for heat. The problem I am running into is narrowing down what units may fit into my basement due to low overhead and limited access and how to power vent my oil boiler...or maybe just build an enclosure attached to my house and put someting into that. I'm still doing my cost/feasability work on this...good luck to you!!...and welcome aboard...a lot of information in here

 

[sinnian]

Depends on how much you are around to fill the gasification unit. Talking to a couple of dealers, they said that 4-6 hours is normal burn time ~ maybe 8, but definitely not 12. I do not know what the actual users here are getting for burn times, but that may be a factor to consider. I went with pellets instead because of it. Also, if you want longer heating times with the gasification units you can install water storage, but that cost more money, space, etc.

 

[ISeeDeadBTUs]

sorry, but from this point . . .

via forced hot water with an oil fired burner (I refer to it as the furnace). To help keep the furnace from running too much in the winter, we run a Jodul wood stove. It does a pretty good job of heating the floors and 3/4 of the house, but we rely on the furnace to heat 2 bedrooms that are furthest from the wood stove. Just heating these two rooms causes the furnace to run more than I would like. Not to mention how much it runs when we use hot water.

In the summer, the furnace kicks on to heat the hot water. Again, more than I would like it to. With spiking oil prices, I go ballistic when I hear the furnance come on on a hot summer's day. It makes me want to pull my hair out.

on, I got lost!!

Is your oil-fired central heat using water, or air to heat your residence?
How are you using your oil fired system to heat only two rooms?
Can you/have you set your DHW production down to the minimum useable temp and only heat it when you need it?
How much oil do you go through in the non-heating season? How many bodies are using this hot water?
How much oil do you go through during heating season?

Jimbo

 

[WoodNotOil]

If you read through posts here, you will discover that gasification is the best option in the long run. Burn times aren't that different between OWB and gasification, however the amount of wood you have to use is drastically different. There are people here putting gasification units in basements, separate rooms of a garage, sheds, pole barns, etc. Storage can be added later and extend burn times and supply off season DHW. There are a lot of designs here for homemade storage that is a lot less expensive. If no one is home to load during the day, turn the heat down and there may be some embers left when someone gets home. It seems like a lot of money now, but after a few years it will seem like a good investment.

 

[nh10ring]

In response to some of IseedeadBTU's questions, It is forced hot water heat with baseboards. I heat mostly 2 rooms because each room is on its own heat zone. The woodstove is on the other end of the house, away from these rooms, and I just can't get enough heat to them from the woodstove only. There are four of us residing in the house, with no set times for when we use the hot water. Some days we only use it in the morning and evening, at other times we use it at various times throughout the day. I thought of putting a timer of some sort on it, but it would be more of a pain than a help.... I may alsoo consider electric space heaters for the two bedrooms, and use oil only for the hot water. I don't know at this very moment how much oil I am using. I would haveto go back through the bills to see.

 

[Nofossil]

If space in the basement is a constraint, you might think about using a wall mounted tankless hot water heater as your backup heat source and ditching the oil altogether. That would also free up a flue if you need one.