Newbie with Outdoor Wood Furnace

[CHRanch2015]

Hello everyone, I'm new to wood heat. Next winter will be my first wood heat winter. I have done alot of homework on Outdoor Wood boilers and had decided that's what I wanted to go with but finances were making it tough to make happen. I came across what I think is a really good deal on an outdoor forced air furnace instead, has its own blower and what not, paid $250 bucks for it, not the prettiest bit appears to be solid.
My question since I'm not familiar with the furnaces is how do I hook up the duct from the furnace to my existing ductwork in the house so it will circulate through my ductwork, I would like to leave my current furnace in place as a backup so all's I have to do is turn it on if the need arises. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

[hondaracer2oo4]

Is this a Shaver? I have only seen a Shaver brand with this style of outdoor forced hot air that you pump into the house. If you are really interested in keeping and running this thing I would head over to http://www.outdoorwoodfurnaceinfo.com/forum/ . They will be much more accepting of your plan and idea than over here on this forum. My suggestion to you would be to flip this thing. You did get it at a very good price. You should be able to sell it for around $1000 if it is in decent shape. You said that this is going to be your first year heating with wood, why the switch now? Oil prices are so low that you would probably be better off holding off, saving your money while using the oil since it is so cheap and then putting together a nice system as money comes together.

 

[rippinryno]

using what oil? around here if we don't use wood, we use gas. And he wants to burn with wood to save on gas prices. I know their cheap right now but who knows where gas prices will be next winter. Even with low gas prices, we heat our house with LP and it costs us $800 at .90 cents a gallon which is dirt cheap, when it's up toward $2.00 a gallon that doubles our winter cost for gas. Wood helps anytime and everytime, cheap gas prices don't mean it's free lol. I'm interested to follow up on this, i'm right now trying to decide if i want to go outdoor wood furnace or put an indoor stove in the basement and tie it into the duct.

 

[hondaracer2oo4]

I assumed that you were burning oil right now, my mistake. Outdoor conventional style(non gasser) wood boilers are inefficient at converting the wood heat from the wood to the water. estimated to be somewhere in the 30%-40% efficiency range. The outdoor hot air furnaces in my opinion are a total flop. That is why I have only seen one manufacturer that has made them in production and I have never heard of anyone actually buying one. This style of outdoor furnace would be even less efficient than the outdoor conventional wood boiler. If anyone has forced hot air in the home like I do the best option for that is using a water to air heat exchanger in the plenum of the indoor furnace. This converts the hot water from either the outdoor boiler or indoor boiler into the air for distribution into the house. I ran a Hardy H4 conventional owb for 5 years. I am in New England with a 200 year old home. I went through 12-14 cords of wood depending on the year. I was able to save up and bought a Heatmaster G200 outdoor gasser boiler. It have cut my wood usage in half so far. If you can save up the money you will never regret the less time that you have to dedicate to wood processing.

 

[rippinryno]

oh, he might be burning oil but he mentioned an existing furnace i assumed he was running on NG or LP

 

[CHRanch2015]

I am currently heating with propane and a bad winter will put me burning $2-3000 worth of propane and that's if prices are low under $2 a gal like right now, propane goes back to $5+ a gal and I'll really be hurting

 

[hondaracer2oo4]

So what is this thing, a shaver brand?

 

[maple1]

I don't think you can get any very specific answers to you question. Installs are always pretty situation & layout specific, and we don't know anything about those here. That's with an OWB - an OWF would be even moreso, it's pretty hard to run big ductwork compared to water pipes.

Myself, I would stay away from an OWF. Lots of obstacles -it's harder to move air any distance at all than water, water holds more heat than air, and you will need to cut a big hole in your building envelope for ductwork. Or maybe 2, for supply & return. All kinds of potentials for heat loss between the fire & where you're sitting in the house. Not saying it can't be done, but it'll be challenging at the very least. An indoor unit will be head & shoulders better, if you can do one of those.

How much wood are you expecting to burn, or prepared to get ready each year? (Cut, split, stack, get dry).

 

[brenndatomu]

I'd say you have a better chance of not liking that machine than you do of actually liking it.
Like has already been mentioned, it is hard to move hot air very far, so if you will have long ducts lengths, that is strike one.
You will have to insulate the heck out of the ducts and the enclosure that houses the furnace...if it is not already.
Again, the two big holes to be cut into your house...and gotta figure out how to seal 'em.
How will you deal with power loss situations? There is a ton of heat to deal with there, and it doesn't stop when the power goes out...fire hazard!
That unit will likely need fed 3-4 times per day...you really wanna go outside in a snowstorm right before bed to load 'er up for the night...and then first thing in the morning too? Not me, I like doing that in me skivvies if I wanna
And you will lose all the radiant heat that would heat the basement if you had a indoor unit....
There are quite a few reasons these things aren't too popular...and used ones are usually cheap.

To answer your question, you may be able to connect to the existing furnace, with a backdraft damper installed. But running new separate ducts for the wood furnace probably has a better chance of providing some real heat to the house.

 

[CHRanch2015]

Ok, I have been doing some looking at the indoor wood furnaces as well, I can ways sell this one I just bought, probably for a profit lol. It's seeming to me that an indoor wood furnace may be a better route than Outdoor, naturally Outdoor boiler would be my first choice but not in the budget right now. So how would I go about hooking up an indoor wood furnace tobmy existing duct work so that I can leave my current furnace in place as well as a backup in an emergency so I don't want to remove the LP furnace just want to hook in the wood furnace in the same ducting so I can run one or the other since each unit will have its own blower bit would be utilizing the same duct work.

I'm somewhat familiar with how woof stoves must be ran with proper piping and regulations on passing through walls and chimney height and all that but by no means an expert so any advice is appreciated

 

[warno]

I would sell off that outdoor unit and save up for an indoor furnace.

My dad's wood furnace is parked right next to the gas furnace and is tapped right into the existing plenum. He has to block off the gas furnace blower fan though because the wood furnace will back feed through it and dump the heat back in the furnace room instead of the house. He's been running this setup for almost 30 years now. Once he starts burning wood he doesn't stop until the end of the season. If he needs to use the gas furnace at all he simply pulls the block off plate out and runs it.

I'm sure there are setups where you can piggy back the gas with the wood and run one or the other. Or where the gas will kick on if the fire dies in the wood furnace but dad's doesn't work that way. So that's all I can comment on is his setup.

 

[CHRanch2015]

That setup would work fine for me, it doesn't have to be automatic or anything, just want it still hooked up so if I'm leaving town or there is a problem with the wood furnace I can fall back on my LP furnace without having change ductwork around lol

 

[mike van]

CH - For an indoor unit, just be sure you have adequate chimney in place, and an easy way to move wood in. Trust me, throwing 4+ cords of wood down the hatchway stairs and wheelbarrowing it across the basement is not fun.

 

[CHRanch2015]

Ha-ha I imagine not, I had planned on installing a wood chute in place of a window in the furnace room and can pull the tractor up right there and dump buckets of wood right by the chute

 

[Mike4430]

I have a shelter furnace 3042 outdoor furnace and love it most people do not install these correctly. I have currently used for cords of firewood and I have been Burningwood since September I live in northern Indiana