Bryan outdoor furnace vs Quadrafire 4100 for heavy use

[phishheadmi]

Wondering if anyone has experience with Bryan Furnace?

We just purchased a 7 year old home with what I expect is a very inefficient zero clearance fireplace. I was thinking of putting an insert in the fp when I came across a fireplace shop near me that's going out of business. He has a Quadrafire 4100 for $2,000 that I was very interested in...then I saw he has and outdoor Bryan Furnace (outdoor forced air setup) for $3,000. I want to more than supplement my heat...we put a VC Encore in our last house and cut our heating bill by about 80% and I'd like to try to stick in that range. I'm now kind of leaning towards the outdoor setup as I'd like to heat the finished basement with wood too and the fireplace is on the main level...BUT I've never heard of Bryan Furnace...learned a bit on their website but I'd love to hear some firsthand opinions...or even just opinions of some stove guys that are more knowledgable than I. I really like the idea of heating from outside the home...no mess, smoke or fire risk...plus we'd still have the ZC FP for ambiance. The Bryan is rated up to 3,000 SF and we're at about 2,900 so we should be good there.

Thoughts?

Thanks!!

 

[mike1234]

I am not familiar with either, but just for your consideration - I'd guess that installation of the woodstove would be 1000? or so, and installation of an outdoor furnace would be 2000-3000? depending on what you had to build and where you could put it, and the ductwork to connect it, which is not cheap. Having a wood furnace myself, I am not at all against them, just consider the install cost when comparing them.

 

[phishheadmi]

Hey Mike,

Thanks for the input, I'm confident I can get my install done significantly cheaper as I'll do most of the work myself...definitely something to keep in mind though. Is your wood furnace outdoor? How's your efficiency? How far is the unit from your house?

 

[mike1234]

I actually put mine in the attached garage (probably not code, but got my insurance to sign off on it), ran the ductwork through the sill and connected to the end of the heat side of the original ductwork. This means I am pushing that hot air about 100' to the other end of the house. I only used my propane furnace last winter when I was gone out of town, and I kept the house at 74 with wood instead of 68 with propane, could of been hotter but 74 is all I can stand.

Everyone loved the heat, it was very efficient, and if propane was 2.25 / gal last year I saved about 3000.00. Propane is 1.18 right now, so will only save 1500 or so this year. My total cost of purchase and install was right at 5000.

Again, I don't know anything about the bryan, so hopefully someone who does will chime in, but from just reading the webpage: the other wood furnaces are using 7 gage steal, bryan uses 10 gage (thats much lighter thinner steal), and I can't find a weight on it, but it looks much smaller, which mean much less steal to hold the heat that it produces.

And do you really want to go outside to stoke the fire in the middle of winter? Even if you get an 8 hour burn from them, that's out at 10 pm to stoke it (dark and cold) and back out at 6 am to do it again, and hopefully there are hot ashes, because of you have to start the fire from scratch, you'll be out there even longer.

If I was in your shoes, and this is all opinion, so it's worth whatever opinion is going for these days, I'd either put in a very good wood stove, or look at some of the other options for wood furnaces.