im in the tree business, so i have a nearly unlimited supply of large logs up to ,6-8ft long 1-3ft in diameter most of which i end up giving away or pushing into a large pile and burning because i just creat way more wood then i need, up till this year ive cut and split wood to heat my home but this is not the way i want to spend my time, ive looked into the large front and top loader fernaces and they r very expensive, 10k for a small one 20k for a decent size, what id like to do is build somthing very simple, efficiency is not much of a concern since i littereally need to burn wood because it accumulates so fast from my work, so my idea is to buy a 20ft metal shipping container 8ft tall 8ft wide, these have large double door for easy loading with a bobcat, place it on a gravle pad, these have a wood flood which would just burn off and then it would be gravle, place some metal water tanks or old hotwater heaters with the skins and insulation removed inside the shipping container, plumb the tanks together, also add a 8in or bigger flue and some way for adjustable air entry, and then biuld a fire inside and close the doors and load this once a day or what ever it take to keep the water temp up around 160-180f, and treat the rest just like any other installation with the water pumps and pex undergroud to the house. any suggestions to weather or not this would work or how to improve would be great thanks
building a large wood water heater / boiler
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Save your hard earned money:
1. Invest in a surplus insulated railroad tank car minus the trucks and use that for hot water storage.
(there are many available)
2. buy a Morbark chipper that can handle your wood supply or barter swap for the use of one.
3. buy a chip burner and use it for your heating
A chip burner is much more efficient and not worried about moisture content
as it is burned out of the chips anyway- saying that having the chips in a horizontal bunker
silo and covering them with tarp will work well using a skid loader to feed it.
I am switching to a coal stoker boiler after 33 years of burning wood.
1. Invest in a surplus insulated railroad tank car minus the trucks and use that for hot water storage.
(there are many available)
2. buy a Morbark chipper that can handle your wood supply or barter swap for the use of one.
3. buy a chip burner and use it for your heating
A chip burner is much more efficient and not worried about moisture content
as it is burned out of the chips anyway- saying that having the chips in a horizontal bunker
silo and covering them with tarp will work well using a skid loader to feed it.
I am switching to a coal stoker boiler after 33 years of burning wood.
i have a chipper that chips up to 12in and have no problem getting rid of the chips, its the big stuff that i need to get rid of some of it is 3-5ft in diameter 6-8ft long, and these logs burn for several days i know this from the bon fires we have somtimes they stay hot and smolder for over a week so there is a ton of heat energy there and they are so easy to move around and load with the bobcat it would only take 5min a day to load the furnace where as with my current setup i have a wood hot air funace in my basement which has to be loaded every 4-6hr plus all the cutting, splitting and stacking, which i am getting away from all that, anyone else want to give there opinion or if anyone knows of any other forum websites where i could ask thanks
Do a quick Google search for "homemade outdoor wood boiler". That's how I found this site and I found a bunch of others before I found this one.
Also the same search on YouTube.
Also the same search on YouTube.
problem I see right off the bat is if its not sealed you have no draft control. wood boilers use aquastats to either open a draft door or turn on a combustion fan when water temp gets cold. then kills incoming air when up to temp. without a reasonably good seal (im not sure how good a gravel floor would work) water will overheat and boil off. if fire is too large in relation to water volume it will boil over. if to small it will not heat enough. it would be more problems than what its worth. might try to give some of the wood away by posting a free add on cl.
getting rid of the wood is no problem but i need to heat several buildings including a greenhouse so i need alot of heat i estimate 500000 btu which is why i need a big furnace and i dont want to spend 20k on one when i could build somthing crude but functional for 3k, some leakage would proboly be fine considering the size of the fire, i would put down inch minus and compact it to almost a concrete like finish and if i have problems i could even put some concrete around the perimeter edges for a better seal, any idea on flue size my firechief has an 8in flue so i would assume i need bigger but im thinking i could control the fire size, is it possible to have 2 flues and have electronic control on those say open both for max fire and close one to choke the fire or does all the control come from the air inlet
There is a fellow on AS that has a tank car burner and he makes lots of hot water.
The issue is always one of wanting simplicity and long hard burn times that have no smoke.
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Now as you have the skid steer loader and the wood chipper-
I will assume you have Morbark disc chipper or a brand simular to the Morbark.
The excellent option of investing in a small single rail portable band saw to rip up the short logs
into 12 by 12 inch thick pieces and then chip them and use this hog fuel to feed a
wood chip boiler with a hot water storage tank that has a copper coal for heat
exchange to keep your home warm.
The bonus would be selling wide slab wood hardwood to lumber millers if you have
that for boiler fuel when you find good slabs you could sell.
The thing is you cannot get high efficiency unless you have near zero smoke and the wood chip
boilers will for that for you whether its soft wood or hardwood.
It wont take much hogged fuel to keep a chip burner fed.
Check the HSTarm site for storage tanks as you can use the smallest chip burner and a large storage tank
and have the best of both worlds with a simple system that has been in use in Europe for many many years.
The issue is always one of wanting simplicity and long hard burn times that have no smoke.
=======================================================================
Now as you have the skid steer loader and the wood chipper-
I will assume you have Morbark disc chipper or a brand simular to the Morbark.
The excellent option of investing in a small single rail portable band saw to rip up the short logs
into 12 by 12 inch thick pieces and then chip them and use this hog fuel to feed a
wood chip boiler with a hot water storage tank that has a copper coal for heat
exchange to keep your home warm.
The bonus would be selling wide slab wood hardwood to lumber millers if you have
that for boiler fuel when you find good slabs you could sell.
The thing is you cannot get high efficiency unless you have near zero smoke and the wood chip
boilers will for that for you whether its soft wood or hardwood.
It wont take much hogged fuel to keep a chip burner fed.
Check the HSTarm site for storage tanks as you can use the smallest chip burner and a large storage tank
and have the best of both worlds with a simple system that has been in use in Europe for many many years.
At this point I would look at a Garn and try to copy it to some degree. They seem so simple. You will most likely need to insulate it because you will get so much creosote all over the place and one day it will catch on fire and burn up anyway and boil the water besides. I am sure there are good used boilers out there for cheap. Gas, oil and propane has been 1.00 a gal lately. Many at these prices will sell the old wood hog and forget about it. I might be wrong though.
maple1
Minister of Fire
Problem number one is: regardless what you construct or purchase, you will be burning wet wood. Any observant person that has burned wood knows that unsplit large logs (or small) will not dry or dry satisfactorily in order to burn without polluting the air or creosoting the appliance. Those logs you are describing will be wet for the next 5 or 10 years.
if you copy a garn or remotely copy a garn boiler the issue is
patent infringement.
As fred61 has also pointed out the issue with residual moisture from
water will always be there to mess with you.
As a you have all this waste wood that is perfect hog fuel for a chip burner.
There a more than a handfull of chip burners that can take care of you
wood waste and the tarm folks have circular storage tanks that will be
more than adequate for your heating load.
The purchase of a no frills portable band saw that you can load with your skid
loader would be of some benefit as you could stack and sticker the beams you slice
up with the band saw to dry them out further under cover B4 you chip them.
patent infringement.
As fred61 has also pointed out the issue with residual moisture from
water will always be there to mess with you.
As a you have all this waste wood that is perfect hog fuel for a chip burner.
There a more than a handfull of chip burners that can take care of you
wood waste and the tarm folks have circular storage tanks that will be
more than adequate for your heating load.
The purchase of a no frills portable band saw that you can load with your skid
loader would be of some benefit as you could stack and sticker the beams you slice
up with the band saw to dry them out further under cover B4 you chip them.
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