HELP! Building a house and want a outdoor boiler, but I don't know what to get!

[bushmonkey]

Ok this will be a long post, but any advise would be greatly appriciated.


I am building a new house with a detached shop this summer.

I am in Northern Alberta where it gets really cold often. Usually Oct - may is below 0 celcius. We often go a week with -25 C. Right not it's actually -39 C. We've been having daytime highes of - 25 and night time lows of -35 for a week straight.

Since our house will be new, we must have triple pain windows, 6 inch walls, styrofoam block basement etc.

The house is 1600 sqft on top with a 1600 sqft walk out basement. The shop will be 30 x 30 feet with 12 ft ceiling.


So I want to go with a outdoor boiler. I know several people with them, but theirs are older models.

I have been cutting and splitting 8 cords a year for 10 years for my current wood stove. I have access to unlimited spruce, poplar and some pine.

1) Do I go with a standard model or a gassification model? I know these need to run dry wood to be used correctly, but my worry is that I can't stuff the stuff at 7 am and go to work until 5 pm and have it still heat the house and shop. I thought I could buy a bigger model than I need to get a bigger fire box, than a dealer told me not to do this because in order to get the gassification process to function the stove needs to burn hot and I would end up wasting a lot of heat/wood out the chimney because the house won't need all that heat. So if I get the correct sized model, can I expect to fill the stove every 12 hours, or does it need to be filled more often?

I know with the old outdoor boilers you could stuff them every 12 hours and they kept the house/shop warm in -40 no problem.

My other concerns with gassification models is that I Will have to split the wood. Again the beauty of the traditional stoves to me is cutting 8 inch diameter logs at 36 inches long and shoving them in a stove without being split. Can I still do this with a gassification stove? I honestly don't want to have to split wood with a ODB. If I have to if I get a gassification stove, I will go traditional route.

2) I see some stoves can be dual fuel. I would love to have the stove set up to run off propane if the stove dies out. Can all ODB be converted to also run propane?

If a stove is set up to run Propane as well, does this mean I can get away without a secondary furnace in the home?

3) The original plan was to have a propane back up furnace in the house. My understanding of how to set the outdoor furnace up would be:

-have a heat exchange in the propane stove. Have the hot line from the ODB go to this exchanger where the blower will provide forced air heat upstairs.

-we will run in floor heating in the basement. The boiler would have a line going to the infloor heating.

-I will have a line going to the shop where I will have another heat exchanger with forced air.

Is this the correct way to set this house up?

4) How does the infloor heating work with the ODB?
-Do I need a tank inside the house or can the ODB line juse go direct into the floor lines?

- How do I control the heat in the in floor heating? What type of system/thermostat controls this? Is it in the ODB or in the house?

- is the infloor heating with a ODB set up the same way as tradional infloor heating withut a ODB except its just the hot line running into the system instead of a hot water heater providing the heat for the floor lines?

5) I don't have a ODB installer near me. So my plan was to have the local plumber set everything up in the house and then have a ODB installer come on site to do the exterior aspects and install the stove itself.

You might think I should just have the ODB come up to do the infloor, heat exchangers etc.. Problem is, the closest installer is 3 hours away. I cant imagine the bill he would give me to drive up for a couples hours of work here and there because he can only do so much as the house is being built.



EDIT:

I think I've narrowed down my choices of ODB to

Portage and Main

Woodmaster


Any thoughts? I narrowed it down to these two just because there is dealers in ALberta. There are other dealers for Polar and Central boilers, but I seem to find lots of bad reviews on them.

SHould I consider other makers?

 

[TCaldwell]

The mindset of stuffing a large firebox with semi seasoned frozen wood because it’s easier at the moment is going to cause you to cut more wood than is necessary, every single year and we do get older! Are your house plans completed enough to have heat loss calculation yet? That number should drive your wood boiler required output and selection to be efficient, not the size of a owb firebox.
Obviously a gasification boiler with storage would be the best choice for coming home to a warm house and cutting less wood, if your determined to go the owb route, a gasification model tied to storage would be the next choice.
Your proposed infloor heat won’t care what the heating source is, wood, propane or oil.
Just realize you have options.

 

[bushmonkey]

Thanks!

I'll inquire about the heat loss calculation with my builder. I knwo my plans need to be sent to a engineer with the government to ensure it's efficient enough. I'm guessing that's when I will get that number you ask for.

Im not sure why you said "the mind set of stuffing a large boiler with semi seasoned frozen wood is going to cause you to cut more wood..." That is not my plan. The plan is to use properly seasoned wood and be able to stuff a ODB enough that I only need to fill it every 12 hours. Do gassification models work with a 12 hour refill? That's the ultimate question for me.

When I called a dealer for a ODB I couldn't believe how he keep skirting around that question. He wanted to talk about everything else except that question. It really made me wonder if the answer was no and he just wouldn't say it so he lost a sale. This is why I came here.

He also was quite vague about other questions I asked here as well.

 

[salecker]

Hey Bushmonkey
I am in the Yukon and have a little colder winters than you.
You can get Quad windows up here, highly recommend them -40 something here right now and not a speck of frost on them.I bought them without the returns and they were cheaper than the competitors triple pane windows.
I have an Econoburn 200 in boiler building.It is 125Ft from our house and it contains the boiler two 500 gal storage tanks for heat my backup oil boiler room for a few days of wood and a warm workshop where i tinker all winter.
Our normal heating day at -20C is start fire around 5 PM reloading every 2 hrs till boiler shut off at around 11PM.
Repete the next day. at -30C the fire gets started at around 3PM and at -40C around noon.
The Econoburn is built like a tank,i have had to run it without a controller one winter,it was doable with storage and using an aquastat to act as the high limit shutoff.The people at Econoburn have an awesome customer relations policy and stick by it.Seven yrs on my system now.I did all the work on the install myself except wiring.We have cast iron rads in out house...awesome it's like having a wood stove in each room.
We are in a small rural town with a volunteer fire department,having the boiler and backup in a separate building is the answer for a lot of issues here.Both my wife and daughter have asthma,no worries about carbon monoxide poisoning,no flame source in our home,no mess.And i can do all the work on our heating system legally. Up here you have to be Red Seal Certified to work on home heating systems since a family dies from carbon monoxide poisoning.
Being in rural Yukon i wouldn't change anything other than i would look at a Garn a little more.
I have a 4 zone manifold for in floor heating if you are interested.And feel free to PM me with any questions.
Thomas

 

[maple1]

Im not sure why you said "the mind set of stuffing a large boiler with semi seasoned frozen wood is going to cause you to cut more wood..." That is not my plan. The plan is to use properly seasoned wood and be able to stuff a ODB enough that I only need to fill it every 12 hours. Do gassification models work with a 12 hour refill? That's the ultimate question for me.

I think that was said, because if you cut to 3' long (or even shorter) and don't split it, it won't be properly seasoned. So will be wet & frozen inside. Proper seasoning requires splitting. Not splitting wood might save you the work of splitting, but it could cost you in having to use twice as much or more wood. Which after a few years gets to be a bit of a burden.

Also - talking burn times with boilers isn't the right way to consider boilers, as any long or extended burn time most always comes at the expense of long or extended periods of smoldering. I.e., wasting of fuel.

Salecker has good advice and he is living what sounds like you will be. I would not install an OWB. I would plan & build the outbuilding so it, or one end of it, would contain a gassifying indoor boiler, and generous amount of storage (at least 1000 gallons), and my entire winters wood.

 

[Seasoned Oak]

I have friend that uses "not so dry wood" in his OWB. The pile of wood he goes through is almost a large as his house. It would be a 10 years supply for me if it were dry and used in my INDOOR woodstove .

 

[warno]

Just speaking on the use of storage or not for a boiler in general. My father and I burn from the same pile of wood and my first year with my OWB i burnt a ton of wood because it was idling all the time. My heat load was less then my boiler output which in turn didn't make the boiler "work" very hard which in turn leads to alot of idling or soldering of the wood.

The next year I had added in 750 gallons of storage so the boiler could burn flat out for a few hours to heat my storage then it would shut down. A good hot, non stop burn is where your effeincy and wood savings is at. My wood savings from my first year to my next was enough that dad noticed right away. He said i probably only used alittle over half of my first years supply.

So if i could only suggest one thing, based on your want of a 12 hour burn, it would be get a boiler and use it to heat a storage tank(s). Then pull your heating demands from the storage. Heating the storage off one load a day, maybe 2 on really cold days, is very nice. And you don't have to worry if the boiler will make it the full 12 hour burn.

 

[bushmonkey]

Thanks for the advice. All good things to consider.