How about indoor hot water boilers and asthma?

[drizler]

I be really proud of myself stickin it to the man using only 225 gallons of oil since October 1 to heat my domestic hot water and supplement my corn stove. I still want to do more to help kill the oil demon. Whats the skinny on inside hot water boiler to hook in series with the existing Peerless oil boiler? The other rinkel is that my wife has slight to medium asthma mostly pet incuced which she manages well with meds. Whats the particulars on inside boilers for better or worse and who makes a decent one that won't destroy my economy as badly as Bush has wrecked ours? I like the outdoor type for the keeping it outside angle but from what I hear the inefficiency coupled with the sky high cost and smoke issues turn me right off. SHOW ME THE WAY!

 

[Eric Johnson]

A good inside boiler won't produce any more smoke in your house than a wood stove, especially if it's in the basement. In fact, it ought to produce less indoor pollution.

One really big advantage of indoor vs. outdoor boilers is that you get the benefit of all the radiant heat from the boiler and the chimney with an inside unit. It will keep your basement warm just from the radiant heat, while it's sending hot water up into your house. Plus, all the mess from the wood is down in the basement, and that should cut down on indoor air pollution as well.

Like any other wood-burning appliance, you need a good, Class A chimney to hook the boiler up to and of course it has to be plumbed into your existing hydronic heating system. If you buy a combination unit, then you can use one chimney for both your primary (wood) and backup (gas or oil or whatever), since they're both built into the same appliance. More likely, you will want to add on the wood boiler to your existing system, so it will need a seperate chimney.

If you have dry wood, then I would consider getting a clean-burning gassification boiler. Tarm makes the Cadillac of gassification boilers, but there are others. Some, like the Eko (the distributor advertisers here on Hearthnet somewhere) are cheaper and I've heard good things about them. I think the Eko is made in Eastern Europe. There are also some exotic alternative technologies manufactured by a company called Garn and another company that makes one called, I believe, "Greenwood." Both the Garn and the Greenwood have huge water storage capacities built into the boilers, so they're heavy and expensive and hard to find a good place for, but if you like to tinker around with this kind of thing, you can get impressive results from both.

If you want just a plain-old, old-school boiler, I would recommend a Marathon (made in NYS) or a Royall (made in Wisconsin). I've heated exclusively with one or the other for the past 15 years. Burned a lot of wood, but stayed warm and fossil-fuel free in a very cold climate (Northern NYS) in a couple of very old, poorly-insulated houses.

 

[Sundeep Arole]

I be really proud of myself stickin it to the man using only 225 gallons of oil since October 1 to heat my domestic hot water and supplement my corn stove. I still want to do more to help kill the oil demon. Whats the skinny on inside hot water boiler to hook in series with the existing Peerless oil boiler? The other rinkel is that my wife has slight to medium asthma mostly pet incuced which she manages well with meds. Whats the particulars on inside boilers for better or worse and who makes a decent one that won't destroy my economy as badly as Bush has wrecked ours? I like the outdoor type for the keeping it outside angle but from what I hear the inefficiency coupled with the sky high cost and smoke issues turn me right off. SHOW ME THE WAY!

If heating domestic hot water is your primary source of oil consumption, have you considered solar? For DHW the systems with a electric backup can work quite well. Where do you live? Solar is the ultimate environmentally responsible choice.

Tarm makes several add on boilers which can work along with your existing units, but if you are going ton consider putting one in the basement consider how the wood will make it to the basement. If you can bring the wood directly into the basement, and store it close to the access, great; otherwise with the amount of wood you will be transporting down the stairs you will be happy to be paying the oilman by the time the winter is over.

 

[drizler]

Thanx for the info boys. Once upon a time 10 years ago a skeptical doubting guy who looks just like me built this house with just this in mind. I insisted on the boiler being right next to the bilko doors and built myself a nice big overbuilt cement block ( 100 Lb'ers) with a 8" round ceramic liner. I never could get the Peerless boiler up to full draft ( it just hovered at just above )with that rig but I wanted the wood ability if I needed it. Currently it sits in front of the chimney but i could easily move it to the side and add the wood boiler in its place. Its unfurnished down there so easy to do whatever needed
So far so good right, I am not nearly as stupid as I look ( hopefully). What I would need is to power vent the peerless. Thats something I am not so familiar with having never had one aside from a gas water heater once. Can I just run it up the outside of the block chimney and then just box it all in with wood facia so it aint so ugly? I guess in this day and age its counter productive to buy anything less than high efficency so would likely go with the gassification units as wood isn' that cheap and I don't have an unliited supply on my 66 acres as its mostly field, softwood and mixed wetlands.
I am planning on setting up something solar, perhaps a drainback type in the attic of my attached garage for summer heat. Its probably not woth going the antifreeze type with its complexities and expense since I live near the Canadian Border in NY. The sky looks like a wool suit around here nearly all winter. I lived in Colorado so I know what winter solar heat can be and here it just aint so. A simple drainable batch and / or drainback seems best suited and I can get my hands on all the free 55 gallon steel barrels I want for free.
So where does all this asthma irritating particulate come from anyways? Is it otherwise or merely messing around with the door open? I noticed my corn stove was sooting the ceiling until I modified it with a switch so I could shut the damned blower down when I opened the door to scrape the ashes into the pan and clean the glass. What a difference that made! If you guys have any web sites or other info concerning setting this sort of thing up I sure would appreciate the assistance. BTW, using the corn stove for heat ( countryside ) and just the boiler for backup and hot water I managed to use only 225 gallons oil since 1 Oct 05 and about 5 tons of corn.

 

[Eric Johnson]

Sounds good to me, Driz. There's some pretty good installation and other information at:

(broken link removed to http://www.tarmusa.com)