Just pick'in heads ( Getting other peoples thoughts) What system to chose.

[wideurt]

First off I live in Mid Mo. House is 2800 sq.ft..Basement house ,but story and a half faces North ( catches all the wind ), middle of house has cathedral ceiling of 23' 2x6 framing. Heat now with a RSF wood-burning fireplace(Opel) Burn about 6 cords , run two base board heaters . Tired of the dryness (running humidifier stays about 23%) One heater ics in the kitchen front side of house three 6'windows and one slider, lot of glass. When temps drop to 0 for a few days hard to heat. I have a central heating system (electric) but hardly ever use it. Looking at OWB. Have a central Boiler Dealer within 20 miles , but the first quote was with out the shipping cost and with out tax. The shipping quote is the shipping to them which should already be on the price tag. Makes me wonder if they are worth dealing with. There is another dealer 125 miles away but have not talked to him. Shaver dealer with in 25 miles and I see as of right now he is handling Natures Choice . Than looking at their web sight There is another Natures Choice dealer just down the road. Well the Shaver there is noway. After reading on these forums and looking at one. Natures choice looked pretty good. Neat job on insulation,and overall appearance looked put together pretty well. Just don't know about the flew dropping down into the fire box like it does.Scared I would beat the hell out of it throwing in wood for 10 years. Like the fire box design on the Central Boilers ( but why does nobody else do this ) If it is not to many welds ( maybe round is better ) Defiantly love the insulation ( can't think of a better way than the spray on if it is thick enough ). Like the idea of the gassafier units ( less wood consumption mainly ) but maybe to soon out of the box. I like the portage & Main units I think, but no dealer even close. As far as the gassifier area made out of steel there is no way That why I like the Portage and Main. How far will people ship these stoves and I suppose no dealer in the area warranty pretty much worthless. [Any thoughts comments, or ridicule all appreciated Thanks
Buy the way I live in the country and can only see one house about 1 mile away and he is to the north. ( No smoke goin that way )

 

[CamaroCrazyChris]

Your best energy conservation choice could be to start replacing the windows with a double coat Low-E glass and have them Argon filled. I believe anything below a .35 qualifies for the tax credit as well to put some money back in your pocket. Thats a problem with a lot of glass... Looks great and is beautifull in the summer but come winter... Well... You are experiencing the downfalls.
Also, another design flaw for heating is big cathedral cielings, obviously most of your heat is at the top of yours.

 

[wideurt]

All of my windows are top of the line Pella. As far as the ceiling I have a 60"ceiling fan. Acually I have fans in every room because being earth contact or basement house all the vents are in the ceilling. What I'm wanting is input on Boilers. The house I love, Like I said I pretty much heat with a wood stove that 3 18'long peices of wood pretty much fills it out.

 

[CamaroCrazyChris]

Well, at least you bought some good windows! I have Pella's as well with the Argon. I noticiced a big differance in how much the AC/Heat ran this past year since installing them. It also helped that I made sure all of the gaps where air tight between them.
Unfortunately I know nothing on boilers, sorry. I am actually just starting to stretch my legs on the fireplace topics now.
Out of curiosity, about what temp does your house average at when you have those cold spells?

 

[wideurt]

The room with the fireplace runs 70's but the room with the 23' ceiling runs 65 the kitchen the same unless I crank up the baseboard heater. The house will stay warm I just don't like using the electric heat and it stays to dry. As far as you looking at fireplace's here's a pic of mine and it does crank out the heat for a lil stove. The brand is RSF.

 

[sgschwend]

Did you say you have window coverings? They will make a big difference.

The wood stove solution you have is probably the lowest cost solution. Why not just add a second one? Certainly it would be a lot less cost and effort to run a second wood stove then to run one inside the house and another outside.

It also sounds like your layout helps distribute the heat.

If you can't live without a completely new heating system then be prepared to pay for the boiler and the extra plumbing to integrate it into your electric heater. I would recommend you purchase a boiler not on price but on performance. The low cost boiler may become obsolete, or even reduce the resale value of your home.

 

[wideurt]

With having the duct work ran all through the house it would be nice to-utilize central heat, wood mess outside ,just don't want to get something and be using 15 cords a year.A lot of neighbors use the Hardy. but I believe they use a lot of wood.What I have always heard of OWB are they are usually overkill. So wood I be better to say go with one that heats 4000 sq. ft. or 6000. I am taking in consideration hot water and my ceiling.

 

[sgschwend]

How big is the central heat? 150K Btu? A boiler could be smaller so that it doesn't have to idle so much (storage helps with this issue).

I helped a buddy put in a water to air heat exchanger. If I remember correctly is was only about 60K Btu. It did a great job only about 1/2 the size of the heater but match the plenum size.

Most folks will tell you the best location is to put the boiler in the basement, but being on the left coast most homes do not have basements. I built a small wood boiler shed and put all my equipment in it, holds about 1/2 cord of wood too. In my opinion, you need to have that high efficiency boiler inside, either make a shed or put it in the house/garage.

 

[Gooserider]

I have not heard of ANY of the "outhouse with a stack" type OWB models that I would touch with a 10' pole - even if it was somebody else's pole...

As far as I'm concerned a gasifier is the only way to go (Look at Wood Gun if you insist on stainless) The only current gasifying OWB's are not yet ready for prime-time IMHO, which is why you see a good number of unhappy owners on here... The "traditional" models are definitely on the inefficient side, and cause a lot of pollution while burning lots of wood.

If you want an outside unit, I'd consider the smallest Garn, with lots of insulation, as you'd likely only need to fire it every few days...

The other option would be a conventional gasifier in an outbuilding (though I would strongly agree with those who thing a boilers place is in the home) again probably with storage - my recollection is that MO has long shoulder seasons, so storage would be important in any system if you want to burn clean.

Gooserider

 

[wideurt]

Is there any storage system that does not take up so much room. My furnace and hot water tank are in the garage, and I hate to loose my garage. As far as a garn what is the cost of their smallest set up. I see it is 1400 gal. I may just wait a few more years and see what happens to the OWB.

 

[flyingcow]

Google GARN, find a dealer. Up here they were about $12,500 ish. That was last year. Stand alone gassifiers will be in the $6,000 to $8,000 range. I've heard of a few that are a little cheaper. Are you a DIY kinda guy?
Should do a heat load calc on your house also. Give you some numbers on what you're needing.

 

[Gooserider]

Is there any storage system that does not take up so much room. My furnace and hot water tank are in the garage, and I hate to loose my garage. As far as a garn what is the cost of their smallest set up. I see it is 1400 gal. I may just wait a few more years and see what happens to the OWB.

Unfortunately, there is no real way to shrink the storage, as water doesn't compress... You CAN do things to reduce the storage "footprint" depending on what your setup allows you to do - for instance standing a tank on end instead of on it's side, or building a non-pressured tank to be tall and skinny rather than short and fat, but if you have a given volume of water, it has to go someplace... The other option is to go without storage, or to use a smaller tank, but both options can hurt your efficiency, especially if your boiler has to spend a lot of time idling... Note that one of the reasons that OWB's are such polluters is that they don't have storage, and consequently spend a lot of time idling...

Gooserider

 

[stumpy]

I installed a Central Boiler E-Classic two years ago and I love it. It can be finicky at times but usually that's due to something I have done wrong like not cleaning it when I should have or trying to burn wet wood. This year I am burning dry split wood only, I cut it 24" long so it will fit on my splitter, the only smoke I get is when the bypass is open while it is being filled then a very small amount when the draft blower comes on. I buy a log truck load of wood each year which amounts to 8 - 10 cords for about $750.00 and burn a mix of pine and hardwoods in the spring and fall, I soent $4500.00 to heat my house the year before I installed the OWB using a combination of wood pellets, oil, and fire wood. I have an oil fired forced hot air heating system in my 200 year old 2500 sf center chimney cape and have no problem keeping it at 70 degrees. I put baseboard hot water heat in my kitchen and two adjoining rooms this past fall and have decided to convert the rest of the house to hot water heat before next winter. From my experience since installing the boiler they do not smoke excessively if the are used properly and dry wood is burned, and they don't burn a huge amount of wood I fill my stove twice a day the coldest 3 months of winter and once during spring and fall. I also heat my hot water with it and will be installing a pair of solar panels this summer to take over heating my DHW when I shut the boiler down. If I had it to do over again I don't think I would do anything different.