Need help

[Johnspring]

Hi. I am looking for someone to help lead us in a direction about wood boilers.

We are building a house this spring (vermont). It will be on a slab. The house will be 24x40 with attached garage 40x39. We plan on putting a utility room in the garage with a oil funace and want to have a wood boiler also. We are doing radiant heat throughout entire building(zones for house and garage). Our plumber said to go with a new oil furnace and to go with a older wood boiler (New Yorker, harmen etc) Everything will be insulated. So our questions are. If we go with an older boiler do we need water storage? Can we keep the garage at 50 and house at 70? A lot of things we have read says people are burning a lot of wood (10 cords). And having to fill everything 4-5 hours. Is that true? Does it make more sense to burn coal? We have all kinds of wood on our property. That is why we are thinking wood. We don’t have an endless budget but want to make sure it’s done right. Any suggestions would be helpful and greatly appreciated . Thanks.

 

[hobbyheater]

Hi. I am looking for someone to help lead us in a direction about wood boilers.

We are building a house this spring (vermont). It will be on a slab. The house will be 24x40 with attached garage 40x39. We plan on putting a utility room in the garage with a oil funace and want to have a wood boiler also. We are doing radiant heat throughout entire building(zones for house and garage). Our plumber said to go with a new oil furnace and to go with a older wood boiler (New Yorker, harmen etc) Everything will be insulated. So our questions are. If we go with an older boiler do we need water storage? Can we keep the garage at 50 and house at 70? A lot of things we have read says people are burning a lot of wood (10 cords). And having to fill everything 4-5 hours. Is that true? Does it make more sense to burn coal? We have all kinds of wood on our property. That is why we are thinking wood. We don’t have an endless budget but want to make sure it’s done right. Any suggestions would be helpful and greatly appreciated . Thanks.

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These would be a good match with in floor radiant heat .
Don't burn wood in a boiler without storage .

 

[Tonty]

I would echo that thought. If you go with a gasifier or batch burner wood fired boiler, you need storage for it to work properly. I have a Switzer with integral storage, very similar to the Garn. The difference is that Switzer’s are pressurized, so there isn’t much concern with rusting out. I’m very happy with it. I do a burn every 12-24 hours. Mine is small, only 600 gallons of storage. If you go bigger, the time between burns would be longer yet. Expect to spend quite a bit of money to do it right.

 

[brenndatomu]

Some boilers NEED storage to work right...and almost all will work BETTER with it, but the new HeatMaster G series are an OWB (also approved to be used indoors) with enough onboard storage to make things work fine...HE gasifier too...which means MUCH less wood burnt!
(broken link removed to https://heatmasterss.com/price-your-furnace/building-your-g4000/#)

 

[mark cline]

You mentioned that your house will be built on a slab . Insulate the the slab and sides as much as you can afford . My radiant basement floor has 2” of polyisosyurnate insulation and on the sides , best money I ever spent.

 

[Tonty]

As far as temperature of house and garage, you should be able to keep it at whatever temp you want. I like to keep my house at 75, that isn’t a problem. Depending on how well your house/garage/furnace room is insulated, your garage loop may not have to run much at all. Mine doesn’t, but then my furnace is in my a garage, and I didn’t build a room around it. I have a hot water coil in the furnace from the boiler, also, so that keeps the garage a nice temp when it’s circulating.
The more efficient (gasifier) boiler that you get, the less wood you will burn, obviously. I burn around 4 cords, but I burn mostly hedge (Osage Orange) wood, so that contains a lot of pounds/btus per cord. We also wouldn’t be as cold as you, but I would guess your house would be insulated slightly better than ours due to your colder climate.

 

[maple1]

'Done right' with an indoor wood boiler means a gasifier and storage. With the possible exception of the IWB/OWB mentioned above.

Honestly if I was building new I would have a hard time justifying going with anything oil burning now. Fuel costs here are like 2x what they were last year or almost. And who knows where that might end. It's new tech but a combination of an A-W heat pump + electric boiler might be a consideration. Or mini-splits. And wood stove. In floor heating can be nice, but in some cases doesn't offer much better performance than other choices. I know some with pipes in their floors that don't get used. Personally, we yanked all our oil stuff in 2012, replacing a wood/oil combo boiler with a gassing indoor wood boiler+storage, and electric boiler for backup. Added a couple mini-splits 4 years ago and the electric boiler hasn't been used since then. Considering adding a A-W heat pump.


Link

 

[Tonty]

I wish those air-water heat pumps had been available back in ‘17 when we built our house. I think I would have tried to integrate one or two in.

 

[maple1]

They seem like an ideal match with in floor heat. A big factor would be the local climate and related efficiency impact.

 

[whit]

Tried to find someone to give a reasonable bid on an air-to-water heat pump here in SE Vermont last spring, with the goal of replacing oil. The only firm that would even offer one bid it at $100,000. Ended up going with a pellet boiler for far less than that. Granted, the pellet boiler is reusing the existing baseboard, where the A-W heat pumps require more modern stuff throughout. A-W heat pumps are a done thing in Europe. But at least in Vermont they're mostly a rumor.

 

[flyingcow]

Good luck with your endeavour.

Im sure you're planning on it but IMO a minimum r60 ceilings and r40 walls.

No matter what kind of wood boiler set up you get, Id start cutting/splitting/stacking wood soon. 1 yr c/s/s is usually a minimum to dry wood properly. Plan on trying to put up at least 5 cords. Good test run to get ready.

A good reference to oil use vs wood boiler......
Typical OWB a cord of wood may replace 100 gals of oil. But no more. And it may not be that high.
A good indoor gasser with storage should replace 150 gals of oil
I have good hardwood c/s/s wood dried 2 yrs. That replaces close to 175 gals of oil. Thats a solo innova 30 w/ 820 hals of storage. I burn wood in the summer for dhw too.

And i have a Garn jr (1000) gals of storage in my truck garage.For what you're describing the Garn jr or 1500 might be a nice fit.

BTW i looked at coal before i put the gasser in. Almost put a coal boiler in. No cutting n splitting involved👍