OK people, first and foremost, thanks for the replies and input, at this point anything is helpful and wanted, don't feel shy to tell it like it is, or how you see it, your not going to offend or hurt my feelings at all, I like to hear it like it is, and don't leave anything out, or leave it to me to imply anything, most times I get it wrong anyhow.
As for what I have now, I bought it on a whim and an urgent need with little background checking or asking questions, to say the least, if one can do anything wrong, I've done it more than once. I currently own wood doctor, not pressurized, and I'll admit, for the first few years, it worked good, but burned far more wood than I ever knew anything every could, the comment about burning the forest down to keep warm, is a mild understatement. We've had leaking issues with it, and quite frankly not wanting to offend anyone, I personally think its a waste of good metal in its design and efficiency, I won't even discuss warranty issues or lack there of, or my dealer support, nice guy, but.....
Its the second to the largest model they made, I'm told they're now a pressurized boiler, not wanting another round and looking for something better in terms of efficiency, its supposed to be around that half a million btu's mark, or so the claims go.
We've had issues this winter with not being able to maintain boiler temps, I'm also thinking there's not a big enough fan on the unit to feed the fire and keep it burning hot enough, but with the leaks we've had, which its currently leaking now........again, I'm hoping it makes it till its spring and we can shut it off for good and replace it.
As for the wood issue's, since this winter has set records on extended cold spells, we figured we had enough wood to last into next fall, cut, split and died, and it ate it all and we were out the middle of january, so we went down and took dead and down tree's out of the woods, and have literally shoveled those through the furnace, not sure it even slowed up long enough to breath myself, and we again ran out of wood in mid february, so back again to the woods for more, nothing ideal, just anything we could toss into the inhaling beast that might bring about some heat. As they say, when things go wrong, they really go wrong and compound issues. In over 40 years of heating and being around wood, I've never ran out, or even close, also never about froze to death in my own house either till this winter due to the lack of heat being produced.
As for specs, on the current system, we have an older two story house, about 100 years old a couple thousand square feet, has been remodeled several times and isn't bad to heat, believe me, I've lived in some old drafty, two story hotels of houses before that were impossible to heat due to no insulation, this is far from it, with the old lp gas furnace, which my dad put in back in the late 80's it would take anywhere from 1000-1500 gallons of lp a winter to keep it really nice inside, some mild winters even less. We have forced air heat in the house, and also a side arm hooked to the water heater for hot water. With the family getting old enough to go out on their own, we will no longer heat the water in the summer with a wood boiler, before with girls especially at home, [anyone with girls knows what I mean] and the boys still at home, we seemed to go through a lot of hot water, once the girls left, I wondered if the water heater was even used on some months, but that's another story.
My shop is a remodel in an old barn, we installed a hydraulic dooron one end, that fully opens up the whole end, 32x20 high and we bring equipment in and out all the time, we also installed in floor heat tubes in the shop, this is the first winter we had heat in it, which brings up a major issue, we want to have forced air fans on the wood boiler to bring my shop temps back up quicker, especially if we bring in cold equipment to work on, as they say a 25 ton piece of equipment coming out of -25 below zero temps a large block of ice to warm up, I want to speed that process up considerably, not something most do or even think about doing, but its what we do all winter long, work on equipment and get ready to go break it again next year in good weather working it. My current office is about 17x17 and has in floor heat, cement block walls and the pour in insulation in the blocks. the rest of the shop has anywhere from pour in insulation in the walls to over a foot of fiberglass blow in the walls to over a foot of fiberglass batts in the ceiling, the door is the poorest insulated in the building being only 4 inches of insulation in that.
My house is about 150 feet from the current boiler, the shop is about 40 feet, we have one inch pex insulated lines in the ground to each of them. I'd like to put an addition on the shop that would be 32x20 with about 15 foot ceilings, in floor tubes and a full width door on one end too, and forced air heat off the boiler for that in addition to the tubes in the floor.
I'd like to then build a building to house my heating source in, along with any water storage and some wood in as well, I'm tired of standing in a snow bank and the wind to shovel in semi loads of wood into the furnace, literally. What that size would be is in question.
I'd also like if possible to heat a second house, already on site, done, a newly remodeled house with a garage, and in the near future put an attached garage on my house, how or even if this is all possible, is yet to be seen, or even if it's feasible.
The next question that comes along is going to be what's my budget............... and as stupid as it sounds, I'm not sure, I'd like to weigh options and costs first, then decide which will give me the least grief, biggest bang for my buck over the longest period of time.............
As non politically correct as it sounds, so don't shoot me, I've even considered waste oil boilers for my shop or forced air heaters to supplement heating those needs, an add on gas boiler and everything else imaginable too, and yet I'm looking at wood the hardest. Any other questions, just ask.
