New guy/New house w/wood furnace...have questions

[Emery Plumley]

I'm new to this forum, and its been about 25 years since I had wood heat.

We bought new to us house this summer, house was built in 1983 and it has a wood/coal furnace in the basement, hooked up to the normal HVAC ducting.

It is a Crosswinds Wood Energy Corp. "The Commander 2832" But also has a tag of Model 2030, says it was tested in 1981.

I cannot find any info online about, and I have never dealt with a wood furnace attached to the HVAC. I grew up in WV, and we just had a wood stove in the center of the trailer. I joined the military, spent 20 years and retired and now living in MO.

I love the idea of burning wood, I have land with plenty of firewood, my wife on the other hand isn't too sure about it. Worried about the safety factor.

I know to get a chimney guy to come and clean it out for sure, but what else do I need to do to make sure it is safe?

One issue is that the stove door is all duct taped up, the reasoning I got was that the AC blows out of the stove and freezes the basement out. This doesn't seem right to me, shouldn't there be some type of backflow device to stop that from happening?

If anyone has any info on this I would appreciate it.

Thanks

 

[john26]

I had a woodchuck 2900 wood/coal add on installed at my previous home. I installed it with an automatic damper in the duct, which was just a piece of tin hanging on a piano hinge. This was in the duct that tied the wood furnace to the main trunk line. In the summer months I opened the duct and placed insulation in it and had a piece of carboard placed in the air return on the wood furnace. You should not be getting cold air out of the furnace door unless the fire box is cracked. This happened on my woodchuck I would inspect the fire box very well before use or have a chimney sweep look at it.

 

[brenndatomu]

Yeah that doesn't sound good...have a pic of it?