Instead of posting multiple times I'm gonna ask a few questions in 1 post. Firstly I am living in a 1200 sq ft doublewide while building a 2100 sq.ft. 2 story open floor plan style farmhouse. I am planning on a wood boiler in the basement or OWB( depending on if I find an OWB as efficient as an indoor) and a Fireplace Xtrordinair 44 or Naploeon 6000 on the main floor. Can anyone give me pros/cons on the fireplaces and the OWB vs. basement install? Also, I'd like to start with fireplace /or boiler first (depending on which comes as a better deal first, I suspect the fireplace). Will these fireplaces give me good temporary heat while building and first moving in until I add the boiler? Can I run a boiler without the water hooked to it temporarily in the basement, kinda like a woodstove, or will it damage the coils.? Also, the dreaded doublewide has an Englander woodstove in the mudroom, which works excellent, we use no oil, but came with a really brutal ZC fireplace that eats wood alive and leaks air, drafty as hell when not in use etc. Can I remove it and add small airtight stove to the existing 8" triple pipe with a 6"-8"reducer for a cheap replacement to get rid of it? Any suggestions, scenarios, info would be greatly appreciated.
New Home Wood Heat Suggestions
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I think you'll get a lot of replies on the OWB vs Indoor questions. I decided to go indoor for several reasons. One - I don't have to go outside to load my boiler. I store my wood under my deck (I have walkout basement) so my longest walk is about 3 feet outside. I could even store a little wood in the basement if I wanted to, but I don't. Two - I like being more discrete with my boiler. The outdoor units are very noticeable and in my area that is not necessarily a good thing. All I have is a chimney and a chase. Three - No trench to dig, no slab to pour. I just shoe horned my EKO 40 through the basement slider. Four - No heat lost to the great outdoors. With my boiler inside any heat lost from the unit, piping or storage is lost inside the house. So that helps my overall efficiency. My only real "heat loss" from the woodburner is the heat that goes up the flue.
I'm sure you'll get answers to the others very soon. I just wanted to chime in on the outside vs inside question...
I'm sure you'll get answers to the others very soon. I just wanted to chime in on the outside vs inside question...
There is some overlap between the lower-efficiency indoor boilers and the higher-efficiency OWB's, but there are no OWB's that can compare to the higher-efficiency indoor units (which can exceed 90% efficiency, in certain models).
You can't run the boiler dry. You could temporarily install a cheap (ie, used, purchased from classified ads) woodstove, if you're just looking for heat during construction. With something cheap like that, you could probably re-sell it for as much as you paid for it, once you were ready for proper heat.
Alternately, you could install the boiler, and a heating zone in the basement, and run it that way until the upper floors were ready for their heat emitters to be installed.
Joe
You can't run the boiler dry. You could temporarily install a cheap (ie, used, purchased from classified ads) woodstove, if you're just looking for heat during construction. With something cheap like that, you could probably re-sell it for as much as you paid for it, once you were ready for proper heat.
Alternately, you could install the boiler, and a heating zone in the basement, and run it that way until the upper floors were ready for their heat emitters to be installed.
Joe
I will be brave and chime in on the side of the OWB. I spent months researching and talking with people and looking as much as possible as to what is out there. There are many pros and cons to each depending on what your thoughts are. Each person has there own ideals and different ideas of what is better. For me, it came down to wanting to keep everything outdoors. No smoke, wood, bugs, fire hazard etc in the house. The OWB was essentially "plug and play". Since it has been installed I have been thrilled. I read most of the posts on here about people asking how to get rid of some of the issues I avoided by keeping it outside and making their systems run correctly because each one is basically its own unique system. Mine might be "cookie cutter" but it works well, I am burning comparable amounts of wood to the indoors and have very little smoke. I look outside at my unit now covered in snow which addresses the heat loss question fairly well considering there are 450 gals of water sitting under the tin plus the boiler itself. These are just my thoughts and I am sure you will here MANY good thoughts on the indoor's as well. It comes down to what is important to you for your application.
Good Luck.
Good Luck.
I fully agree that the best place for a wood burner is outside a living space. That being said you can install a high efficiency clean burning gasifier outside in a outbuilding. I was at home depot the other day and saw the have 6'*8' all metal sheds for $200. Someone could always purchase one of these sheds and put their gasifier in it, also it would have enough room for some wood storage. OWB are not an option for many of us.
Don't know if it matters to you, but the best data I've seen on efficiency indicates that a well-operated gasifier uses much less wood than an optimally operated conventional (indoor) boiler.
In one case, the indoor boiler was always operated at full throttle with very dry wood - no idling, virtually no creosote, no visible smoke, and with a secondary heat exchanger to extract heat from the flue gas.
Despite all of that, wood consumption dropped by 40% when it was replaced with a downdraft gasifier. This is very solid data - the owner weighs his firewood every day and keeps a detailed logbook with years of data before and after the switch.
In one case, the indoor boiler was always operated at full throttle with very dry wood - no idling, virtually no creosote, no visible smoke, and with a secondary heat exchanger to extract heat from the flue gas.
Despite all of that, wood consumption dropped by 40% when it was replaced with a downdraft gasifier. This is very solid data - the owner weighs his firewood every day and keeps a detailed logbook with years of data before and after the switch.
No fossil, did he have heat storage for these boilers? That is a surprising difference just going to a gasifier. 40% less cutting, stacking, hauling wood, etc. not to mention the negative environmental aspects of wasting resources. I would imagine the particulate matter spewed into the atmosphere by the non-gasifier was much higher as well.
The only place for a wood boiler is outside the home (IMO), that said it doesn't mean you can't put an high efficiency gassifier indoors outside in its own area. This eliminates the smoke in the house and thus saves your marriageand gets somebody off your back. I made my area 12x24 inside a 40x60 shed. I can haul wood in with the loader or pickup or whatever and keep the mess and smoke where it belongs, not in the house.
muleman51 said:
Smoke should not be an issue. If it is, you can easily install a "fume hood" to capture it and exhaust it, for a lot less money than installing the boiler in a separate building.
Personally, my boiler is going in the sun porch that opens off my kitchen. The storage tanks are going in the barn/garage (which opens off the sun porch). That keeps the boiler out of the garage, which pleases the code enforcement folks, and keeps the tanks from taking up space in the sun porch (I lose one horse stall in the barn, but I don't have horses, so that's no big deal). Having the boiler in the house means that it's easy to tend, even in the middle of a blizzard.
There will be some mess to deal with (or, rather, there will hopefully be careful handling of wood and ashes, to prevent mess). And I will have to move wood by hand from the woodpile to the bin that will sit near the boiler, but I feel that's a good trade-off for not having to go outside when it's miserable out there.
Joe
I like the idea of installing a gasifier outside in it's own bldg. Are any OWB's gasifiers, or are we commited to the indoor units for efficiency?
BrownianHeatingTech said:
Mine is indoor and I may have liked it outside at first however it is very nice to be able to tend to it without going outside, I did put a vent just above the door and it is just a small in line fan with some flexable pipe vented with a dryer vent to the outside. I did not build a hood however I just may do that in the future. I get very little smoke when I load but I have it down to a science now, and I know what to expect. Also with the tank I can start the boiler and it will run till it is done, these days maybe 4 to 5 hours a day, the rest of the time the thing is just sitting there warm. There is no question that having the boiler in the living space is more efficient then outside, all residual heat from the thing helps to heat the house. However it is also no question it causes other problems when it comes to smoke in the house, and the other issues with it.
Steve
I have been running my boiler in my basement for about a month now. I had one smoke incident where I set off the fire alarms, but after learning a better technique I have no complaints about smoke. It is in an unfinished part of the basement so a little smoke puff here and there is not a big deal to me, it fact i kind of like it because I often miss the fire smell now that I don't use my fireplace insert.
I just finished stacking enough wood in the basement to last me the rest of the winter (I hope). I love the fact that I can tend the fire in my boxers and won't ever have to go outside to haul in wood when there is a foot or two of snow outside. It is now 10:45 on a Sunday night, I just loaded up my boiler and I'll have to add some more wood in a half hour or so in order to get through the night without burning oil and I am soooo glad that I don't have to go out in the rain to do it. The commitment to heat your house with wood means a lot of work, why not make it a little easier?
One thing you may want to consider before your floor joists go in - drop a 1000 gallon propane tank in the basement for heat storage while you can still get it in. I think a large propane tank is a very good way to store heat, but it is hard to do if you can't get it into the basement once the house is there.
I just finished stacking enough wood in the basement to last me the rest of the winter (I hope). I love the fact that I can tend the fire in my boxers and won't ever have to go outside to haul in wood when there is a foot or two of snow outside. It is now 10:45 on a Sunday night, I just loaded up my boiler and I'll have to add some more wood in a half hour or so in order to get through the night without burning oil and I am soooo glad that I don't have to go out in the rain to do it. The commitment to heat your house with wood means a lot of work, why not make it a little easier?
One thing you may want to consider before your floor joists go in - drop a 1000 gallon propane tank in the basement for heat storage while you can still get it in. I think a large propane tank is a very good way to store heat, but it is hard to do if you can't get it into the basement once the house is there.
clarkharms said:
He does not have much heat storage - maybe 150 gallons of very low temperature storage plus the floor slab's mass. He builds a fire every day and tolerates bigger temperature swings than I would choose to. This is the same pattern that he had with the conventional boiler, so the comparison is valid.
By the way - he heats a decent sized two story home in Vermont with 2.5 cords of wood per year. I wouldn't expect to get to that point - his house is very well insulated and he has a condensing boiler with a flue temp below 120 degrees. No commercially available unit is going to do that well, although most gasifiers have a unit efficiency near or at 90%.
In my personal experience, storage does not increase efficiency if you already have an efficient burn pattern (short hot fires, minimal idling). It does increase comfort and convenience, though.
If your burn pattern without storage is to have long fires with lots of idling, then storage would help.
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