newbie building a home

[NEPA Phil]

So for the long and convluted newbie post. I could not find a thread in your form that seemed to answer my long list of concenrs and questions....

I am builiding a new house. I have a rumford fireplace in my living and a second flue in my basement that I put in as a "just in case". Well my carpenter brought in a nice temporay woodburner for the basement while we are working this winter and so far the heat is great. The ease of ashes and getting wood in the basement on pallets with a tractor is not so bad either. I burned wood for a number of years in the past but "burned out" on the unit in my livinging room that had blow back issues and gave up on it as my wife could no longer deal with the smoke and ashes. The basement set up great and now has us thinking wood boiler. In the new house I have about 1,200 sq feet of concrete basement floor that has been well insulated underneath and has pec's tubing run through for in floor heat. Plan was to move the basement air upstairs with air circuiting and a propane boiler for the basement floor with baseboard on 1st and 2nd floor as backup.

Rather then have the propane heat the floor and the current wood burner generate heat in the basement too, the best idea seems to be installing a multi wood propane fuel unit (we travel in the winter, so need propane too). I'm open to a heat storage water tank if i need one in additon to my basement infloor heat that would act as storage too. There are many brands to choose from. Also wondering if I should do a high efficiency propane unit and a separate wood boiler. Rather then list brands I've looked at online, I'd like some real guidnece from this very well informed group. Also, simpler the better. While I have no intention of selling now, having a NASA space control center in the basement will not help to sell the place a few yrs down the road. I have an good supply of hard wood, so fuel should not be an issue. If doing two separate furnaces for wood and propane, the propane will need to be on a power vent-er since there is only one flue in basement.

The foundation is ICF ( Insulated Concrete Forms) with 2" of foam inside and out with 12" of concrete. I'm getting bids for blown in shredded paper and glue product as well as Isonyne, so any input on that would be much appreciated. House is about 2.700 sq feet and have pecs pipe in a 10 x 38 foot outdoor concrete / blue stone porch floor that I plan to make a seperate zone. It was done as a just in case it ever becomes living space or has snow build up as porch is a seious weather catcher.

Unsure what I will do for domestic H/W since it may depend on type of storage I go with....infloor concrete or tanks.

I'm very nervous about trying these systems since I suspect the wood aspect may add $5,000 plus to the cost of my heating system. And any direction as too what brand or brands and instaltion/ storage I should consider would be great! Thank you.

 

[FyreBug]

Sorry I re-read your post and you were talking about a boiler. If you are looking for a furnace the info below might help.

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Hi there, there's a lot of info in your post. You're doing the best thing so far by researching your options. Based on what you mention you have a few options. but if you are looking at wood what you need to ask is will there be someone there during the day to re-stoke?

1) Why propane? It's starting to get more expensive. If you go for one of the new EPA furnace (Caddy) they can burn for a long time, you probably wont have to re-stoke more than twice a day depending on the level of insulation of your house etc...

2) you could go with a wood add-on to your furnace. It will use the blower from your current furnace.

3) you could also use 2 full furnace side by side in a parallel installation with each its own blower but will have to design an automatic baffle to switch between one an the other.

3) You could get a bi/fuel or Tri-fuel combo furnace (Wood/oil/electric). The Max Caddy for example has a very large chamber and you should get 8-12 hours of burn time easy (the usual caveat apply here), then it would switch to oil or electric if no one adds wood. Nice thing about this furnace is it has a 6 speed blower to keep your temperature in the plenum constant and increase the efficiency. It also has a hot water pre-heater option for your hot water tank.

4) You could also look at pellet furnace such as Harman, Traeger or PSG Alterna.

There are a lot of good units out there and when you narrow your options ask the folks here what they think of the units. You may want to download the manuals from the units you are interested in to see how the setup would work in your house.

 

[Hunderliggur]

Take a look at the "Simpelest pressurize storage..." sticky on the top of the boiler room forum. It shows a wood boiler, fossil boiler, and storage. You have radiant in the basement slab, why not radiant on the 1st and 2nd floors? Underfloor radiant works well if sized correctly. You are in NE PA? Have you considered a geothermal heat pump as your primary source. We have a Rennai 200K BTU direct vent tankless heater as our "backup" system - small, reliable, no seperate flue. In runs on propane. Yes, it will cost money. A good gassifier costs 5000 and up, probably add another 5K for piping, labor, controls, storage, insulation, etc. Even at 10K total, payback can be reasonable if you have a source of wood. My payback will probably be about 5 years, and it gives my two kids at home something to do splitting and stacking wood.

 

[Como]

I was thinking the same, go radiant throughout.

 

[Chris S]

WHile ICFS and your insulated slab are great systems, The slab will not really act as storage. Once the heat is no longer beaing applied, temperature will start to drop.
What you've done with the ICF system is really lower the btus/s.f. required to heat the home.

As mentioned aboive, there are plenty of good units to choose from, you'll make your own decision on that. As for your automatic, gas burning equipment, I like the Triangle Tube Excellence, or solo. The excellence has a built in 13 gallon dhw tank, which saves a lot on installation, controls etc, but is not going to fill your whirlpool tub. We've installed these in small houses with one bath only. Otherwise, any wall hung 90+ eff. LP boiler would be my choice. I'm partial to Triangle as its heat exchanger has very low head loss, meaning off the shelf circulators. We've also installed Crown, and Burnham ( same unit diffferent color), and WM The three I just mentioned are aluminum TT is Stainless. I've also installed Munchkin, and won't do it again. All of these units are direct vented with PVC pipe which sounds like what you need. You could also go with a flash water heater, which gets it's efficiency from ther not being any standby losses.

Lots to think about hope I helped a little

 

[91220da]

Consider moving the whole wood operation outside in a seperate building or even your gargage if zoning will permit it. Wood, wood chips, bugs, dust, ashes, smoke, etc. etc. outside not in the basement.
I had to put my boiler in the garage do to lack of basement entrance large enough get the boiler down there. In retrospect it was the greatest decission I had to make.

 

[NEPA Phil]

Thank you all for the help. So much to consider. Saw the Garn video with husband and wife in NY and that has me thinking going the 2 furnace route. I do not have a garage, and outdoors is not an option on a lake front lot (that gets serious wind and outdoor trips not too exciting on some days). Also adding a storage tank since as was pointed out that the slab looses btu's faster than an insulated tank.

So I understand gasififcation, is it s a sort of flash burn or do you keep the fire going continuously? Do some of the units start the fire with gas (on the multi fuel systems) so you keep it loaded and it burns when it needs heat? Tarm looks nice for multi fuel and Garn for wood. I'll look at the units you all mention in the thread.

 

[Como]

Basically the wood burns completely at a very high temperature. This minimises emissions and maximises efficiency. Smouldering wood produces a lot of nasty by products and not a lot of energy.

With pellets or woodchips you can vary the fees sort of like you can with oil or gas. With cord wood you can not. So it works a bit like Solar, you get the energy, use the but you need and store the rest. The storage tank is like a battery.

Unlike solar you can re charge as needed rather than when the sun shines.

If there are enough coals then the fire could re start by itself, otherwise you need to re light, same as a stove.

 

[NEPA Phil]

Another basic questiuon. If I go with wood boiler and seperate high eff propane unit as back up, does the propane unit heat the water storage unit too. Could it be looped to heat a Garn boiler / tank? Seems like it would not be good to leave and run on propane for a few days or week then come back and have to heat up the water again?

 

[Chris S]

Your back up boiler heating your storage would depend on your piping schematic. I have my oil boiler & wood boiler sitting side by side, and piped so that the oil would heat the water storage however when I went on vacation, I turned off the valves to my tanks so that the oile boiler would only heat the house. On return from vacation, I was able to get the tanks back up to temp with an all day burn.
Since the LP boilers you are talking about modulate, I w think with a creative piping schmatic, you could heat the house, without heating the storage ( I think)
That would be my choice if I were in your shoes.

 

[Como]

Generally speaking you want to keep the heat in the fuel, not the product.

You can certainly design a system so that the wood is bypassed when not in operation.

 

[Needshave]

We plan on building a 26'x26' two story timber frame in the next year or two. I never thought of putting radiant in the basement since it's not going to be living space. Does doing this increase the comfort level of the home? I do plan to heat with cord wood but picking out a system with so many options is a big decision. Like you we are going to use propane for backup heat and hot water. I was planing on a wood stove on the first floor for power failure. But while researching propane I found electric generators that run off of propane. In another thread someone suggested I get a generator for power failure since it will run heat and the well pump. Now another decision to put the wood stove money into a generator? I'd like to have it all but I need to sell this system to the wife and of course $.

 

[Como]

Generators are not cheap, plus you the cost of the install and switching.

If you have outages on a regular basis may be a higher priority.

 

[Hunderliggur]

"I never thought of putting radiant in the basement "

PEX tubing relatively cheap if you think you may want to heat your basement. I plan on using panel radiators/basboard panels in my basement if I ever finish it. I choose NOT to put tubing in since I had no ideawhat my zones may be. In hindsight I could have used tubing with a manifold that has individual loop shutoffs.