options, options, opinions.

[ssupercoolss]

every time i hear my oil burner kick on i can feel myself getting poorer....but anyways. i am in the research process of adding a wood boiler to my current set up. i felt that i may be able to but this in my garage, but thats looking pretty slim, so into my basement i go. i am going to have to add a chimney - somewhere. right now my favorite option is taking out the basement window in the rear of the house and running the flue through there, and class A up the rear of the house. i think i would also be able to make a nice chute next to it for getting wood into my basement. second option, and not really my favorite, is to go through my foundatin, approx 2' and stone. currently my oil burner vents through a chimney that was just relined with a stainless liner. is there any advantage to using the newly relined chimney for the wood boiler, and using the class A for my oil burner? the wood boiler will definetly be used more often than the oil. i think the relined chimney is in a better location for cleaning. one other thing - power venting, i keep reading about this, and i am sort of under the impression i cannot power vent my boiler becase it was not made to be power vented, correct?

thanks

 

[steam man]

I am not the expert on this one though I have a power venter on an oil boiler and a wood boiler on an interior masonary chimney. I believe any oil/gas setup made for a flue is ok to power vent though there are drawbacks. There are some DIRECT vent models that use no power to vent. These are probably different. My thought is to always go with an interior flue-never the outside one, especially for solid fuel due to having to deal with a cold chimney. Let's hope a professional heat tech can answer this better than I can.

 

[BotetourtSteve]

Might want to hop your post over to "The Boiler Room" forum. ;-)

 

[Gooserider]

Not an expert, but my understanding is that you can powervent just about any oil burner setup. The wood burner would definitely do better with the inside chimney as long as it's the right size. (most wood stuff uses either 6" or 8" diameter flues, or equivalent area)

I would definitely look at going the route of powerventing the oil and putting the wood on the inside chimney.

Gooserider