Ranch Home Heating Question

[cueball44]

The existing propane system would be used as back-up and I have no plans of getting rid of that system. It's a single zone for the house with a nice high efficiency boiler that was installed in 2023.

 

[EbS-P]

Once you go BK king I don’t think one would ever go back! If the extra cost of the Bk40 and 8 in liner VS say the biggest Dolet doesn’t bother you then I can’t find any reason not to go down the BK40 route. It’s simple, efficient, and robust. Wood boilers are considerably more complex systems.

 

[Highbeam]

I'm hearing a lot of support for the Blaze King and I can understand why after doing some more thorough research. I really do like the hands-off approach that the BK would allow (especially) with two littles I'm constantly chasing after.

One of my main concerns that hopefully members of the forum can shed some light on is the new liner. Am I setting my self up for obsolescence putting an 8" liner down to feed the BK? As I will need to put a new liner down regardless of the stove I'm putting in. As begreen mentioned, why is a 6" liner recommended for a new liner installation?

Side note, but I've also extensively looked into getting a wood boiler to tie into the existing system hot water heat system, but most the systems I looked into were upwards of 10 to 20 grand depending upon manufacturer and size of the system. The indoor wood stove would act as a nice bridge to get me to a fancy wood boiler system in the future. Or if anyone has any indoor wood boiler recommendations that would be awesome.

I'm not sure why @begreen said any new liner "should be" a 6" liner. They sell 8" insulated liners too. Especially with a liner, it could always be removed and replaced with a 6" liner if in the future you felt it was needed for a different appliance.

On the wood boiler, the wood boilers themselves are extremely expensive but then you need to also add insulated storage tanks. Takes up a lot of space and with considerable complexity. Heat dumps, circulation pumps, computers. They're really cool when finished but take a lot of knowledge and up front investment. I have radiant tubing in my well insulated shop slab. 1800 feet of pipe for hot water but the boiler system is prohibitively expensive so I heat the shop with a woodstove.

The BK is great in the basement because the thermostat lets you set it and forget it for up to 40 hours. That thermostat is unique to only the BK. There is also the princess model on a 6" flue. It's only 2.9 cubic feet so will have a correspondingly shorter burntime of up to 30 hours and lower max output level.