Wood Boiler - Insurance Issues

[MarkM99]

Hi all

I was all set to make the dive into a Polar wood boiler in my detached garage. It's a 3 car garage with in floor heat, 30'x60', and then the goal was to run a line to my house and retrofit some in foor heat into a older home and then it be the main source of heat when we add an addition onto the house.

I'm now seem to be stuck, My insurance provider has basically said not a chance unless we don't use the garage as a garage, even though the Polar furnace has all the CSA and UL listing for indoor use.

Anyone on the east coast of Canada have any luck putting one of these inside? I have a call in to a second insurance company but my hopes are not that high. My main goal with the indoor boiler was to have it so I could deliver wood next to it on pallets with my loader tractor, and in a indoor conditioned space that we heat - there would be a chance my wife would occasionally add wood as well. I figured I would be ok as I have an existing oil boiler, cement floors, steel walls, planned to run an outdoor cold air vent, etc.

Any suggestions or perhaps insurance provider help? I went through a long process with my exisiting provider, and the underwriter basically wasn't interested.

I'll throw in some pictures of the oil boiler I had planned to replace with the wood one.

 

[peakbagger]

My understanding is that if you put the boiler in its own fire rated room with its own exterior entrance then its not considered in a garage.

 

[Woodman1]

Check with your provider but yes, enclose it in its own room or just drop the insurance on the building.

 

[maple1]

Yes, a wood burning appliance of any kind is most times a no-no on a garage, insurance wise. Do you have room for another outbuilding?

 

[Tylervt]

Yes, a wood burning appliance of any kind is most times a no-no on a garage, insurance wise. Do you have room for another outbuilding?

My understanding is that if you put the boiler in its own fire rated room with its own exterior entrance then its not considered in a garage.

Three car garage. I can see the track on the ceiling for the garage door over the furnace.
Now people would always ask my brother construction questions because he was really good. He would most often say "sure, how much do you want to spend?"

 

[MarkM99]

Check with your provider but yes, enclose it in its own room or just drop the insurance on the building.

This is basically my dream garage, so I would have a hard time to drop the insurance on it.

 

[MarkM99]

Yes, a wood burning appliance of any kind is most times a no-no on a garage, insurance wise. Do you have room for another outbuilding?

Yes, I have a 10 acre property, but I had high hopes that this space might work. My wife basically said she would never go out into the cold to add wood. I also liked the thought of having my wood on pallets (which I do now for my wood stove in the house), and then moving it close by with my tractor.

 

[maple1]

You might be stuck. Short of just inquiring with different insurance companies. Even a solution involving partitioning off part of the garage and adding a separate entrance for it would require going outside for a quick trip to get in to it. Then there would be the question of how you'd deal with the wood. I get wanting it all inside. For me, that is my walkout basement.

 

[sloeffle]

My insurance company told me mine had to be a minimum of 50' from the house and if it was in a building it could not be a building attached to the house. My boiler is rated for an indoor installation also.

Personally I wouldn't want the boiler in my garage. Polar does a better job getting the smoke out of your face than HeatMaster because of the tubes over the door but they still smoke like a freight train when loading. Not unless you catch it when there's very little wood left and just coals.

 

[cumminstinkerer]

@sloeffle I would have to contest the smoke in your face on the polar, if I am patient enough, lol, to wait for fan to come on after opening the "storm door" on my polar I don't get any smoke in face, if I get in a hurry then it's a different story

 

[sloeffle]

@sloeffle I would have to contest the smoke in your face on the polar, if I am patient enough, lol, to wait for fan to come on after opening the "storm door" on my polar I don't get any smoke in face, if I get in a hurry then it's a different story

Yep, that definitely one thing I really really liked about the Polar. Not smelling like campfire for 5 months a year would be nice.

 

[cumminstinkerer]

@MarkM99 maybe just build a small room off the garage to house the boiler with a fire door between the two? I unfortunately had to put my Polar outside, I wanted to put it in my garage but the old farm garage is too short, it would just fit but I would not be able to pull the turbulators to clean it. To be honest though outside is not so bad, I have 1100 ft 1933 farm house, windows have been updated but thats about it, I run with 1500 gallons of storage, we got down to 5F here last night with wind and I only burned 1/2-2/3 of a full box load in the G2+, and that was with two showers and two loads of laundry as well.

 

[salecker]

Up here the issue is the height of the wood burning appliance off the floor.
If you put it on an 18" pedestal then it's OK in a garage.
I built a dedicated boiler building which eventually will be connected to my shop,after all the inspectors are done.
I don't have fire insurance.Having the boiler building is my fire insurance.

 

[hedge wood]

MarkM99 Over the last ten years I have put many 90 plus LP furnaces in out on acreages were the current or
new owners were updating their home owners insurance and the wood stoves and wood furnaces had to come out either the rate was too high with wood or they couldn't get insurance with wood. My Garn is in another building with in my cold storage pole shed. So far the insurance hasn't said its has to go. I have a load of wood in a trailer backup to a sliding door leading to Garn. I don't want to be out side loading wood in a boiler. I have two racks in the Garn barn and if its going to be zero or below for a while I load the racks up. They hold a cord of wood. Normally I just open the slider and unload out of the trailer right into the Garn. Hopefully you can get something worked out with a insurance company.

 

[Highbeam]

Canada has better rules about wood burners in garages. If your permitting department will permit the garage installation as they should then it's just a matter of finding a cooperative insurance company. I dumped state farm because of this issue but farmers was great about it. Not sure what your options in Canada are. State farm insurance company wouldn't allow a solid fuel burner in any outbuilding and would just drop my whole policy, I couldn't select to not have the shop building covered. I too have a detached 30x60 with a woodstove on an 18" pedestal. Permitted and insured in the US.

Quit calling it a garage. It's a 30x60 storage building with overhead doors.

 

[MarkM99]

Canada has better rules about wood burners in garages. If your permitting department will permit the garage installation as they should then it's just a matter of finding a cooperative insurance company. I dumped state farm because of this issue but farmers was great about it. Not sure what your options in Canada are. State farm insurance company wouldn't allow a solid fuel burner in any outbuilding and would just drop my whole policy, I couldn't select to not have the shop building covered. I too have a detached 30x60 with a woodstove on an 18" pedestal. Permitted and insured in the US.

Quit calling it a garage. It's a 30x60 storage building with overhead doors.

That is kinda also what is bugging me - all the people that have wood burning appliances in their homes, their garages/shops, etc. Hell I have a pacific energy wood insert in our house.

I have a call in with another insurance company, but possibly another building is the only answer, by that time though, it's hard to justify on the savings side of things.

 

[Highbeam]

That is kinda also what is bugging me - all the people that have wood burning appliances in their homes, their garages/shops, etc. Hell I have a pacific energy wood insert in our house.

I have a call in with another insurance company, but possibly another building is the only answer, by that time though, it's hard to justify on the savings side of things.

Not a terrible idea to have a dedicated boiler shed. Even stick it in an enclosed trailer. Your shop and house will be warm with reduced risk of fire, less mess, and less insurance problems.

A dinky shed or trailer can be a couple thousand bucks. This boiler project could hit 20k really easy.

 

[MarkM99]

Not a terrible idea to have a dedicated boiler shed. Even stick it in an enclosed trailer. Your shop and house will be warm with reduced risk of fire, less mess, and less insurance problems.

A dinky shed or trailer can be a couple thousand bucks. This boiler project could hit 20k really easy.

True, even say spending a couple grand on a shed and a concrete floor isn't much compared to the overall cost of the project. 0% chance my wife is going into a freezing cold night to help fill it though. I have a hard time keeping her on a routine of throwing a stick in the fire insert once and awhile.

 

[Highbeam]

True, even say spending a couple grand on a shed and a concrete floor isn't much compared to the overall cost of the project. 0% chance my wife is going into a freezing cold night to help fill it though. I have a hard time keeping her on a routine of throwing a stick in the fire insert once and awhile.

I thought one of the benefits of a boiler is that you only need to fire it once per day and that is an automated firing. Then, I would think part of your design is a backup fossil fuel boiler just in case you are unable to fire the wood boiler one day.

My point is don’t depend on the wife for this.

 

[Woodman1]

At anything close 20k I think I would be looking real hard at a closed loop geothermal. I've heard rumors the tax credit is going up to 50%

 

[sloeffle]

At anything close 20k I think I would be looking real hard at a closed loop geothermal. I've heard rumors the tax credit is going up to 50%

I have geo, it's not all it's cracked up to be. My signature line will tell you that. Yes, the system was installed properly. I've had mine installed for 13 or 14 years now and paid close to 20k then to install it. Off road diesel was > $2.00 a gallon then. Geo systems require lots of digging or wells being drilled. I'd expect a geo system to be 30 - 40k these days, no way can that pay for itself. ASHP with propane or NG has a much better payback outlook.

Make sure you look at the fine print on the credit too. Lots of people don't realize all a credit does is lower your tax liability. You can have a 20k credit, if you only owe 10k in taxes, Uncle Sam isn't going to to give you 10k back. Lots of guys have found this out with the tax credits for wood burning systems.

The OP is Canadian so I don't think it comes into play anyways.

 

[MarkM99]

At anything close 20k I think I would be looking real hard at a closed loop geothermal. I've heard rumors the tax credit is going up to 50%

I got some rough pricing and it was in the 50-60k here in Canada, and nothing that generous in credits. Air source heat pumps are around 4k.

I had considered it though (in my quest for radiant heating in my floors).

 

[Woodman1]

Well that's disappointing. If that credit really got up to 50% I was going to start looking into it pretty hard. It would definitely help on my tax liability. As far as price, a friend was just quoted 30k for a 4 ton system but that included 10k for all new ductwork. My biggest concern is how it feels coming out of the ductwork. In my opinion there is nothing worse than Luke warm air blowing around the house.

 

[peakbagger]

IMO comparing closed loop geothermal with biomass boiler is apples to oranges. A large shop unless its super insulated is going to need 100 to 200K BTU of heat capacity. Geothermal rule of thumb is 300 foot of vertical well per ton of heat (12000) BTU or 1000 feet of "slinky" horizontal buried pipe (I wouldnt trust either rule of thumb as heat transfer and resource availability. A system equivalent to wood boiler would be commercial system, my guess is $150 K

 

[peakbagger]

Sorry for the drift, Folks get confused on the US tax credits on renewables (wood, geo, solar). They are credits not deductions (which are worth zero to someone with a standard deduction. Deductions reduce your bottom line income (if they count) and then you are taxed on that bottom line income based on your tax bracket. Its better than nothing but not as good as a tax credit. A tax credit is deducted from the tax owed. As noted for the previous renewable credits prior to the recent IRA bill could not be carried forward so someone who did not have enough taxes owed only got the amount of credit for the amount of taxes they had paid in over the year plus whatever they may owe at tax time and might miss out (there were ways around that). The new IRA renewable tax credits appear to be able to be carried forward to future years. https://www.uc.edu/news/articles/20...=If owners owe less than,and will end in 2035.

As usual, I am not a tax accountant, do verify it with your accountant before taking the plunge.