Wood boiler stove

[puckerbrush]

I converted my garage to an office. I use one of the former bays downstairs. It’s 12 x 24 and it’s heated with a propane space heater. My wife has an office upstairs that’s 18 x 24, and it’s also heated by a space heater.

Here’s my challenge. I would like to use a woodstove located in the downstairs office to heat both offices. The downstairs ceiling is well-insulated, so heat wouldn’t just make it up there on its own. And I don’t want to just open up a section over the stove as a floor grate because we don’t want to hear each other. I’m a writer and on the phone a lot, and she’s a weaver with students. So the sound separation is important.

I’ve heard of boiler stoves in the U.K. but have never seen anything like it here. What I’d like is something like that. It could heat my smallish office and also heat water that would then circulate to baseboard heat upstairs. One last difficulty. We don’t have plumbing to the garage, so the circulating liquid would have to be anti-freeze. Does anybody make a boiler stove that would work like this? If not, has anybody here fabricated a similar system? Thanks.

 

[MDFisherman]

I would suggest you do some searching on this matter. The short answer is no, there is no easy/safe/cheap way to heat the room upstairs using the existing woodstove in your downstairs office.

Wood fired furnaces to heat water are available but are pricey and would require quite a bit to install. They are typically built to go outside in a shed of some sort.

If you would like to heat the upstairs with wood then you may want to look into installing a woodstove there. You may also want to consider a pellet stove.

Sorry I could not have been more help!

 

[mellow]

There are wetback options out there, the problem will be you will have to run the stove pretty hot to keep the cycling water hot enough to do any good, at the same time I think you will chase your self out of the room to get useful heat upstairs.

 

[PLAYS WITH FIRE]

Buderus makes a wood boiler that is also a stove. My buddy in Germany has one that he uses to heat the floor and to throw heat into the room. They have this brand here but the model may be another story. I have uploaded a pic..

 

[peakbagger]

A friend of mine has a home made version. He has set of baseboard fintubes plumbed up in rectangle that fits on top of his stove with temperature switch on a circ pump and safety relief. I think he has patio blocks on top of the fin tubes to retain the heat and make sure that the fin are in contact with the top of the stove.When the stove is hot enough the pump turns on and the warm water goes through a baseboard in his upstairs. He has it set up with some unions so he can remove the coils if the power it out and he want to just run the stove. His system is somewhat more sophisticated but that is the basic concept. Just remember it has to run as long as the stove is warm otherwise the stuff could boil and pop a safety. This would work with glycol.

 

[puckerbrush]

Thanks for the responses. I checked out the wetbacks as they are known in Australia and New Zealand, and they might have something that could work, but couldn't find the equivalent in this country. And couldn't find a Buderus model either. Most likely, I'll need to fabricate something myself, sort of like what Peakbagger described. Peakbagger, does your friend's system use a storage tank or is all the fluid in the pipes? Any provision for adding fluid? And does the pump run from a thermostat upstairs? Thanks.

 

[Theodore]

I'm currently building a system in my shed. My wood stove is going to be in the shed along with an old water heater for a storage tank. I have laid the pipe under ground into the basement of my house (you could do the same just lay it on the ground instead of having it underground), and from there I will hook up two radiators to give off the heat. Once the system is done I will post my setup. I'm still somewhat in the design process.