Tl;dr is the ABC Concept 2 Wood cook stove/hydro combo a good product that can actually heat a whole house with hydronic system, domestic hot water, and cook food, or is this way too good to be true and won’t be enough? Possibly some more in depth questions for the boiler room forum later, but right now just asking about a specific wood stove option.
Hello, we’re planning a new off-grid house build, and trying to make some decisions on our future heating system.
We had hopes originally of incorporating in floor hydronic heating into the design, running off of a large wood-burning boiler in an attached garage. We also really want a wood burning cook stove in the kitchen for winter cooking and supplemental heat.
The engineer we’re working with to design the house pointed out some of the European wood cook stoves available at Obadiah’s that have boiler functionality built in, and could theoretically be connected to a hydronic heating system. Specifically the “ABC Concept 2 Hydro Wood Fired Oven with Boiler” may be big enough to meet our needs.
The house will be about 1500 sq ft, 900 first floor and 600 upper. We’re still working on the heating budget and r-values, but he estimated we’ll need a heat source that puts out a minimum of 65,000 btu. This product claims to transfer about 72,000 btu to water and over 13,000 to air.
There will eventually be a garage/shop built on, several years after, but at this point we’re just looking at something that will heat the house we will live in initially. We are attracted to hydronic concept to spread heat around evenly through the house, rather than having a hot kitchen and cold bedrooms.
For context we currently live in an owner built straw bale house that has some serious type one errors, the foundation is bad and the house is slowing sliding downhill toward a creek. We have a basement in this house with a big blaze king that heats pretty well, and a little stove in a side bedroom. We generate our own power through micro-hydro and solar. Our house is often cold in the winter, drafty and heats unevenly. We now have a much bigger budget and are investing in a professionally built, well insulted and designed home. No basement in the new house.
Anyway I have serious doubts that this product would actually be what we need. The salesperson at Obadiah’s was very positive about the concept, but it still seems wild to me that a cook stove with a small firebox could also be heating water that runs through a whole house, and do any of these things effectively. Makes me a bit nervous having this complex and potentially dangerous system that requires electric pumps to even use the stove at all.
Our structural engineer is not a heating/plumbing expert. Obviously we would hire and consult with professional hydronic heating and plumbing experts for installation when the time comes.
It’s just the idea of having only one wood stove in the house that does it all is very attractive. I guess my question is, does anyone run this kind of system, hydronic whole house heating/domestic hot water off of a coil in a small indoor wood stove, does it work efficiently? Or should we just rule out this idea?
I’m personally thinking we should keep it simple and just start with a big Amish cook stove in the house initially that throws out a lot of heat, like a Kitchen Queen or Heco. Run PEX line in the floor in the initial build, but install a standard wood boiler along with the shop build several years down the road.
Anyway curious about the experiences and opinions of others. I’d rather seem ignorant on the internet and figure out what we really want before we go to the professionals.
Thank you!
Hello, we’re planning a new off-grid house build, and trying to make some decisions on our future heating system.
We had hopes originally of incorporating in floor hydronic heating into the design, running off of a large wood-burning boiler in an attached garage. We also really want a wood burning cook stove in the kitchen for winter cooking and supplemental heat.
The engineer we’re working with to design the house pointed out some of the European wood cook stoves available at Obadiah’s that have boiler functionality built in, and could theoretically be connected to a hydronic heating system. Specifically the “ABC Concept 2 Hydro Wood Fired Oven with Boiler” may be big enough to meet our needs.
The house will be about 1500 sq ft, 900 first floor and 600 upper. We’re still working on the heating budget and r-values, but he estimated we’ll need a heat source that puts out a minimum of 65,000 btu. This product claims to transfer about 72,000 btu to water and over 13,000 to air.
There will eventually be a garage/shop built on, several years after, but at this point we’re just looking at something that will heat the house we will live in initially. We are attracted to hydronic concept to spread heat around evenly through the house, rather than having a hot kitchen and cold bedrooms.
For context we currently live in an owner built straw bale house that has some serious type one errors, the foundation is bad and the house is slowing sliding downhill toward a creek. We have a basement in this house with a big blaze king that heats pretty well, and a little stove in a side bedroom. We generate our own power through micro-hydro and solar. Our house is often cold in the winter, drafty and heats unevenly. We now have a much bigger budget and are investing in a professionally built, well insulted and designed home. No basement in the new house.
Anyway I have serious doubts that this product would actually be what we need. The salesperson at Obadiah’s was very positive about the concept, but it still seems wild to me that a cook stove with a small firebox could also be heating water that runs through a whole house, and do any of these things effectively. Makes me a bit nervous having this complex and potentially dangerous system that requires electric pumps to even use the stove at all.
Our structural engineer is not a heating/plumbing expert. Obviously we would hire and consult with professional hydronic heating and plumbing experts for installation when the time comes.
It’s just the idea of having only one wood stove in the house that does it all is very attractive. I guess my question is, does anyone run this kind of system, hydronic whole house heating/domestic hot water off of a coil in a small indoor wood stove, does it work efficiently? Or should we just rule out this idea?
I’m personally thinking we should keep it simple and just start with a big Amish cook stove in the house initially that throws out a lot of heat, like a Kitchen Queen or Heco. Run PEX line in the floor in the initial build, but install a standard wood boiler along with the shop build several years down the road.
Anyway curious about the experiences and opinions of others. I’d rather seem ignorant on the internet and figure out what we really want before we go to the professionals.
Thank you!
