Wood stove over wood furnace?

[Fuel]

i have been thinking about putting in a wood furnace in my basement, but it seems like a person could buy a wood stove for much less. My question is that would a stove just burning in my basement radiat enough heat up through the floor to do any good or should i stay with the add on furnace idea. My basement isn't finished off at all, all open and used just for storage. Also, i have a fireplace now, but it is a non airtight until that just eats wood and fills the house with smoke. Someone please help me find another way besides turning up the gas furnace.

thanks
Josh

 

[BJ64]

I'm going to assume you are in East Nebraska or along the Platt River some where.

The stove is cheaper but it would be more effective on the first living floor than in the basement. If you scan around on the forum you will find some people have trouble getting the heat from a stove to move up if the floor plan is too closed. In some cases it is too open between the first and second floor and the heat cooks the second floor.

The furnace (I assume) has air ducts coming and going that would solve those problems but it would be less effective during a power outage.

Take a look at how your gas furnace is working. If the gas furnace is air duct dependent from the basement I'd say the stove in the basement would be hard to make work. I don't know, but a wood furnace might be able to just tap into the existing system and go with it.

I think you are leaning towards a stove of some sort. Do you think you could set a stove or insert at the old fireplace? Keep in mind, it would be good if you could put a 6 inch liner down the chimney for the new unit to work at its best.

Hope this helps!

 

[Fuel]

i really want to buy a hot blast 1557M, but they are expensive. THe fireplace that i hace is a Marco insert style but isn't air tight so it just burns wood and u get little to no heat out of it. My basement is all open and unfinished but yes, my gas furnace is downstairs with ductwork that i could pipe right into with the wood furnace. I was just wondering how well it would work to have a wood stove in the basement and keep the basement at about 85 with that(temps down there now are around 50)

btw, i am near Neligh NE. So yes actually the Elkhorn River

 

[BJ64]

btw, i am near Neligh NE. So yes actually the Elkhorn River

I was wondering about your wood supply. I used to come and go at Ericson, North Platte, and Thedford, NE and did not see much of it.

I see what you say about the fireplace. I was thinking it might have been and old brick job we could set something in but it is not.

Dude, I'm thinking you may be best off going the furnace route, but hang on because there are some guys here that know more about that stuff than I do. I hate that because of the money deal.

To help these guys the know more than I do, lets get some more info that they can work with.

How much can you open up between the basement and main floor?
How many square feet in the basement and main floor?
How is the house and basement insulated towards the outer walls and how is the floor insulated between the two areas (if at all)?
Anything else you can think of like you dog's last name and how is your horse breed up.

If there is a way to make something work, this bunch will be happy to help figure it out.

BTW, you know who Two Eyed Jack was, right?

 

[Fuel]

wood supply is more than i will even be able to burn up and is all free, I live about 5 miles from the Cedar Creek bottom and there is all the standing, bark off Ash, elm, oak, u name it down there for the taking.

I think that i am going to have to go with a furnace, Tractor Supply Company here is trying to sell out their winter stock of Hot Blast 1557M already and have them marked down to 995. Hope my tax return is big this year, and they still have one when it comes!

 

[Todd]

If you don't plan on insulating the basement it would just be a waste to install a stove down there. But if your basement will be finished off and you can install a stove near the stairwell it may work. There will be a vast difference in temps between floors, could be 5-10 degrees depending on the floor plan and insulation. A wood furnace will give you even heat through out the house and also heat the basement, but you won't have the fire view. Good luck.

 

[Stephen in SoKY]

I had a wood furnace like you're considering in a basement essentially as you decribe. I now have a freestanding wood stove in my living area as this house has no basement. Unless you're plagued with frequent/long power outages, I cannot express how much happier I was with the furnace. There's no comparison to the convenience of having all the mess down in the basement, the heat was more even, it was just far less work than my current stove. I liked it so much I brought my furnace with me & still toy with the idea of digging a basement for the stove and additional storage.

 

[BJ64]

I know the unit you are talking about and it should do you fine.

It is not the most popular stove here on this forum because it is non EPA, takes more wood, and dose not have name brand on it, but in your situation - it is better than buying fuel.

Get some advice from a local heat and air guy on how wire it up and do the ducts. The reason I say that is because he will have the parts when or if you will need them. From here you will get the best advice on running the chimney. That will make a big difference on stove performance and address the safety issues.

You are thinking this process through. That puts you ahead of most that try this stunt.

 

[Fuel]

which furnace does everyone one here like, also i work for a construction company and we do our own HVAC so that part is simple for me.

I was going to run a heavy gauge steal irrigation pipe(6 5/8") up on the outside of the house for now for a chimney and if it doesn't draft like it should i will later lay block around it and insulate between the block and pipe

 

[reaperman]

First off I have had both, this doesnt make me a expert though. There are many wood furnaces on the market, many under 2k, which is in line with what a nice wood stove costs even less than a lot of stoves. Will heat radiate upstairs? In my case it did, somewhat, but there are cool spots and hot spots, and just some spots that never get warm. The basement, yes will be hot, if you have a concrete floor, that will suck the heat from the basement when the wood stove shuts down. With a wood furnace, your heat will be distributed evenly upstairs. A wood furnace will consume more wood than a wood stove will, or at least in my case it does. But once your home is heated to a desired temp, a wood furnace will keep it their easily. I'm not sure what your chimney situation is, but if your leaning towards a wood stove, you may want to consider putting it upstairs. The chimney would be shorter and cost less than if it were put in from the basement. It would be easier getting some heat to your basement, from upstairs if you had a wood stove on the main level, and just ran the blower fan on your gas furnace to circulate the air throughout the home and basement. This is also a good method for cooling down the upstairs if it gets too warm from the wood heat.

 

[Stephen in SoKY]

I used Simpson Dura Plus. Bought most of it from TSC on the clearance you're looking at now. BTW, I was sorely disapointed in the furnace until I installed a barometric damper. Completely changed the heat output for me. They're controversial on this forum, but in my case it was the best thing I did, without it, I had very disapointing heat output.

 

[EatenByLimestone]

My father had a coal stove in his basement that he made a sheet metal bonnet for. He had fans connected to the original FHA ductwork. He heated for years with it.

Matt

 

[wellbuilt home]

I think its kinda nice to have the heat ducked or piped thru the house . I would like to heat my hot water with wood . The problem is that the furnaces burn so much more wood . I have a friend that has a wood boiler in his garage and he is burning a cord of wood every 4 or 5 days when its cold . His house is 4000 feet but that's 16 full cord I use 31/2 to 5 cord . My house is over 3000 feet and some of the far rooms are a little cool but only when its 15o .When its around 30 the temp is even . There are a lot of people with stove in the basement and heat the whole house . If you don't live in the basement i would try to find a place on the 1 floor for it . John

 

[savageactor7]

Fuel if you can get free wood then OK that's good.

Back in the 80's this fella I knew had a oil fired wood stove in his unfinished basement. He liked it cause it was even heat, you loaded the stove and the oil burner would catch the wood on fire then stop. The oil stove would also turn on if you ran out of wood. I suppose you could burn gas too.

My recollections was that it would take bigger/longer chunks than you'd ever put in a free standing stove. He also put in an out door cellar entrance that made bringing the wood in very easy. I thought it was pretty cool at the time but looking back now...it was a young/healthy mans operation.

just say'en -I appreciate function more than design so I would retrofit/demolish the most silver plated, gauche fireplace ever built to accept a free standing stove than waste coin putting in an insert.

 

[johnsopi]

Check out the Yukon /Eagle wood furnaces. I have the Big Jack works great. Only wish there was a viewing window on the door.

 

[ccwhite]

Go with the furnace. You can't beat having a blower circulating the heat to every corner of the house. I've even found with mine that in a power outage I just burn as usual and the heat will still just naturally flow through the ductwork and you can feel the heat coming out of the registers. Without the blower you will have cold spots.
As far as brand goes I have and am quite impressed with the Woodchuck 2900. You can check em out here.
http://www.meyermfg.com/woodchuck.php

If you'd like to see my setup. I combined the woodchuck with an electric heat pump. I let the heat pump take care of the heat until it gets down to about 35 degrees and the fire up the wood furnace. My pics are here.
https://www.hearth.com/econtent/index.php/forums/viewthread/31660/

I had a mendota dual fuel wood/oil furnace before this and I couldn't imagine running a stove not connected to the ductwork.
Just my $.02 hope it helped.

 

[Fuel]

thank u, yes i think that i am sold on the idea of the wood furnace now

 

[mike1234]

When I bought the house it had 3 wood stoves, one in kitchen, very efficient, very smoky, chased us out of the kitchen with heat or smoke, or both. One in the living room, warmed the living room, one downstairs in the family room, heated the family room and the bedroom next to it a little. Too bad for the other 3 bedrooms, it was going to be cold!! And I couldn't keep up with feeding 3 stoves, and everyone complained they were cold, and I burned propane to keep the place 68.
A furnace heats the whole house, and I only feed it, the house is 74, everywhere, everyone has stopped complaining, and I only have to see the propane guy once a year, for my propane hot water tank.
I vote for the furnace.

 

[Cowboy Billy]

I have been heating my POS house with a Johnsons wood furnace for 6-7 years. The stove can take a log 30" long which is nice as I like to cut my wood about 20" as the piles stack up better.

The house I am heating is 1380 sq ft. Built as a summer cottage in 1933 and now has five additions on it. And everything that was built wrong was continued on each addition. There are no sill plates on the block wall. It has a michigan basement. That means the basement is only 5-6 feet tall gotta watch you head walking around down there. And you cannot even get a kid in the crawl spaces ( would never put a kid down there anyways) I fixed what I could in the main basement where the wind blows between the floor joists but cannot get into the crawl spaces. Chip monks got under the siding four years ago and made tunnels in my insulation in walls and I can feel cold air blowing out of my switch plates and recepticals in the living room. The windows are Junk (at least now I know what not to buy for windows).

But even in below 0 weather I can keep this house at 75 deg with the stove alone! But it uses a lot of wood to do it. A nice thing about having the stove in the basement is that I can just pull out the window and through the wood down and all the mess stays there. I usually keep a weeks worth of wood in the house.

The big Problem with one is if you loose power it will over heat and burn the paint on the outside of the stove and smoke up the house badly. I have the furnace hooked into the heat ducts of the house. I have one cracked to heat the basement and keep my floors warm. But both pipes are loose so if I loose power I can pull them off and let the heat radiate into the basement. As long as I turn the stove to low.


Please ignore the mess!!

 

[ccwhite]

Cowboy billy, That's a furnace bud, not a stove. The furnace is definitely the way to go. A stove is just a firebox with no jacket around it. (ie: no way to hook it up to ductwork.) My furnace must have more space between the firbox and the jacket or maybe it's because I have a 20"X20" plenum instead of the 2 little 8" round ducts. But I have no problem with the furnace getting too hot in a power outage. Maybe I would though if I left the ash door open. I keep it closed up so it is choked down where the fire burns real low. If it is very cold outside I may need to go down and open the ash door for a few minutes to get it burning good and then close it up again. If so I would watch the temp. very closely.

 

[Cowboy Billy]

HI Charlie

For some reason I always want to call it a stove. To me a furnace is something that burns gas or oil.

Now that you got me thinking about it. It would work better if I did not have the 8" ducts reduced to 6" When I put it in I just took the ducts that went to the kitchen and utility room and routed them to the furnace. Also if I had a actual 8' basement rather than this 5'-6' head knocker the hot air would draft better and keep the jacket cooler. I just looked and there is only two inches of space between my firebox and the air jacket. Also on the blower motors there is a flap on it I think so that when gas furnace turns on it will not blow air out through the stove. When I replaced one motor I took that flap out but haven't done the other one. In this drafty old house I usually have the fire pretty well stoked up! I have been burning soft coal as well as wood for the last four years. It easily putts out twice the heat my gas furnace will!

Have a great day! Looks like I will be burning hot for the next few days

Billy

 

[CowboyAndy]

I'll give a little push towards a furnace, too. I have a Newmac wood oil combo and love it. Our house is 2100sq ft, and last year we went though approx 1400 gal of oil to keep out house at a balmy 65, with the upstairs usually about 5 degrees because there are no duct runs up there except one. Now, we are usually at 74-75 in there easily, and seems like the upstairs is equal to the first floor now. Yes, you will go though more wood but you will get more heat out of it too. after 4 1/2 months of 24/7 burning we have gone through about 3 3/4 to 4 cords of wood.

 

[ikessky]

Here's another vote for a furnace. I run a cheap Daka that I bought at Menards. I've been pretty happy with it so far. I only have one register in the basement and it keeps the temps down there at around 70-72 (radiant heat from the furnace itself also helps out). It keeps the house at 74 degrees very easily. There are some days where I just let my fire go out because the house gets too warm. I plan on running a few ducts out to the garage to help bleed some heat off.

 

[Badfish740]

I don't have my furnace yet (Englander 28-3500 picking it up on Monday) but here's why I decided to go with it. I have a 1200SF two bedroom ranch with a full basement. Initially I wanted a small woodstove for the living room like a Summer's Heat plate stove which can be had for $600-700. However, the more I researched, the more the price of that stove went up. Here is a list of what you typically need when installing a woodstove in a living/family room type area:

-Some sort of non-combustible floor under the stove.
-Either a non-combustible wall behind the stove or a lot of clearance between it and the wall.
-Wall thimble and assorted accessories if you're going through a wall then up.
-Chase up through the attic/second story and roof if you're going straight up.

The hearth also adds to the footprint of the stove which was an issue for me also because my living room is on the small side already. The furnace allows me to just set the unit on some concrete blocks in the (unfinished) basement and run the chimney out of an old window opening. No need for elaborate fire protection since all but one surface (floor joists above) are non-combustible. Now, this can certainly vary with what type of furnace you buy, how much chimney pipe you need since you're going from the basement, and how elaborate of a hearth you would build, so consider all of that. I decided that right now we don't have the $$$ to build the kind of hearth we'd like (floor to ceiling with a brick veneer), and that until we remodel the living room/kitchen, we wouldn't have the room for it anyway, so we went with the furnace. Here are the benefits of the furnace as I see them:

-Less "prep" in terms of combustible surfaces, etc...
-Less mess in the house
-Heat is evenly distributed via the home's existing ductwork

To be fair, here are the cons as I see them:

-Sitting in front of the fire in the basement next to the dryer isn't all that appealing
-No nice looking stove/hearth as the centerpiece of your living room
-Must walk down the steps in order check the fire
-Having a decent amount of heat upstairs requires a generator or battery backup for the blower

Later on once wifey and I change the house around a bit and start spending the $$$ saved on heating oil we'll look into getting a very small stove for the 1st floor partially for supplemental heat, partially just for the look and having a fire to sit in front of. For now the furnace will do us just fine.

 

[firefighterjake]

Last Summer I had a similar decision to make . . . only it was a toss up between pellet stove, wood stove and a indoor high efficiency add-on woodboiler.

I'll spare you why I ruled out a pellet stove (mainly because getting the make and model I wanted here in Maine was about near impossible.)

I liked the idea of a woodboiler (indoor) model due to its efficiency, volume (i.e. less filling) and the ability to heat the entire house -- that last part was a big positive in the pro- column.

However, I opted in the end to go with a woodstove due to the cost (cheaper), no need to build an addition (which I would have had to do with an add-on wood boiler), factored in cost to buy/repair/replace additional parts for a woodboiler such as pumps, valves, etc. compared to a woodstove, likelihood that I would use more wood and finally the inability to heat the house adequately without power.

For me personally, the woodstove was my best solution to heating . . . the choice made mainly due to the short-term and long-term costs and the way I intended (and have) heated my home. For you, the choice may or may not be different.