Woodstove vs. Boiler vs. Both... wise timeline?

[Kankujoe]

The more I read the more undecided I become. I am new to all this and want to make wise choices as I transition away from propane to wood burning. I live in a 2850 sq ft home that I built in 1995. It is a two story w/ a 20x30 great room addition (2850 sqft total not including basement which is approx 1800 sq ft). Exterior walls are 2x6 w/ R19 insulation, attic has R38 insulation, and fanfold insulation over the exterior wall sheathing and finally vinyl siding (I may change to a log siding down the road). Furnace is a high efficiency Lenox, HWH is a high efficiency AO Smith, great room has a Carrier electric wall unit both heating & cooling. I live on wooded acreage so I have an unlimited firewood supply.

I got bit pretty bad last winter with propane costs (which are ever increasing). I would like to transition to woodburning to reduce fuel costs and use wood as my primary fuel w/ propane as the backup. Since I am a newbie I am not sure which way to proceed. Should I start with a woodburning stove such as the Englander NC series (also not sure which size to go with)? Or should I start with a woodburning boiler like a Central Boiler system? I assume that either way I go I will likely recover my initial costs given the current & future propane costs. Should go with both right away or transition over time.

How much could I expect to offset propane costs with a woodstove? Or do a I need a boiler to really have any savings?

 

[Todd]

That's a big place to heat with a wood stove. If you have a centrally located stove and an open floor plan a wood stove will work nicely for the main floor. If your looking to heat the basement as well, then you may need another stove down there. It would be hard to heat all that square footage with just one wood stove in the basement. A good Boiler may be the better choice for all house heating.

 

[Kankujoe]

I do not plan on heating the basement unless or until I get a boiler type furnace. It stays between 55 & 65 degrees year round without any direct heat.

Mainly I'd like to heat the great room and the ajoining dining room and kitchen on the first floor. My wife & I also have offices on the 1st floor that we've supplimented heating w/ ceramic space heaters. On the 2nd floor is our master bedroom & master bath which we've heated with an oil or water filled radiator type space heater. The other rooms on the 2nd floor (3 bed rooms & bath) are not used except as closet space. I plan on closing them off during the winter.

One concern I have with a boiler type furnace is it freezing up during our annual 10-12 day absence for the Christmas holiday (we always visit family at Christmas time) or the occasional long weekend away (3-4 days).

 

[RedRanger]

That's a big place to heat with a wood stove. If you have a centrally located stove and an open floor plan a wood stove will work nicely for the main floor. If your looking to heat the basement as well, then you may need another stove down there. It would be hard to heat all that square footage with just one wood stove in the basement. A good Boiler may be the better choice for all house heating.

Yes, 2 stoves are much simpler and not as complicated as a wood boiler. Keep what you have and add the 2 stoves. Simple is better imho.

 

[Todd]

There are wood/electric or wood/oil boilers. When your gone and the fire dies out the other takes over. Take a look at the Boiler room forum. Lots of good advice over there as well.

 

[BrotherBart]

That setup sounds like it is just asking for an add-on wood furnace. If the Lennox is forced air, which in Missouri I suspect that it is. The forced air through the ducting would heat the upstairs while the residual heat from the furnace would heat the basement.

Second coldest I have ever been was in St. Louis one night years ago. Nothing between there and the North Pole but a barbed wire fence and I think it had blown down.

Edit: Never mind. If he is thinking Central Boiler then he must have hot water heating.

 

[webbie]

I would probably vote for the Woodstove, all things being equal. The reasons are many...

relatively temperate climate
cost less
higher efficiency in most cases for delivered heat
use less wood, all in all.
Allow for some use of your other options such as the wall unit (heat pump) and LP - depending on the pricing.

Central heat is nice, but really only for the person who want to do 100% of their heat all the time and has the wood and energy to do so. You also lose that "sit around the fire" things.

 

[Kankujoe]

I'm getting more & more confused but atleast the consensis seems to be that I don't need to send 10-15K on a boiler furnace. So many variables... which path to take?

So... if I go with a woodstove (or 2) for my main floor (approximately 1700 sqft) what size should I go with? Should I buy a stove that will heat 1000 or 1500 sqft or go bigger (2500)? If I go bigger will it produce too much heat to be comfortable in my greatroom? If I put the woodstove in my greatroom will it help heat the rest of the 1st floor and rise up to the 2nd floor?

I don't see any need to put a woodstove in the basement since it is not currently used as living space... except for our exercise room (under the greatroom) and storage, and historically it has always stayed above 55 degrees even in sustained periods of sub-freezing temps.

With a woodstove should I see an appreciable drop in my propane use? We currently use propane for cooking, heating (Lennox forced-air furnace) & hot water (AO Smith HWH). How do I calculate what percentage of propane is used for my hot water vs. heating. Our oven & stovetop cooking is really minimal since we use lots of electric cooking gadgets.

 

[Todd]

Most people here agree, a little bigger is better. You don't have to fill your stove up to the gills every time. You can run a big stove half full and get the same heat as a small stove and still have enough left over for when you really need it or want long over night burns.

You will definitely see a drop in your propane bill. Especially if you run the stove 24/7. My stove burns 24/7 and my furnace rarely kicks on and I have it set at 68. I'm heating 1800 sq ft.

 

[begreen]

Ah, when I kept seeing Lennox furnace I thought it was a warm air system. BB is correct, if you want to heat the whole house up to 72, an add-on wood furnace is a good solution. It will need to be managed, but will definitely heat the whole place if sized correctly. Alternatively, adding a wood stove will definitely save you fuel and will be less expensive. If the great room is closed off in the winter, it will save even more.

Think of the wood stove as an area heater. A big stove in the great room addition will heat the great room very well, especially if there is a ceiling fan. It will heat the rest of the first floor moderately. That is, it won't be as warm as in the great room, but may be just a few degrees cooler if the hot air has a good convective pattern. If it's 75 in the great room and 70 in the rest of the first floor, that may be just fine. However, I would expect the upstairs to end up even cooler, maybe 65 degrees. If the wood stove could be centrally located in the core of the house, then it would likely do a great job heating the core of the whole house, but the great room would be a bit cooler.

Then there is the option of having 2 stoves. That would cover heating, but will mean a lot of wood consumed and more work to keep the homefires burning.

 

[Kankujoe]

I guess at I'll start looking at woodstoves for the greatroom. This room is where we spend most of our time. Next comes the master bedroom.

Thanks for all the replies and the advice... it is much appreciated.

 

[webbie]

Read this:
https://www.hearth.com/econtent/index.php/articles/choosing_a_wood_stove/

You might end up choosing a stove by the amount of wood you intend to burn as opposed to the biggest you can get, etc.

It would seem a mid-sized stove of 2 to 3 cubic feet firebox would be fine - if you are burning soft or punky wood you can go toward the larger size, if real nice hardwood (or cat stove) you can go toward the smaller.

 

[Highbeam]

Oooh, that article is absolutely bogus in the cords of wood used per fire box size section. According to the table, in a cold climate you can expect to burn between 2 and 4 cords all winter. Bah! I'm set to finish up 7 cords in my moderate climate. If they're going to give a range with a 100% spread then they could at least be on the high end.

 

[Kankujoe]

Read this:
https://www.hearth.com/econtent/index.php/articles/choosing_a_wood_stove/

You might end up choosing a stove by the amount of wood you intend to burn as opposed to the biggest you can get, etc.

It would seem a mid-sized stove of 2 to 3 cubic feet firebox would be fine - if you are burning soft or punky wood you can go toward the larger size, if real nice hardwood (or cat stove) you can go toward the smaller.

My woodburning goal is to cut my propane useage by 50% or maybe 60% using a stove. If/when I become more ambitious I will add a furnace/boiler and attempt to cut propane by more. So I guess I would be burning wood every day to every other day during the cold months. I live on 60 acres which is mostly wooded (mature hardwoods) so I pretty much have an unlimited supply if I want to harvest it (both dead & live trees). I will be burning primarily oak, hickory, locust, hedge (maybe?) and some sycamore (mainly just to get rid of down branches & limbs). I would like some imput of pros & cons of my available firewood stock. I will also burn other times just for the pleasure of having a fire.

Thanks for all the suggestions and for pointing me in the right direction. I especially appreciate being directed to web-links so that I can learn more.

 

[jebatty]

[quote author="Highbeam" date="1213068795"]Oooh, that article is absolutely bogus in the cords of wood used per fire box size section. According to the table, in a cold climate you can expect to burn between 2 and 4 cords all winter. Bah! I'm set to finish up 7 cords in my moderate climate. If they're going to give a range with a 100% spread then they could at least be on the high end.[/quote

I guess experience varies a lot. Our wood stove is just shy of 2 cu ft firebox, we heat 1500 sq ft solely with wood (24/7), our northern MN winters are typically very cold and long (heat from Sept thru May), we burn only aspen (60% heat value of red oak), and 4 cords would be pretty normal, maybe pushing 5 in the extreme. Living space temp comfortable 68-74.

 

[Redox]

Welcome to the forun, Kankujoe. I understand your indecision and confusion. Only a fool would jump into something like this uninformed. I'll throw in my two cents here...

1. Start splitting wood NOW. It will need a while to season and it's getting late.

2. Start off with a wood stove. If you have never burned wood seriously, it takes time to develop that lobe in your brain that makes you want to check the stove every few hours. You might wind up being disappointed in the boiler simply due to operator inexperience. I'm making some huge assumpions here, so don't take it the wrong way, K?

3 You can make a huge dent in your fuel bills with just one stove. I have managed to knock the bejeesus out of our gas bill with a single medium sized stove. Last winter, our worst bill was $80, but we have natural gas. We also are using gas for everything and the majority of that bill was for the everything else part. There are one box solutions for heat and hot water (OWB, gassifier), but they are significantly more expensive and complicated.

4. Educate yourself on the various makes and models and hang around here for a while. You WILL get an opinion on just about any model out there. Start looking into the obstacles you are going to run into (like chimney issues) and have them thought out by the time you buy.

Now for opinion: The Englander might be an excellent first stove in the main living area. Not the prettiest little thing out there, but certainly functional. Maybe after a couple of years with it, you decide to sell it or move it to another part of the house and splurge on the nicer and larger stove. In the meantime, you have saved a bucket of money to put toward that new stove. I'm not sure when the best time to buy is as I'm hearing that it's a byer's market and a seller's market at the same time. I would want to have a deposit on something by the end of August, if it isn't already in the house by then.

Good luck and stick around. It only gets better!

Chris

PS: Buy a Quad! %-P