Outdoor Wood Burners

[Chad2660]

Does anyone have any experience with outdoor wood burners? We have a fairly small home (approx. 1,900Sq/Ft) and we are currently all electic. I have no experience with this and I'm wondering if investing in an outdoor wood burner would be a good option for us to cut our heating bills. The cheapest units appear to be about $3,000-$4,000, and I'd like to know if anyone could tell me their experience with these units.

Can anyone provide an estimate of how long it would take to get a return on the investment. I dont have access to cut my own wood so I'll need to purchase the wood as well. Also, how often do you need to re-load these with wood? Thanks in advance.

 

[Rustyiron]

Jump over to hearth.com It's a good forum for wood burning. You'll find that there are lots of ways to scroung free wood. You should look for a "Gassification" type wood boiler. They are much more efficent (less wood) and don't spew the nasty smoke that are slowly making the non "gassers" illegal. Do your homework and reasearch, it will pay off and you will not just cut your heating bills, you'll mostly eliminate them, particularly if you don't have to pay for your wood. It is a commitment (cutting, splitting, stacking and feeding) but It's good honest work that will keep you fit in body and soul, and somehow it provides a special warmth knowing that YOU made this heat! Just like a eating veggie's out of your garden.
If your heating with elec. now, your installation will require more than just your wood boiler.You'll need a way to distribute the heat thru baseboards or radiant tubing. If your elec, is forced hot air, you could add a "coil" and that will use your existing ductwork.

 

[Pete Judd]

New a guy about 20 miles from us, that had one made in Spokane Wa, that was over 1000 gallons of water. He had it in a out building about 50-75 feet from the house. He used it to heat the house, heat the hot water, and heat his greenhouse. I think it was 6-7 feet tall, and about 12 feet long. It had a very large fire box, and many 4 inch dia tubes running through the water. He had access to lots of large firewood, as many of us here in the PNW. He also burnt all kitchen waste, and a couple of times a month he cleaned out the fire box, and only the tin cans didn't burn. In the winter time, a fire every 2-3 days was needed. In the summertime maybe a fire a week for hot water. all of the waterlines where below ground in a 8 inch insulated pipe.

As for cost, it was around 4-5k, and with the free fuel, Paid for itself in 4 of years. Did not notice where you are located, but around here firewood, if you have to buy it costs 150-250 bucks a cord. And I would think that you could go through a cord pretty quick. Don't know how much you are paying for heating right know, but it may be cheaper to make your dwelling more eficent.

 

[scesnick]

I had one for three of the longest yrs of my life. I hated it and it absolutely ate wood. I thankfully sold it and bought an indoor wood/coal boiler and it is way way more efficient, ASME stamped and actually cheaper.

My burn time with the outdoor unit was no more than 8 hours. Now I can easily get 14-18 hours depending on the outside temps. The best part is that it is inside my garage and I no longer have to freeze my tail off while tending the boiler. The wife was no fan of feeding the outside unit when I was working because of this..

My boiler is wood/coal with an oil burner backup for when we are gone for an extended period of time.
I agree with RustyIron about the gasification unit. They are a bit more than the multi fuel unit i bought but they are highly efficient if you are burning strickly wood. i burn 90% coal.

AN outdoor unit is around $8,000. with that same money you could easily buy a multifuel boiler like mine and go to Lowe's and buy a nice shed to put it in. That way you would have all the mess outside still. A boiler that is way more efficient and ASME stamped and STILL save about $2,000. Not to mention the outdoor units are being banned left and right. This way you don't have to worry about that.

I bought my multifuel boiler here http://www.alternateheatingsystems.com/ They also have VERY efficient gasification boilers.

 

[Chad2660]

Thanks for the advice...this is definitely good information and gives me a good place to start researching.

 

[WayneB]

I would think you would be much farther ahead looking into a coal or pellet type boiler instead of going with an outside wood boiler.

If you research the gasification boilers the cost is right up there, but they are clean burning and extremely efficient. I believe, but not sure, that if you were to go with the gasification boilers you would also need a water storage container to store the heated water. Then it is sent to the different zones in your home. I researched them earlier but just could not justify the purchase price and space to install the unit and water storage. The company I talked with did not have a multi-fuel gasification system and did not recommend them. It is the leading edge technology for wood burning, but for our home we were looking in the low 9.000 dollar range and they had to do the installation on top of that.

Not sure what the cost of wood in your area is, but here I would have to pay around $100 a cord in grapple load (log length). To buy wood dry cut and split I would think the cost would be around $200 to $250 a cord (that is a full cord 128 cubic feet). We cut it off the our land so it only cost me the tool purchases plus maintenance items and operating cost. We burn about five full cords a year and I have ten or so cords cut and split that has been drying for nearly two years. We are right now working on our wood for 2013 so it is an on going process to stay ahead of the heating season. Heck we do call it heating season, believe it or not and it runs from October till May.

I would suggest you check around your area and find some people that are using wood or coal for heating and see what they are using and how happy they are with it. I think some of the coal furnaces with auto loading might be a good solution as long as you have a place for storage of the coal and want to deal with the waste product. My Nephew added a coal boiler onto his oil furnace about four years ago and he only uses the oil in the spring and fall as maintaining a coal fire is difficult during warmer days. He buys his coal locally and hauls it home himself. Not an easy or clean task.

Pellets are more popular around here, but most of the people I know that have them are small in room radiant heat units and are space type heaters. They seem to work fine with outdoor temperatures down to about zero degrees F. Again here the cost for pellets is around $259 a ton delivered. Need a place to store the 50 pound sacks.

We have a Vermont Castings Defiant wood stove that is our primary source of heat. The only time we turn on the oil furnace (forced hot water) is when we are going to be leaving the area for more than one day. Our house is pretty much an open concept design so the heat will get around to all the rooms. Further away we are from the room with the stove might require wearing a sweater on sub-sero days.

Up side we do not have an oil bill coming monthly, we are really warm in the room with the stove, I keep warm many times during the winter, cutting wood, splitting wood, stacking wood, hauling it in and then hauling it out, We love the smell of the wood burning.

Down sides include the learning curve on just using wood heating, chance of chimney fires (we have had a few of them), having to plan trips away from the house to make sure we have ample wood in the stove to maintain the fire, constantly having to keep a flow of wood dry inside for feeding the stove, the list of down sides could go on and on, but I think you get the idea.

Start adding up the cost of operation and it doesn't take to long to realize that turning up that thermostat isn't to bad of a deal either. You might even consider going with a large on demand hot water heating system (propane operated and adding radiant heating to the floors if your house is a single level and you can get to the floors from beneath. You would be running low temperature hot water to the radiant floor heater elements and it would also provide all of your domestic hot water needs.

Just food for thought, sorry for getting carried away...

Wayne

 

[IndyIan]

If you are buying wood or don't want to spend alot of time getting "free" wood, I wouldn't go with an outdoor furnace. Maybe some of the new ones are more efficient but a couple neighbors have them and they smoke up about 40 acres each on a still night while they are wasting wood with the long "burn" time. :confused2: There are advantages to them but everyone I talk to with one uses 3 times the wood to heat a roughly equal house.

I heat with a indoor mid size regency stove and go through about 2 to 3 cords a year in a similar size house to yours doing 95% of our heating. Its a bit messy bringing wood inside but its near the back door so its not too bad. We also went with a pro installation with the chimney inside I have almost no creosote in the chimney at the end of the year.

Anyways, you might want to crunch the numbers on spending $5k on making your house more insulated. Maybe then electric heat is cheap enough and you don't have to fool around with wood or coal or pellets at all. I like sawing and splitting but even with a forest 100' from my house, it does take time to do.

 

[dmccarty]

Firewood in my area is $200-250 per cord.

If I had to buy my own firewood it would be cheaper to run the heat pump.

There are quite a few outdoor wood burners in my area. Some of them are horrible. They smoke up one area pretty bad. I drove through this one area last night and it was a smoke fog for a good 1/2 mile. I WOULD not be happy if I had to live with that mess. There are four outdoor burners in that one area and they really can smoke up.

They are old burners though.

A guy up the road put a burner in a few years ago. He put it in an out building. If I had not seen what he was doing when he was building you would not know he had an outdoor burner. That thing smokes VERY little and I am sure 99% of the people who drive by his house have not clue he has an outdoor burner.

Since we have free firewood, seems like the trees are always dying, , all I have to do is make cord wood. We have a wood stove that we used to heat 2,500 sf house with LOTS of windows and 10 foot ceilings. I figure heating with wood saves us about $100 a month during the cold season.

As has been mentioned, there are indoor burners that work well, but they can be expensive and take up space.

It bears repeating but if I had to pay for firewood it would just be cheaper to run the heat pump. During December and January we burn a cord a wood a month. I do not think the heat pump would cost us $200-250 which is what a cord would cost if I had to buy firewood.

Later,
Dan

 

[KYErik]

In terms if economics (how long will it take to pay itself off). Take a look at your old electric bills.

Add your 4 cold winter month bills and then average your fair weather month bills (when you likely had no electric heat or AC running).

Take the fair weather average bill amount times 4 and subtract it from the 4 months of winter bills- you should then a have an approximate cost of how much you spend on the electricity you use to heat your house all winter.

So if it comes out to be $400, then it would take 10 years (winters) to break even on a $4k woodburner if you got the wood for free. Since you'll be buying wood, you'll need to calculate the cost of the wood.

Also keep in mind that electric rates might increase- especially if your area switches over to time of day pricing.

A few years ago, my dad installed an older Hardy unit. The house is about 1700 square feet and is insulated a fair amount and has good windows. He loads it every morning and evening and burns at least 3x the amount of wood that he used to burn when he heated with an indoor wood stove.

 

[elroy]

Take a look at this gasser.

Multi Fuel Stove | WoodMaster Flex Fuel Furnace Series | WoodMaster

They have a $2000 rebate going on right now. You can burn wood or wood pellets in the same unit.

Nice looking, lots of options.

 

[2diamondfarm]

I love my central boiler

 

[hydro2]

I have one and heat two homes. Have had it about 10 years. They do like their wood. That's for sure

 

[clemsonfor]

They use a ton of wood to keep going. Afriends neighbor has one and when they leave he will fill it for them. He said it will litteraly take a wheel barrow load of wood to fill it up. And you have to fill it every day when cold or everyother on cold days i think. If your house is 1900 feet, which isnt that small, i would get a wood stove or put an insert into your home. Even if your house is not to open (mines not) you can circulate the air with fans into the warm room. I have the big high valley catalyst stove and it can burn as an insert, like i have it, or as a free standing unit. I burn about a cord maybe less on cold days. The catalyst or EPA non catalyst stove use 30% less wood than the old stoves. I get plenty of heat from it and only load it every 8-12 hours. Once engaged it will put almost no visible smoke out of the chimney.

If you need to buy wood ($150-200 cord in my area) you will not come out cheaper, unless you buy it by the 7 cord 10 wheel log truck load and buck it and slit it yourself. There are plenty ways to get free wood, but it requires work. I cut on public land but live close to lots of public land. A fire wood permit is $10 to cut dead trees which there are plenty of! If you live in a subdivision with covenants forget about it! It will be messy and you will have sheds/and or piles and work areas with piles of wood in various stages the sizes or cars. You can get tree services to "drop" off wood for free at your house after removals. But you may end up with some 3ft in diameter, you need to have the stuff or muscle to deal with it! You can haul pallets from businesses and cut them up and burn them, it takes hundreds of pallets for a winter i would think as it will burn fast in such small pices. You can burn construction debris like untreated dimentional wood etc.

Tell us more about you and your area? Do you live in the country like me with just no land (my farm is 3 hours from my permanant residence) or do you live in a city? Do you own a chainsaw, have you ever spit wood, are you willing to buy a hydro splitter?

 

[bearhawk]

Does anyone have any experience with outdoor wood burners? We have a fairly small home (approx. 1,900Sq/Ft) and we are currently all electic. I have no experience with this and I'm wondering if investing in an outdoor wood burner would be a good option for us to cut our heating bills. The cheapest units appear to be about $3,000-$4,000, and I'd like to know if anyone could tell me their experience with these units.

Can anyone provide an estimate of how long it would take to get a return on the investment. I dont have access to cut my own wood so I'll need to purchase the wood as well. Also, how often do you need to re-load these with wood? Thanks in advance.

I would take a look at the pellet stoves.

 

[scesnick]

Take a look at this gasser.

Multi Fuel Stove | WoodMaster Flex Fuel Furnace Series | WoodMaster

They have a $2000 rebate going on right now. You can burn wood or wood pellets in the same unit.

Nice looking, lots of options.

pellets are $5.00 a bag in my area !

 

[Pete Judd]

We have a pellet stove in the living room, and go through about 2.5 bags a week to heat 1900 sq ft, in the worst part of the winter and found that if I turn on the fan in the master bathroom, witch is in the far end of the house, the heat will move through the house, but we are well insulated, 2x6 walls and R 38 plus in the overhead. Double pane windows. That said, during power outages, can run it with a cord and a cheap inverter off a car battery for a long time.

 

[SpringHollow]

I had one for three of the longest yrs of my life. I hated it and it absolutely ate wood. I thankfully sold it and bought an indoor wood/coal boiler and it is way way more efficient, ASME stamped and actually cheaper.

My burn time with the outdoor unit was no more than 8 hours.

You did something wrong in sizing your unit or picking the brand that you did or ? I heat my house, shop and hot water and can easily get a 24 hour burn if I so desire. Before I added the shop, it used about 15 - 20% more wood than an inside wood stove but my house was warmer and it provided the hot water as well. I also liked that there was no mess in the house and I did not have to pay for a new chimney nor worry about a fire in the house.

There is a huge variation in the quality and efficiencies of wood boilers. Family and friends liked mine so much that they asked that I become a dealer so they could get them as well. They have all been extremely happy with their wood boilers. Like any wood burning heating system, if you do not enjoy cutting your own firewood, they make less sense.

Ken

 

[scesnick]

You did something wrong in sizing your unit or picking the brand that you did or ? I heat my house, shop and hot water and can easily get a 24 hour burn if I so desire. Before I added the shop, it used about 15 - 20% more wood than an inside wood stove but my house was warmer and it provided the hot water as well. I also liked that there was no mess in the house and I did not have to pay for a new chimney nor worry about a fire in the house.

There is a huge variation in the quality and efficiencies of wood boilers. Family and friends liked mine so much that they asked that I become a dealer so they could get them as well. They have all been extremely happy with their wood boilers. Like any wood burning heating system, if you do not enjoy cutting your own firewood, they make less sense.

Ken

My unit was sized for 6,000 sq, ft and my house is 3,500 sq ft. Mine was a wood only unit. I live on top of an extremely windy and cold mountian.
There is no indoor mess with my new multi fuel boiler. It is inside my detached garage. It cost about one third as much as an outdoor unit and is way more efficient. I have seen many indoor coal boilers that are 50-60 yrs old and still going strong.
Not many outdoor furnaces around over 20 yrs old that haven't been welded and patched up at some point. Atleast that I have seen. Non pressurized will not last near as long as pressurized. Oxygen= corrosion.
I have yet to find an outdoor unit that is ASME stamped and the muti fuel indoor boiler is not in danger of being banned in my area.

Outdoor furnaces ( which are actually boilers since they are heating water) have been replaced by more efficient and longer lasting gasification and multi fuel pressurized units. They were nice in their time, but their time has passed.

 

[SpringHollow]

Mine has a 30 year warranty. I also use 3rd party anti-corrosion chemicals in addition to the anode. I know it sounds counter intuitive, but a small amount of oxygen entering an oxygen depleted sealed system is extremely corrosive so I would still protect your system. There are very good gasification outdoor wood boilers. Being inside or outside does not change the technology.

BTW, you definitely do not want to size your boiler based on stated square footage. 1000 sq ft in Texas needs a lot less heat than 1000 sq ft in Alaska. Where I live in NY, an "8000 sq ft" model is what we use on a 2400 sq ft house if we want 18 - 24 hour burn capabilities when necessary. I do not even know how one would compare sq ft ratings between companies. The knowledge of your dealer is very important when picking a boiler.

I am sorry your system did not work out for you but I am glad you now have something you are happy with.

Ken