Outdoor Wood Boilers 5 Years Experience

[Charlie]

OK.......after having an outdoor woodboiler providing heat to 5 buildings, my update.

It works, but requires a LOT of work. The boiler is a hungry beast requiring constant feeding. I knew that going into it and have NO regrets. The system paid for itself in less than two years minus my labor. Put the labor back in, the payback would be about 3years.

Efficency - The sales folks are fulla crap. They are NOT as efficient as they claim. They also smoke a lot. Not a problem if you live in da boonies like I do, but if you live in a neighborhood fulla houses......do not go this route. My nearest neighbors are over a half mile away and thus we have NO problems with the smoke. They do not smoke all the time, but when you stoke em up and they are not burning hot......they do smoke.

I am heating a small town....our resort. This includes 3 homes, all the domestic hot water we can use and two garages. One huge one. 5 buildings in total. A zillion square feet of heating space.

Is it worth it. YES! No doubt as it save us over 4 grand a year. Probably 5 grand. But! It is a lot of work.

For a single home, these things are the ticket for sure. For an energy efficient home.....mega ticket.

Prepping wise. The pumps require electricity. These things are NOT for the ZEN PREPPER. As a ZEN PREPPER we have back up free standing efficient fireplaces in all of our buildings. The wood boiler is just for providing us with local energy while the grid is still operational.

Anybody else out there doing this for both energy reasons and prepping?

 

[BH]

Not using one myself, but knew a guy that had one. He used green wood in his. Said that cured wood burnt to hot and to fast. He had a friend that brought him dump truck loads of green wood very cheap.

This guy did screw up, cleaned out the fire box and didn't remove the ashes from his little out building and it burnt to the ground while they were at work, during winter when it was cold. Had to have a new central furnace installed in the house cause it was the fastest way to get heat back.

Lost touch with him, don't know if he replaced the wood burner or not....

 

[Wise Owl]

We use wood to heat with yes. No to outdoor wood boiler. Reason? It requires electric to use it.......

We have yet another ice/wind storm bearing down on us. Probably the electric will do down yet again. Then the temps are supposed to be a high of 8 on Sat. If we get those 60 mph winds with the snow/freezing rain, Sat could be a nasty day up here if we had to rely on something that needed electric........

This is ice storm #7 for this winter. Out of the past 6 we have lost power for over 24 hours 3 times, at least 6 hours 2 times........

If/but more likely when tshtf we do not want to worry about how to heat our home if the grid is taken down for some reason.......

Also, we are not so young anymore and our freestanding woodstove is enough
work. I don't want to have to go outside in subzero weather to feed a boiler......

 

[Jackpine Savage]

Right now I'm in the planning stages for heating our new farm house. I've considered the outside woodboiler in the past but because of the efficiency I think I'm ruling them out. What I'm looking at now is an indoor wood boiler, probaby the Tarm brand. The house already has an off peak electric boiler, and we will be adding some radiant floor heat.

We will have a non-electric wood stove for backup as well.

 

[BigDog]

OK.......after having an outdoor woodboiler providing heat to 5 buildings, my update.

Charlie, what brand are you using? I've look at several manufactures, some offering dual fuel.

 

[Ravekid]

I have a new insert. The thing actually works pretty well, but it does have it's downsides. I really wish I knew of these things prior to getting this insert.

#1: Firebox size. The amount of space this thing heats is plenty for my house, especially if I cranked it up. The problem is that the firebox is so small, unless you have some very small pieces of wood, it is hard to pack it full of wood because wood could fall toward the door and totally black out your view. This can be dangerous because you won't know when it's safe to open the door. After getting many good comments here, I know the best way to go is to cut a lot of the 16" logs in half and lay them front to back instead of long ways. This and spliting a normal wood log another time seems to do the trick.

#2: Insert vs. free-standing. If you insert the stove, you loose a lot of heat. The blower needs to be on to really get any significant heat. When the guys come out to clean it, I am going to ask if there is anyway to pull it out. It looks like the flue pipe goes through the top only, no back connection. However, when they installed it, they used a flex type pipe to connect to the existing flue. I hope they can just extend that. This will require the carpet infront of the stove to be torn up with fireproof tile placed. If I had it to do over again, I would have likely purchased the 'Hearth Heater" model and paid extra to lay the tile (or do it myself.

The next home I get will be a freestanding stove or hearth heater. It really sucks to need electric to run the blower. This year is looking like we will be looking for a generator that can run this blower.

 

[summerthyme]

We have a Woodmaster. LOVE IT!!!

We switched from an indoor wood boiler to the Woodmaster when the Buderus died after 22 years. The outdoor furnaces are NOT *inefficient*... but they aren't much- maybe any- more efficient than an inside boiler.

What we love: The Buderus required refueling EVERY FOUR HOURS in cold weather, day and night. That meant we slept very cold, or we got up at midnight.... and you still had to rebuild the fire from scratch at 4:30 am when we got up to milk the cows. It was sized and the system was designed by a professional, so it wasn't that the furnace was too small. It had more to do with the environmentalists and their morbid fear of "slow burns" "smoke" and pollution... the thing simply couldn't be adjusted to hold a fire.

The woodmaster will hold a fire, once full, for anywhere from 24-48 hours, depending on outdoor temps and how much wind we have. It's thermostatically controlled, and it WORKS that way. We set the house thermostat to 68 degrees.. the house- ALL of it- is 68 degrees. That doesn't sound so amazing to someone with gas or electric central heating... believe me, for wood heat, it's amazing!

We can use BIG wood... the indoor boiler required that the wood was split down to between 4" and 6" diameter max! PITA, believe me! This will take a 36" long log up to 30" diameter. Not that we can lift one that big... but the boys are designing a wood trolley which will pick up monster logs with tongs and load them in...

NO MESS IN THE HOUSE. And along with that... HANDLING THE WOOD MUCH LESS. We don't have to dump the load of wood, drop it down the stairs, carry it over to the storage area and stack it anymore. We just back up to the wood area, unload it directly from the trailer to the stack, and we're done. No more shoveling up piles of bark and dirt from the basement and carrying it outside. Come to think of it... no more mice in the cellar, either!

WE HEAT OUR HOT WATER FOR THE HOUSE AS WELL, with it. And we're planning on installing piping and a heat exchanger to our milk house this summer... with the price of propane fuel, that hot water heater has been costing us $150 a month!!! We won't run the woodburner JUST for hot water.. but it's an essentially free "fringe benefit". Cuts our house electric bill by about $30 a month when we're heating with wood.

A couple of things to really watch- the underground pipes vary in quality and insulating value GREATLY from brand to brand (and, I suspect, from dealer to dealer). Have them show you what they use, explain the R value (if they can), get a feel for what they'll be using. You will lose a LOT of heat through a single copper pipe in the ground, believe me!!! We had a problem with leaks in the pipe (installer installed it wrong- it figures) so we added a second, heavy pipe over it. We can notice the improved efficiency that extra layer gave us. I'd consider adding another insulated layer when installing one if you can.

Make sure you get a furnace big enough to heat what you have to heat... but don't go crazy and get one way too big. Empty space in the furnace box is expensive, and burns the wood faster.

On the "electric problem". It's not one, believe me. The Woodmaster we have is actually a DC system. I had planned on setting up an inverter and battery backup for it. Didn't have to use the inverter... it's already there. We have an automatic switch set up (designed my one of my sons) which immediately starts the system using the battery power if the grid goes down. It recharges the batteries once the power comes back, all automatically. If we had an extended outage, we'd either hook up the solar panel trickle charger, or we'd switch out batteries and charge them in the pickup truck or tractors.

Smoke... yes, they can be smoky. BUT... it's not that they are MORE smoky than a woodstove in the house or a fireplace (unless you burn trash in them.. sort of dumb), but the stovepipe is so low to the ground... you notice the smoke more. If it bothered us (it doesn't- the prevailing winds blow it away from the house, and like Charlie, our nearest neighbors are far enough they wouldn't notice even if they weren't burning wood themselves), we'd extend the stack up to 25' or so. Problem pretty well solved. Wood burning in a suburb is going to generate smoke complaints no matter what you're burning it in, I'm afraid...

Maybe the best part of this is the complete peace of mind. We've always burned wood, certainly aren't afraid of fire, or nervous about a wood fire in the house. But this... there simply is NO risk. No chimney fire risk, no hot ashes in the metal barrel in the basement.. it's all 30 yards away from the house.

Summerthyme

 

[texastee]

I wish they made some kind of wood fired air-conditioning system....Barely had to heat my home this winter....Supposed to be around 80 this afternoon....

 

[Airborne Falcon]

I wish they made some kind of wood fired air-conditioning system....Barely had to heat my home this winter....Supposed to be around 80 this afternoon....

Yeah, see, that's us. It's near 72 degrees here - and I am about to head to the golf course. But I get a call from a buddy of mine up in Cleveland and he is telling me it is bad up there.

Of course, once every five or six years when we get a freak of nature ice storm down here - I'm usually wishing we had more heat. But we have yet to really need anything more than this gas-fired log stove we've got and the Empire wood stove down in the bar area of the home. I cannot imagine needing all the heat some are talking about for three or four months out of the year.

Now, if they could come up with a better cooling system, I would be all over that. But with the humidity down here .... whew.

Russ

 

[abbershay]

if you dont have your water heater hooked up to it you can run the water through the system and this will work as a house cooler.

 

[Charlie]

I wish they made some kind of wood fired air-conditioning system....Barely had to heat my home this winter....Supposed to be around 80 this afternoon....

It is available from Empyre. I talked to them about this several years ago. Uses the same technology as a propane refridgerator.

Imagine........ Honey, it is sure is hot out....would you go throw a log on the fire so we can cool down the house?

 

[Charlie]

Charlie, what brand are you using? I've look at several manufactures, some offering dual fuel.

Empyre

They now have a new model which is much more efficient and less smokey. As far as I know they are the only ones so far with this technology.

 

[Shuswap]

Charlie, Tnxs for thread. I am putting a wood boiler in my new house. It is an inside boiler, home built and I need all the info I can get. My son welded the new boiler. Made from 2 lenghts of pipe, one 24 inches and the other 30 inches. It holds 45 gals of water, a very professional job. Hoping to only fill with wood twice a day. I am installing battery power system so the electric power will be covered. The boiler wood box is 30 inches long so it will burn a lot of wood. Wood is cheap here where I live and I need the excercise for sure. Will let the forum know how we progress here.

Shuswap

 

[sssarawolf]

Wow

Its been 5 years all ready Charlie, I remember when you put that in. Time flys.

 

[BigDog]

Empyre

They now have a new model which is much more efficient and less smokey. As far as I know they are the only ones so far with this technology.

Thanks for the info Charlie

 

[Charlie]

-27 here a couple of days ago. The beast was hungry, but it kept all of our resort homes nice and toasty.

The pros have been mentioned above, but I will repeat them.

The fuel here is plentiful and free. Takes work, but what the heck.

The mess is all outside and your home is well heated, all the hot water you can stand and NO DUST like you get with a indoor unit.

NEVER before we put in this unit have we been so warm. It is easy to turn up the thermostat while looking around and seeing all kinds of dead trees standing there that need to be harvested. I often get paid very well to harvest "problem trees" from neighbors. I do it for about half of what the professional tree harvesters charge and grin when I haul home their "messy stuff".

Cons

Work, work work. You gotta feed em.

Smoke......minor once you learn how to season your wood properly and stoke them at the right time. If you stuff a buncha wet gooey junglewood in them, yah, they smoke. If you put in nice pre-dried wood, they burn very clean. (Imagine that!?!?!?)

Electricity requirement. If you are running pure hydronic, the pumps do not take a lot of juice, but they DO require electricity. As mentioned before we have free standing fireplaces in our resort cabins and two units in our house that do not require electricity, so we can go back up in a hurry.

Advice. DO NOT run water in these things. This will cause rust, corrosion issues even with the stainless steel models. (which we have). Spend the bucks and put in "RV Antifreeze" so you can forgedaboutit if you do not want to stoke the system. Thus, you will have no issues with the system sitting there even if it goes mega cold. Without the anti-freeze, the pipes/system will freeze into a gob and pipes will break, etc.

On the refridgeration issue, this is being worked on. www.burnsbest.com Check out the refridgeration links. Still has some bugs, but the propane fridge technology is being examined and beta tested. Soon home air conditioning will be able to be run off of the Empyre Woodboilers if it works out. It currently CAN be done no problem. But the cost of the system makes it prohibitive. Stay tuned as I am working with these folks on this technology and if it works out, I plan on selling them in the future.