Woodstove or woodburning furnance?

[Quiver0f10]

Which would you prefer for heating your home and why? Thanks!

[Countrybumpkin]

We put in an add-on wood furnace-all the mess is in the furnace room, out of the living space, and we have used it for the last 5 years with no problem. We like the fact that it hooks to the ductwork of the existing furnace, so the heat goes throughout the house through the registers.

[pookshollow]

We have a wood/oil combination furnace - we use mostly the wood furnace - but we are planning to install a woodstove upstairs this year as a backup. If the power goes out, the fan doesn't work and the furnace can't circulate the heat. Besides, we like to sit and watch the flames through the woodstove's window.

[Menglish]

Outside furnace. Saves tracking in and out, wood, sawdust and so on. Also no smoke in the house. We love ours.

Mike

[haypoint]

I loved my hot water furnace in the basement, even heat, no need for pumps or blowers. My next choice is a free standing air tight stove. Easy to control the burn by closing the damper door.
Personally, I hate the outside furnaces. Takes too much wood and you have to stand out in the cold every time the fire goes out.

[PhilJohnson]

Depends on what you consider a wood stove or furnace. I would say in my opinion a wood cook stove comes in two varieties, the kind you cook on and the other type which just heats your house. Most folks I know consider a wood furnace to have a blower to blow into a house's duct work. I heated my house with a wood cook stove for a couple of years. It did a lousy job. Opening up the oven helped some but still it was built for cooking not for heating. The firebox was tiny so even with the stove loaded up with as much wood as I could fit meant a rather short burn time (2 hours at most). If I fed it constantly it would heat my poorly insulated trailer home (450 square feet) okay but it would cool off almost as soon as the fire would go out. Last winter I had a wood furnace. I didn't use the blower but even still it had no problem heating my trailer home no matter what the temperature outside. A fire would also last a decent amount of time but since I burned mostly soft wood I usually only got a fire to burn for about 4-5 hours at the best. If your off grid I would suggest getting a very heavy cast iron stove or a soap stone type. You want something that will radiate heat long after the fire went out unless you enjoy waking up at least a couple times during the night (I don't). My parents use a soapstone type wood stove to heat their house. Does a decent job heating their three bedroom farmhouse even when it got down to 20 below. The biggest thing I noticed is that it will continue to radiate heat long after the fire is out, something my steel wood furnace does not do. It was quite expensive though (2800). I have also heard of people making their own stoves out of cement, supposedly it is great for radiant heat. Any wood burning appliance that requires me to get up less during the night is great in my book

[haypoint]

Cook stoves are for cooking. There are wood cook stoves that are now being made that have a large air tight fire box and they will heat a small home. Older cook stoves have small fire boxes and are not air tight. They are not suitable for efficient home heating.

[Quiver0f10]

Thank you all for the replies!

[Ross]

We had a wood burning furnace (PSG 4000) and it worked very well even gravity feedign hot air with no power. Thing is we wanted to use our basement for somethign other than wood storage. So we went to an out door wood boiler system. I like it much better even needing power 24/7. We now have a wood stove where the furnace was for emergency back up and cooking. It isn't the same as a furnace at all. We'd freeze upstairs with just the stove. Every house is different though!!! It's coming out when I get a chance. I have a wood burning fireplace to go in ..... which is pretty and we'll finish the basement some around it. The stove will go to another building for a cooking place/back up heat. If you want to seriously heat your house go with the furnace and duct work.

[Quiver0f10]

Originally Posted by rose2005

I would go for an indoor woodstove for heating your house.

An outside furnace is fine....till the power goes out, then you have to run a genny to push that warmth into the house.

A wood cookstove tends to have a small firebox and is designed for cooking rather than heating a whole house.

We have a pellet stove and are installing a wood stove soon. It's sitting in our living room now, waiting. LOL

Rose

We originally planned for either an outdoor wood furnance or a wood furnace in the basement but I would like to not have to worry about power. The thing is we will most likely have @ 2000 sq ft to heat and extreme cold, so one wood stove probably wouldn"t work anyways?

[Quiver0f10]

Originally Posted by Ross

We had a wood burning furnace (PSG 4000) and it worked very well even gravity feedign hot air with no power. Thing is we wanted to use our basement for somethign other than wood storage. So we went to an out door wood boiler system. I like it much better even needing power 24/7. We now have a wood stove where the furnace was for emergency back up and cooking. It isn't the same as a furnace at all. We'd freeze upstairs with just the stove. Every house is different though!!! It's coming out when I get a chance. I have a wood burning fireplace to go in ..... which is pretty and we'll finish the basement some around it. The stove will go to another building for a cooking place/back up heat. If you want to seriously heat your house go with the furnace and duct work.

Could the bolded stove be used without power long term or only during an emergency?

[FlagWaver]

We have both a wood/oil furnace (basement) and a woodstove (living room). We used the wood furnace the first year and the woodstove ever since because we went through at least twice the amount of wood in the furnace than we do in the stove for roughly the same warmth. The woodstove has a blower on it to move the air around the house. We do use the oil part of the furnace as back up but have used less than 1000 gallons in over 10 years.

My brother has an outdoor wood furnace and goes through 20+ cord of wood per winter, I'd rather clean up bark and sawdust than cut and split that much wood.

[ronbre]

we have heated with wood for 38 years..and i'm getting old..we built an outside boiler building and added a wood boiler for us and our son's house last Nove..and used it last year..for part of the year..with improperly cut wood..it used 20 dang cord of wood.

we are hoping with better cut larger pieces of wood and knowing more about how to adjust it..we will cut that at least in half..but it is still a lot of wood..we just put up 18 cord last week..had to build a larger woodshed this summer to house the wood inside the building.

would i recommend the boiler..NO..it was a real hassel and i wanted to get things easier as i grow older not heavier and more difficult..but my husband (who has a head injury and thinks everything is easier than it is) and my son who knows everything..so he thinks..would both say that it is a better situation..

we've put about $25,000 into this mess..and i would have rather spent that $25,000 on easy propane for about 10 years or more instead..at least by then i would have been able to get social security to pay for propane..but nope we got the ugly huge boiler..buildng and very very heavy firewood instead

[agmantoo]

I have owned and installed a number of outdoor boiler type furnaces. I have totally sworn off them. All of the ones that I have had experience are junk. They waste wood, foul the air and have maintenance problems. They either crack or rust out and are unserviceable in these problems and end up going to the recycler. I have come across one that I have no experience with that does offer some interest. Here is an advertisement that does show a unit that has potential IMO. Realize that the storage area for the heated water is separate which is a major plus. http://video.google.com/videoplay?do...5530348764525#

[Jennifer L.]

I dithered for years about whether to go with outside boiler or woodstove. Finally went with the wood stove and am very glad I did. The biggest concern was if the power goes out--if you live in the North that's a big consideration. The idea of keeping the mess out of the house, and yes, the possibility of a chimney fire, were the two things that kept me thinking about an outside boiler for a long time. Now that I've got the wood stove I found out the mess was nothing like the ash that used to swirl around the house with the old fireplace insert that was in this house 30 years ago. It's really quite clean. And my chimney run is short and when cleaned showed almost no creosote buildup, so my fire fears have been banked. The really nice bonus was, I found out I really, really enjoy cooking on the wood stove and I now look forward to getting the stove started this fall.

And my oil furnace use dropped by about 90% (I still heat my hot water with the oil furnace).

The only reason I would think you would not like the wood stove is if it's difficult for you to get wood into the house, or if it's hard to have someone in the house to stoke the fire. If you are in the North you would definitely need back up heat for the times you might be away from home for several days (say, you had an emergency).

Jennifer

[woodsy]

Woodstove user from waaaaay back here

Heating 1500 sq ft(1 3/4 stories plus full basement not included in sq. footage) all with 4 cord per year. And this is MAINE !

Have one Ashley box type stove with automatic damper control, takes a good 24" stick, load it up at night and forget about it till wake-up in the morning.
The other part time stove in basement is 1/4" boiler plate steel takes a 18" stick and has a blower, can cook easily on the top of this one.
For efficiency, i like woodstoves indoor, where you can back up to it and warm the bones on cold winter nights, and cook on them when power is out !

[foxfire51]

I would definitely go with the outside wood furnace. You can use longer and larger pieces of wood (Just keep some small enough for the DW or the kids to handle if need be.) You will not be tracking in bark, bugs, etc. There will be no ashes inside the house. The DW will generally be happier!! That's a good thing.

Second, you can run a set of waterlines into your domestic hot water system and have hot water as long as you care to keep heat in your furnace. During the summer months, we burned junk mail and household paper trash primarily, and added an occasional stick of wood. Worked great.

Re the need for electrical power. Correct, they do run off of power in most all cases. A pump is required to circulate the hot water and if you use a forced air system (That is, if your wood furnace is hooked into an existing ductwork and forced air furnace) you will need power for the fan motor inside the house.

Nearby, folks up in the Amish settlement have fixed theirs to run off of a deep cycle battery. The battery is kept charged via solar panel. The best of both worlds! The circulation pump doesn't draw much power. Not sure about a fan motor.

If going with the outside furnace, I'd consider a Hardy. That is what we had. There are also other good brands out there and I would research them as well. My experience is with the Hardy.

Good luck and happy wood burning!

Foxfire51

[RedneckPete]

Originally Posted by Quiver0f10

The thing is we will most likely have @ 2000 sq ft to heat and extreme cold, so one wood stove probably wouldn"t work anyways?

I heat 2750 sq feet with a single woodstove. The furnace is only backup, but the furnace fan runs all the time to move the heat around. I'm not sure about Arkansas, but it gets plenty cold up here in Canada. I burn about 8-10 full cord a year.

Pete

[Quiver0f10]

Thank you all! You have given us a lot to think about and research. I appreciate everyone's input.

[Ross]

Could the bolded stove be used without power long term or only during an emergency?

We used the furnace without power during the icestorm of 1998 and the temps were not terribly cold but the house was comfortable enough if chiully upstairs. It could have worked near perfectly IF we had cold air returns from upstairs. If you want a gravity system to work without power you have to build for no power. It can be done and undoubtaly works better on a 2 story house than a single. We were confortable to -10c (I'm guessing that's about 0 f) obviously it gets colder than that. Over sized ducting would help.