Outside wood stove

[GrannieD]

For more years than I want to think it I've burned wood ..carried in wood.. ashes carried out...I'm thinking about an outside wood stove so that I can keep the mess out of the house...plus make less work storing & using the wood..
Is it really hard to get the thing set up in a house that has no heating ducts or crawl space.?
I live in SW Mo. & would like a system that is easy enough for me to handle myself...thanks GrannieD

[uncle Will in In.]

I used a furnace add-on wood burner out in the garage. It had a jacket over the outside with a fan that blew the heat out a large pipe which I ran into the house. It had another pipe bringing the air back from the house to go through again. I wrapped it with fiberglass insulation. It burned more wood than an inside heating stove.

[Cindy in KY]

We have a wood furnance like Uncle Will describes in a small metal building behind the house. It hold allot of wood. But instead of the air-return, we have both pipes blowing hot air in the house, and it sucks in air from the metal building. Allot warmer for us that way. We just ran one inlet into a window in the bedroom, and the other thru an outside wall next to the sliding glass door.

I don't like having the mess inside my house either, or the smoke. The flue is simple to clean outside, even with a small fire still going. When we had a woodstove in the house, we had to let the whole thing go out to clean the flue, and we froze till we got it going again.

[farmerscotty]

Grannie I too live in SW Missouri near Springfield. I use a heater called Lil'house Outside Wood Heater. I have used one for 16 years. I don't think we could have bought the amount of propane we would have needed since most propane furnaces are not very efficient. I know I would freeze to death with electric too.

I like having the mess outside and just filling it 2 x a day. Best part is when it is messy outside I just make sure my wood is covered and kept dry. No coming in the house with messy wood.

If you don't have a very big house you know too that a wood stove takes up alot of room. With this outside it is like having more space.

Here is a website that has pictures and tells about the heater. www.outsidewoodheater.com

Hope that helps as Winter is just around the corner.... and with these gas prices something like this just makes $en$e.

[breezynosacek]

GrannieD, I was actually just thinking about that about the same time you posted!

We have a small wood burner and it is the kind that you use in the garage. I was thinking since we have a mobile that to make a little chamber to add onto the house with the woodburner in it would be the best way to go.

Then, I started reading about having to have fresh air returns or some such and I just got bogged down with trying to figure out if:

a) the stove is big enough to use for the house.
b) would it really save enough money to use it in place of the oil burner (we would have to build something around the stove to hold the heat in.
c) do I need to get a bigger stove? If, so, how much bigger and can we afford it?

So I am not sure yet what to do...I know winter is on it's way and I know that heating is going to cost twice as much as last year. We already have the prices for just filling it up

I'm working on it.

[uncle Will in In.]

My sister bought an old house that had electric hot water heat. It cost a fortune to opperate. They had a small enclosed back porch. They put a wood heating in the porch, and hung a window fan close to the top of the door going into the kitchen. It worked surprisingly well. To heat their bedroom which was at the far end of the house, they set a small fan so it blew the air from the bedroom floor out toward the kitchen. The warm air near the ceiling went into the bedroom above the fan to replace the cold air the fan was blowing out at the floor. All the dirt and ashes were out in the back porch. Insulation in the porch was nessesary.