Woodstove or woodburning furnance?

Thanks again, Ross.

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Blessings,
Jean

We heat 1800 sq. ft. with one woodstove. You might want to consider a soapstone stove, as they will release that heat for many hours after loading.

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May all your weeds be wildflowers.

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To answer your question may require a person to think about his/her lifestyle, the condition/layout of what your heating, and just as importantly where you live.
If you're home most the time to be able to "feed the flames", the house is well insulated or if the outside temp rarely drops to freezing the choice would be a whole lot different than if you are only home on weekends, there is little or no insulation in the home and the outside temp can get to 40 below..........
Me living in central NYS, I'm happy with an oil fired hot water system with a wood stove being a supplemental source of heat. The stove is located in the cellar of a well insulated ranch styled home. It has a flat top to cook on if needed, and during emergencies (no power) can hold the house about 45-50 degrees warmer than the outside temp. In turn, I can go away for long weekends in the middle of winter and not have to worry about pipes freezing because the "fire" went out......... it's what works for me!

We will definately be looking at a soap stone. I looked at a few online yesterday and so far like what I see.

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Blessings,
Jean

Thank you. I know a lot will depend on whether we buy an older farm or are able to build new.

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Blessings,
Jean

I'd prefer the outside stove for heating and the mess reduction. However, if the stove's outside it's only a single purpose appliance. If it's inside it can be an emergency cook top, water heater, clothes iron, and many more things.

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Francismilker

"The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much" James 5:16

Overall, I have only used a cast iron woodstove. For many years it was a NON- airtight Franklin type. It would get roaring hot, & then cool down very quickly. Pretty messy.

Couple years ago bought a new airtight off ebay for about $1000. Great price on it. It will hold heat much longer because it can be damped down.

Your best course is to well insulate and make airtight your home! Stop the waste of heat [and cool in summer] by using a lot of insulation. It costs more up front, but the payoff will be in much lower costs, whether it is for fuel oil, propane, or labor & firewood.

If I ever build another house again, I am seriously thinking about the superinsulated SIP type houses. They can have R-50 ceilings & R-35 walls, and are airtight. You need a heat air exchanger/vebtilation, but that can be worked with using alt power.

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We will meet in the golden city, called the New Jerusalem,
All our pain and all our tears will be no more.....

We're planning on getting a Norseman 2500, but we also want a wood cookstove as well. The nice thing about it is that it runs through existing ductwork, and it runs with no electricity on the lowest setting. Eventually, I would like to have a nicer, newer wood cookstove (haven't decided on which one yet). So if the norseman doesn't heat it enough, we'll have a back up too.

Running without electric was incredibly important for us. While my husband was deployed I went 7 days without electricity after an icestorm. My kids were under two years old at the time, it was miserable.

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We purchased a airtight free standing woodstove last fall. Lovin it so far.

Avalon Olympic is the model. Heats the whole house easily, gets full overnight burns (9 hours later plenty of embers to start another fire) with a little practice, and has a large cooktop surface which we got a lot of use out of.

It looks pretty and watching the fire burn is nice....but it was expensive to install and purchase.

As someone who has heated with wood for 45 years here is my two cents worth.I have used a Buck stove all these years not the same one but only on number three.when we switched from non cataletic to a stove that had a catalectic the difference was great less wood more heat hardley any smoke.Now then they came out with the outside wood stove like central boiler and such and two of our friends have them WOW is that a good one no mess biger logs and will burn for three days no atention.All our stoves have a thermostat and blower so if my Buck wears out had it 12 years so far then that is what i am going to get for sure.PS one of the three was not wore out we moved. God Bless John

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If you are still mowing the grass then the garden needs to be bigger

Thanks again everyone!

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Blessings,
Jean

Wood stove. If the power goes off, a furnace isn't going to work. Also, I like being able to stand next to the stove and warm up. Doesn't work with a furnace (nor can you cook on top of a furnace). Yes, there's a little mess with having a wood stove in the house, but it's pretty minor compared to the advantages, IMO.

Kathleen

We use a free standing wood stove as our main source of heat. It does need to be stoked once overnight, but we only use 2-3 cords per year due to the size of the stove. We're planning to build a house next year and will be installing a masonry heater, which only needs to be fired twice a day and will provide more steady heat throughout the day and night.

Currently I'm heating with a Woodmaster outside wood boiler that came with my house. It heats both the house via an exchanger in the forced air furnace and the hot water through a plate heat exchanger. It works very well. It does use a lot of wood, I used about 10 cord last year for my 1600sqft house. But it will burn almost any wood, wet or dry, half rotten, etc. It will also burn large pieces of wood so I do almost no splitting, just cutting. Smoke with mine is not objetionable 99% of the time. But I wouldn't run one in town. They do smoke more than an airtight stove.

So, I like the system, but considering that these things end up costing $8000+ installed, I don't think I would install one for a single house. If you had multiple houses or outbuilding close togther that all could be heated from it, it would be worth it, but not for one house.

I would probably go with an inside wood furnace if I was starting from scratch. Wood stoves are nice but unless you have a house with a very open floor plan the heat distribution just isn't good. I like to have some heat in my bedrooms too, personally. Most wood furnaces will operate in gravity mode with no power and at least keep pipes from freezing in a power outage. Plus you can get one installed with chimney for around $2000.

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