I need to buy an outdoor woodstove but don't know anyone who has one and don't want to take the claims in their liturature at face value. What brand of woodstove do you have and what are it's plusses and minuses?
We've had a Central Boiler for 13 years! No problems. Little maintainence. Wood is cheap! What part of Wisconsin are you in? Am in north central part of the state, 40 miles west of Appleton.
Don't lnow if this will help you, but I yook on of those add-on wood burning furnaces that TSC sells, built a concrete block room right behind the outside wall of the house that my furnace sits by, and ran the hot-air ducts from the wood burner into the attic, and hikked them into my existing ductwork! This is the 3rd year for it, and it heats our house great, all the ash and smoke is outside, and its a durn-sight cheaper than one of those outdoor woodburners!!
A friend in Butte Montana built a HASA and only used about 8 cord a year which allowed him hot water for the house and also converted a dryer from electric to use the radiator hose for doing the heat for drying clothes... said it isnt really a problem except he had to clean the thing out every so often and taking five ton of small rock out and putting it back using five gallon buckets was not something he ahd figgered on, and would have built it with a larger opening so a wheel barrow woiuld be easily filled if it was to be done over again..... or maybe an auger of some type. I was gonna build one of the central boilers for heating a quarter acre green house a couple years back, but put the project on hold for a awhile until i could fund the massive project easier than going into huge debt for a mono crop. but it will work, espeacially well with a radiant floor plan when building from the get go...... retro fitting can be a chore. I recieved a magazine awhile back of a home built outside furnace where the fella was just exchanging air and puttingit into his basement, and cut his whole house heating bill dramatically..... couldnt find the article, but his system was built on an old hot water heater, a 30 gallon oil drum and a 55 gallon oil drum [steel] with the duct work bieng insulated to and from the house..... the reasoning it was small was so he could put it inthe shop for summer so his wife did not have to look at it..... portability is not something all units can have. William
yeah, i like the idea of an outside woodburner... i'm planning to take a standard wood furnace , the kind with a blower, and build an add-on to the house. It'l keep the smoke, ash and general mess outside. I might miss the 'ambience' of the old stove, but i believe this will be a better way to go. plus, it'll free up some indoor space that i could use... best of luck greg
I had hoped to start construction on an outdoor masonry wood burning water heating stove this fall, but it hasn't happened yet. I have the fire brick, but I need to build the foundation for the stove and the adjacent cistern. I'm out of cash, and the first bucks will go to the parts to electrify the garage. So I don't see getting started on the cistern and stove until next spring. Oh, well. The plan is to heat the water and pipe it into the garage and use some old car radiators and fans to circulate the heat. Ken Kern wrote a great book on building masonry stoves. It is my primary source of design information. They are not all that complex and don't require special skills. The materials are cheap, unless you have to buy new fire brick. The models I looked at on the internet were all expensive. One common design puts a water tank on top of the fire box. I don't think this is a great idea based on what I learned from Kern's book. Most also have stainless steel fireboxes. According to Kern, steel boxes don't work as well as firebrick, because they don't allow the chamber to get to the optimum temperature. Setting the water on top, or against the fire box makes it even worse. You get the most BTU's out of wood by flash burning at very high temperature. You cannot reach these temperatures with slow burn, metal box and adjacent water. The way Kern suggests heating the water is to route the flue like a russian fireplace and capture the heat from around the flue. The most expensive part is the fire brick. New cost is in excess of $3 each. I searched and found some for 15 cents apiece. The stove and water heating features do complicate the construction and increase the price. A simple outdoor woodburning heater would be very cheap and easy to build if you can find the used fire brick.
i am on the Wi/Il border on the west end of Lake Geneva. Grew up on a dairy farm in Marathon county,40 years ago
By TSC do you mean tractor supply company? I am looking to build one of these for my mom and am really interested in the method you have described here. Any info would be greatly appreciated.
I had a TSC unit in my attached garage for 15+ years and it worked great. Just ducted it to the far end and the intake was in the living room. Nothing like a 80 degree car on a winter morning. mikell
I had a Central Boiler unit installed about 10 years ago. Puts out a lot of heat. Up here in N.W. Ontario, use about 12 cords/yr. heating about 2500 sq. ft. of enclosed space. They've improved the units since I had this one. I'de recommend them.
We've decided to buy an Empyre because it has higher grade stainless steel, a removeable ashpan, and uses real chimney sections to duct the smoke up higher. That said I have friends with Central boiler, Wood Dr. Aquatherm and of course the Empyre and they all luv the ones they got. The only other option we'll consider is a high presure combination oil wood furnace intended for inside use but we'll centralize it and build a small garage for it and some of the wood. One of the fellows we custom harvest for is a steam fitter and says the entire outdoor wood furnace industry is about 60 years behind on technology for water heating systems and most of the wood stove salespeople have no clue how to size a heating sytems or plan out radient heating. He showed me his reference manuals and I had to agree the fellow who was sizing radiators etc. was working from his head ..... guessing. Course nothing beats guessing if its right!!
I have had a taylor woodboiler for three years and friends who have had them over ten... we like em'. I know another guy who has two cental boilers- one big one at the shop and one at home. they are great and the only thing I would do different would be to consider the multifuel model that would heat automatically if I went away... The only "pain" is working with the flex tube trying to insulate and install it in an "outer tube"
in ontario i have seen new pipe in the last few years..hot and cold 1" plastic inside 6" "big O" tile filled with foam...jsut roll out what you need..no more stuffing your pipes like i had to do
