outside wood burning furnaces

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Thought there was an old thread on this but could not find it so please bear with me.

We are looking for information on the wood furnaces that are installed outside the home. Does anyone have one? Do they hold a fire well? Being outside, will they use more wood than a traditional wood furnace? Do they have to be filled often?

Any information will be helpful.

Thank you all in advance.

-- Cordelia (ckaylegian@aol.com), November 12, 2001

Answers

We are putting in a Central Boiler outdoor woodburning furnace and the dealer said it will only need to be stoked every 96 hours (4 days) depending on your demand. Ours will have heat exchangers for the LP furnace, the water heater, the garage, and the barn. So I doubt our 500,000 BTU furnace will make it 96 hours on a stoking. He also said you don't even have to burn split and seasoned wood. He throws whole green logs in his. Ours will eat logs up to 50" long and 18" in diameter. Bigger than I can heft I'm sure.

-- Steve in So. WI (Alpine1@prodigy.net), November 12, 2001.

Steve,

Is Central Boiler the name of the furnace you are putting in? We are in NW IL so our weather is probably similar.

-- Cordy (ckaylegian@aol.com), November 12, 2001.


Cordy, Our house will be in southern Wisconsin in a county which borders northern Illinois. So the weather should be very close to yours. We decided to go with Central Boiler because they are made in Greenbush, MN (very, very NW Minnesota). I figure they should know how to make a good wood furnace. I used to live in Grand Forks. Ours is supposed to be delivered in a few days.

-- Steve in So. WI (alpine1@prodigy.net), November 12, 2001.

Their website is Central Boiler

-- Steve in So. WI (Alpine1@prodigy.net), November 12, 2001.

Out door boilers can be very nice. No wood dirt in the house, thermostatically controlled heat, domestic hot water etc.

Those are the reasons we bought ours plus the advertising that our particular boiler uses half as much wood as brand X they claimed. The reason is that its designed on the principal of a down draft gassifier so you get more complete combustion and it burns alot cleaner. Sounded good to me.

We heat about 2000 square feet, upstairs plus a portion of the basement. The house is insulated to code and we're located in central wisconsin.

Last winter we burned 13 full cords of wood----a semi load of oak slab wood. Thats WAY too much wood to burn even if it was slab wood.

Rather than just running the lines directly into the house I ran the lines around the house to the interior portion of the heating system. The lines were insulated but in spite of that I was loosing too much heat before it got into the house. This year I rerouted the lines so there's only a 20' run of pipe rather than the 60' run we had before. Some improvement but I'm still disgusted with the boiler, primarily because of the excessive wood use.

I will say this tho. It does burn really clean and its virtually smokeless.

So if someone tries to seel you a Johnson Energy Convertor run the other way as fast as you can. There was a previous thread on this topic a while back and I recall people using 4-5 cords for a winter. Thats sounds alot more reasonable.

-- john (natlivent@pcpros.net), November 13, 2001.



Thank you for all the great information.

Steve,

When you get your unit hooked up, please let me know how it is working?

-- Cordy (ckaylegian@aol.com), November 13, 2001.


i have a Taylor and its the best money i ever spent it can heat the house and a large green house plus heat the hot water for the house as well its a larger unit with a 3' square fire box and believe me iv put the pieces in that just fit no splitting it takes a little time getting used to fireing the furnace acording to the weather mabey once every 3 days when its not bad or 2 times a day at below 20degrees with the house and the green house 1500 sq feet of greenhouse figuring its pushing 300,000 btu per hour on the 2 . there are a lot of mfg.of outside furnaces and whichever one you get you eliminate the mess in the house ,the expense of a chimny ,the unit can be moved with you if you relocate,and you eliminate the carbon monoxide risk asociated with all fueled heating systems

-- george darby (windwillow@fuse.net), November 13, 2001.

I have been using a Central boiler now for about 4 months. I am still getting the hang of the furnace. I origanaly intended to heat two homes and two garages with the 500,000 btu furnace. I soon realized that that was not going to work although my dealer said no problem. So just a week ago I shut down the one 30x40 garage and now the furnace is doing pretty good. I went from firing every six hours to about every twelve with temps of around +20 outside. I am located in northern ohio. I know several people with Taylor furnaces and several with the central. I went with Central boiler because of it seemes the simplest as far as maintanence. Also I don't have to keep adding water to it unlike the taylor. As far as which one burns less wood...??? I don't think there is a winner there! Even for the amount of wood that the furnace uses, I still think that I would use more if I had a indoor wood stove at each place I am heating. Over all I am happy with the furnace. As long as you have you own wood supply and are able to do it you can save a lot of money over the long run. One last thing Don't believe for one minute that you will get 32 to 48 hrs burn time it just won't happen. People I know with these furnaces some even went over kill on size and still at the up most get 24 hrs. in winter condition! Good luck & happy burning.

-- jIM zWICK (CZWICK@EOHIO.NET), January 07, 2002.

Does anyone know of a site that lists manufacturers of outside wood burning stoves?

Thanks

-- dunmovin (alldunmovin@yahoo.com), February 28, 2002.


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