Thanks to all for the input on the firewood chute.
We're planning on having a 1212 sq. ft house(main floor) built on a full unfinished basement. It'll be quite the upgrade and plenty of room for the 3 of us. Besides, the 63 acres will keep us outside the house a lot of the time! The location is N. Idaho.
My wife and I had decided on vinyl siding for its ease of maintenance. We came across solid core siding on Crane Siding's website. The idea certainly appealed to us (R4 insulation value, better impact resistance, still low maint.). It looks like it is about 35% more expensive than vinyl, but with possibly lower installation costs. Does anyone have experience with this type of siding?
Also, our builder states he usually uses Elk roofing - can anyone recommend or otherwise comment on this company's products?
Ok, I keep thinking of more questions. We're planning on using primarily central air wood heat with LP backup. Does anyone have experience with Charmaster (model would be Chalet) or Yukon-Eagle wood furnaces? Those appear to be the furnaces best suited to our needs. I haven't been able to get a personal reference re: either of these, however.
I hope you are enjoying the new place. It sounds nice. My wife and I just bought 47 acres with an old farmhouse on it. We are fixing up the farmhouse right now, but plan to build a new house on the other end of the property in the future.
I don't know anything about the solid core siding (but it sounds kindof interesting). I'm not too keen on vinyl because it tends to discolor a bit over time (can get chalky), but it sounds like the solid core reduces the other main problem. I do have to agree with the ease of maintenance though.
I do have some experience with Yukon/Eagle wood/oil combination furnaces. My folks had one when I was growing up in northern MN (back in the 70's and 80's). Their place was about 1350 sq ft. It heated real well and was easy to operate - you could just fill up the firebox and let the oil burner start the fire if you wanted to. There was one problem that we had with it. We burned a lot of somewhat 'green' wood which would cause some creosote buildup in the heat-exchange tubes. With the original exchange chamber it was hard to clean these tubes out (through the exhaust pipe opening). We had to replace that chamber with a new one after about 5 years due to burn-through. The new one was MUCH better as it had a cleanout door which gave easy access to all of the exchange tubes - no problems with the new one.
If you keep it cleaned out, I expect it should work pretty well. The units look like they have changed a bit over the years, so I would think they have probably improved over what we had.
As a side note of forced-air -vs- other heating systems. When we build our new house, my wife and I are going with in-floor hydronic heat. The farmhouse that we just bought has a hot-water boiler and radiators. It is SO nice to not have forced-air, no dirty ductwork blowing around dry, dusty air. Our other place has natural-gas forced-air. We are doing some renovations in the farmhouse and I am putting the pex tubing in the floor of the bathroom to replace the radiator in there. It will free up some floor space that we desparately need as the bathroom is only about 6'x6.5'.
Picking out the materials can be fun, but the decisions that you make now will have an effect for the life of the home. Weigh the lifetime benefits against what you can afford now and get the system that will work for your needs.
BTW - with all of that wood burning have you considered one of the outdoor boilers? Central Boiler or one of the others?
Good luck with things and keep us posted on your decisions.
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