I have been looking at wood boilers and was wondering if someone who had experience with them could give me the real deal. There is a lot of differing opinions.
So far, I have been quite impressed with the Greenwood Furnace ( www.greenwoodfurnace.com ). Does anyone have any experience with it?
Thanks a bunch!
wp
The manufacturer's web site refers vaguely to a Canadian Government study stating an up to xx% reduction in heating costs but they neglect to say compared to what. Compared to burning diamonds, bank notes, fuel oil, corn or wood pellets, or what.
A philosopher once said, "without expectation there is no disappointment ."
On the plus side, if the wood is cheap or free and you enjoy the work, it can be a great deal. My wife's cousin had a similar unit to heat her two story log home in Arkansas (near Bald Jesse Flats.) Yellville area. they rarely had to add wood more than once a day and then just in the absolutely worst weather. Their thermostatic furnace control worked well. The thing reduced the wood to fine grey ash and was relatively easy to empty and reload.
When I was researching heat sources for hydronic heat your selection was my top contender for wood burners but I went ground sourced (geothermal) heat pump.
Pat [img]/forums/images/icons/smile.gif[/img]
"I'm not from your planet, monkey boy!"
We have an outdoor wood furnace, it is made by Hardy.
http://www.hardyheater.com/
Ours seems to work good, it came with the house so I don't know what it cost. Once I got it up and running ( see below ) it has been trouble free. I fill it up twice a day in coldest weather, once a day in moderate ( 45+ high ) temperatures but I usually don't start it up until the cold weather starts, we just use the normal (Propane) furnace until then. When the weather is cold, I can go thru a cord of wood every 2-3 weeks. So for a normal winter figure at least 5 cords of wood to get thru the coldest part of the winter (Dec-Feb).
I imagine it does use more wood than an indoor wood burning stove, but I don't have any experience with one of those in this house.
The weak point would be the flue straight up out of the firebox ( thru the water tank of course ) so a lot of heat will escape that way. The sides and top are insulated and stay cool to the touch so not to much heat is going out that way.
The advantage is no woodor ash mess in the house, nice even heat distribution throughout the house.
By the way, it had some freeze damage when I went to start using it the first time. The coil of copper tubing for the domestic hot water had a split in it and the impeller on the pump that sends the heated water in to the heat exchanger in the cold air plenum was busted as well. Moral of this story, once you fill it with water and start using it in cold weather, keep it burning or be prepared to drain it if you can't.......don't let it freeze or you will be fixing stuff. Oh and someone had wired the relay wrong, when it went to turn on the pump they had it hooked up to also start the outside a/c compressor, haha.
I looked at geo as well -- really expensive but it does give the heating and cooling. Thanks for the comments.
cheers,
wp
Great insights, thanks! I am leaning toward a unit that i can put in the shop and I am also concerned a bit with the smoke that comes from it -- how much does the Hardy smoke?
Thanks
wp
Windy, Geo is expensive to install but you make it back in lowered operating costs. What counts is lifecyle costs not purchase price or installed cost. You have to look at all costs, purchase, installation, maint over its life, operating costs (electricity etc) over its life (we reasonably chose 20 years.)
It would have been much less expensive to install pure electric heat and air conditiioning. Of course the operating costs would have been over 4 times as much and in less than 20 years we would have paid significantly more total cost. If electricity goes up significantly then we would really have done the wrong thing to get straight electric heat.
For those who have access to cheap wood there is $ to be saved, even when installing fairly expensive hydronics and controls. If wood handling is something you don't mind and your source is cheap there isn't any less expensive system that will give you the comfort of radiant heat.
We don't personally want to do the wood thing so we chose the best systems we could for propane and electricity. If we only had a maint staff then we'd be using a wood fired boiler to provide hydronic radiant heat.
Pat [img]/forums/images/icons/smile.gif[/img] [img]/forums/images/icons/smile.gif[/img]
"I'm not from your planet, monkey boy!"
When the thermostat in the water jacket on the Hardy determines a need for increased heat in the water, a solenoid opens a flap to let into a blower that turns on and forces air into the combustion chamber....when that is going on, it blows smoke like an old locomotive. It's denser smoke as the blower first turns on, then clears up a bit once temperatures in the combustion chamber rise.
We have a stack on it that takes the smoke up above roof level, it doesn't bother us, and I have asked our neighbors, it doesn't bother them ( they are a couple hundred yards away ).
The smoke at that point just smells like a wood fireplace or wood stove as it's starting and them moving to normal burning, nothing dense or smoggy.
When the Hardy is in 'non burn' mode, a trace of smoke comes off the stack, but not much at all, barely visible or sniffable. It's more like a cigarette left in an ash tray that is nearly out, just a wisp of smoke.
I know a lot of folks complain about smoke from outdoor furnaces and some locations are banning them..I think a lot depends on design, stack height, and prevailing winds. If you had one that didn't have a blower to force induction air, you had it way down in a valley, and you didn't have any wind, I imagine it could lay down a smog layer around it...but ours doesn't do anything like that at all.
I should take some pictures to have on hand when I get it started to have on hand to show what I mean.
If it helps, I am in michigan and the winters get cold, but we have wondered where winter has gone here the last few years.
But anyways i have a Timberwolf Outdoor Woodboiler. Ive used it fot two seasons heating 1900 sq. ft. and my domestic hot water. wood use is not bad at all, i can burn anything.
If you burn green wood, your going to get alot of smoke, use seasoned wood and you dont get much at all. For our situation,65acres of forrest and very rural it works great.
Ok, I got some pictures taken this morning showing the Hardy outdoor furnace in action.
Here is the furnace in full burn mode....
Here is one as it transitions to smother mode....
And here is one as it is in smother mode...I was in a hurry to take the picture as I had to get to work, but normally there is even less smoke visible, a lot of times none at all.
Tim, Very clean burning, I can't see any smoke at all.
Pat [img]/forums/images/icons/smile.gif[/img]
"I'm not from your planet, monkey boy!"
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