School Me on Outside Wood Boilers.

My Wife, Daughter and I recently moved to a new home. It has two big shops, tons of yard space and a huge polebarn. Right now we are heating the house and one of the shops with propane. It's going kill me if I dont do something different. I am considering putting in an OWB to heat all 3 buildings, with the amount of wood we cut in a year, plus having a free dump site for the tree guys I can heat my house with just my labor. The initial investment is a little scary, but it will pay for itself pretty fast with what we are paying for propane.

So who has an OWB, what brands are the best, what should I stay away from, any input in general would be great. Thanks!

Wouldnt it be easier to install a couple of high quality woodstoves for heat? That is all we ever use. I have zero knowlage on owbs, looking forward to the replys.

Outdoor wood boilers are the only way to go. I have had mine for almost 3 years now and would never go back to an indoor stove. So many more possibilities infloor heat, hot water for the tap, forced air, etc. They are expensive and the install can be a long process. Central Boiler would be the brand I would look at. They have the best warranty and fairly easy stove to run. Don't buy a gasification furnace unless you are forced to by local ordinance. I would think a Classic Model 6048 should work real well, several of my friends run that model and they put out some serious heat.

How many sq/ft are you heating, well insulated, good windows, etc.?

It's around 7500 square feet. The house is completely remodeled with spray foam insulation, Windows seemgood. The shops are well insulated, one has a bunch of Windows one has no Windows. Any new installation needs to be a gasification unit. My cousin has a classic model and he is very happy with it. Maybe I should look for a decent used one?

good idea

hey there, im in southern ontario, if you have access to lots of wood, hard or soft, id go for it, sotf wood needs a bit of hard to mix just for coals to keep rollin.. i heat my old farm house 60 gallons of water, and a 30x25 poorly insulated shop, with a HEATMORE 200. good quality stove, stainless boiler,, my shop is 80 degess in january,at -30, heat more also aufers used oil/fuel adapter burner and grain. not to mention the cleanup of card board,fence posts, gardrails,scrap lumber and slabs from my farm and saw mill... im approx 10 to 12 bushcord of mostly crap wood, if u had seasond hard wood id take off 3 or 4 cord.if your in the buiss, i would in a second, its alot but my calculations with the farm in three and a half years, i would have spent the same money,instaling oil furnace,and the oil to heat the house....not the shop or my water... goodluck

I have about 12 cord right now,4 cut split and seasoned and the rest is log length. Thanks for the good input!

Alot of wood boiler info at "Arborist site.com" under the firewood section. Good Luck. I just put a indoor wood boiler in my house hope to start using it this week. doug

thanks Doug, I'll check it out.

Probably a little bias'd here but Central Boiler is the only way to go. Along with everything else we do we have the dealership for them in this area. They are a very good stove and like some have said, very versatile. My brother is the salesman, so I will give him the info and have him reply. In my opinion, hydronic heating is the only way to go, and no, not because we sell them. Actually we had infloor boiler system in the shop long before the dealership came along. We heat my parents house and attached garage, a 40 X 60 shop and another 24 X 70 shop. we use about 20-25 cord a year, and minnesota does not have 'creampuff' winters.

I like either Heatmore or Hardy water stoves ...I cant believe how efficinent these stove are ..

Maybe not in all jurisdictions, but most insurance companies give a serious rate cut if the flame of the heating source is not in a building. In other words an outdoor boiler with hot water plumbed to the buildings. Don't have experience with wood but do have experience with coal. My dad heats 7000 sq ft, and some of it is a paint shop where the air just gets dumped, (no heat exchanger) and total cost is about $1500 yr. With coal there's no wood splitting or stoking the boiler, it's all automated.

My former neighbor in Ontario heated his house and large metal shop with an OWB he built. He designed it with doors at each end. He removes the ash by pushing it with his tractor. Ambient can get -20C or so, and his shop is at shirt-sleeve temperatures. Woodstoves bring with them a lot of mess bringing the wood in, and moving the ash out. His OWB is an excellent solution.

I went to the central boiler dealer yesterday. They reccomended the e-classic e 2300, its supposed to be the epa phase 2 certified gasification unit that is equivalent to the classic 6048. I was a little dissapointed to find out that I would have to burn hardwood only, dried to 25% moisture. I had hoped to be able to burn softwood in it also. Thats OK though, not that big of a deal, as every stove I've ever had needed dry hardwood, so it wont really be that much of a change, just have to put up more, hopefully it doesnt have to be split as fine.

They do have a used unit there that has been run 7 months, and the guy got rid of it. That creeped me out a bit so I called the owner and he said he was 70 with arthritis in his hands and he never planned ahead far enough to have dry wood up before the heating season so it was too much of a struggle for him to use this model, he wanted a classic that he could burn anything in. He bought a 6048 in a private sale and has this one for sale at the dealer. New they are around 10 grand and he wants 7 grand for this one. I'm skeptical to go this route as the warranty does not carry over in a private sale. I called and spoke to a guy I know that
has done service work on this unit and he said it was in good shape and not to be scared of it, just beware the warranty doesnt carry over. So I guess I would feel better having a new one installed with the piece of mind that I have the warranty. It would be nice to save 3 grand or more, but if I have some sort of casastrophic failure with it, I might end up spending more in the long run.

Is that 7500 square feet of space with 8 foot ceilings or does the house have two stories or one main floor and living in the basement, add all the footage, with two shops and a house 7500 isn't much, if the shops have 14 foot sidewalls you should figure two levels or a building thats 50x50 with 14-16 foot sidewalls is 5000 square feet alone. I've run my OWB for about six years now and love it, it paid for itself in less than two years, I went with a wood doctor with boiler plate steel in it and a 20 year warrenty, we heat the water and run it year round. First off find the one with the biggest door made, don't get hung up on the lenth of wood it takes but more so the height you can stack it. with that said, wood doctor makes one with a double door in the front, the one I should have bought and I could load large chuncks with a skid steer and pallet fork instead of by hand, the length does very little for you, its nice in theory but unless its cut split and shoved in very neatly your not going to get it full anyhow, Mine has forced air and you want that with any of them you look at, the greener the wood the better for mine, you burn less green cut wood than dry wood, there's more btu's of heat in green wood than dry, unless you have a forced air system you can't burn green wood very well, with that said mine also burns more wood than others the same size.

I looked at central boiler, they make a good furnace but their contols are electonic and some have a computer in them that I looked at as well, the other problem is their forced air tubes are at the bottom of the furnace and you have to have most of the ash out of the furnace to get them to work unless they changed this design, mine is in the door and your having to pull the coals forward before you load it every time is all, if its natural draft leave it at the dealers lot in my opinion but thats me. I"m also not big on pressurized boilers but they are better for lasting that open air one's, they supposedly won't rust as fast but also cost more and more dangerous to operate so unless you know exactly what your doing I"d opt to avoid those.

I use a heat exchanger in the house and also a sidearm on my waterheater to heat the water, I don't yet have my shop done with infloor heat but my office is done and I love my infloor heat in that, we just haven't had time to finish the shop part yet and when done I"m going to heat almost 9000 square feet plus another house and that would be about 3000 feet more but we're wanting to see just how much it takes to heat my shop first before hooking up another building as well. I'm not sure what sizes your looking at but go bigger than you need or anyone recommends otherwise your loading it constantly, like 3 or 4 times a day, we load our twice morning and night and thats enough in my opinion.

As for heating with wood so much cheaper than gas, yes, but its still not free, I"ve got almost 20k tied up in everything we use to heat with, and then we won't even start on how much it costs and time involved to cut, split and haul the wood, we used to live in a rented hotel of a house that one's before us said took 4000 gallons of lp gas a winter to heat so you didn't freeze to death, not warm just enough so it didn't freeze, we burned almost 35 cords of wood a winter to heat it to 75 degrees day and night, but spent almost all winter cutting wood to do it, now we're in a house thats way more efficient to heat and are down considerably, once my shops done we'll probably be back up to about 20-30 cords a winter again, so unless you have plenty of time and enough help most get sick of it pretty quickly. I'm gonig to get some kind of firewood processor to speed things up once we have some money saved up, right now we've got kid help but they are graduating and leaving home shortly and we're back to working it all by ourselves again, my wife and I that is. Make sure you have access to wood free and for the next 20 years and have it accessable year round with no problems of getting there to get wood. Don't ever put in any kind of indoor furnace, we heated with wood in the house all the years of growing up and in one rented house we lived in for a winter, never again in any house outside is the way to go.
Best of luck on whatever you find and get.

Just read your post on the gasifaction unit, I'd opt to avoid those altogether and go buy one like the guy who is selling his did, then you have options to burn about anything, don't limit yourself to just one type of wood, hardwood for example and also dried hardwood, another headache to get and keep enough on hand, once you run out your going to be buying cords of dried hardwood to heat your house with or the entire first year anyhow unless you've planned ahead and were cutting and stacking wood all last winter. The 25% is the high end of what you can burn in those I think, more like under 25% is more like it and that takes time to dry it that dry and have a shed to stack it in while its doing it, or even three years supply on hand at all times and your already two years behind on cutting already if you get that furnace.

Any new install is required to be EPA phase 2 compliant. The town makes me have a permit to install it, so I'm stuck with the gasification unit.

That limits you considerably on possibilities as to what to purchase or use, around here those units are not going over very well from the last I was told anyhow. The city must be trying to eliminate the complaints about owb's in town in your area if they are requiring a gasifaction unit and a permit to itstall it, also do they require you to take it out if there are too many complaints about the smell or the unsightly wood piles? I"ve been told some towns have a policy on wood burners and if there are so many complaints the owner is required to take them back out and replace it with something else, but thats just what I"m told. I know wood doctor was making a gasifacation unit, and also one to go into a basment of a house to try to get units sold in towns, but the guy who sells them said it wasn't going over very well, both the furnace and the city's requirements, people just opted for something different instead, due to the headaches of dealing within city limits. I'd go the forestryforum.com and check out there, those are some descent guys and can steer and direct you to what works or not, ask plenty of questions about the gasifaction units and what problems they have been having, a lot more friendly site than the ariborist site. Those guys are big on e classics and those types of furnaces and can get you in touch with the owners of those units to talk to and find out the downfalls of them and if your wanting to deal with those types of problems or not.

After weighing the pros and cons I wouldn't have one if it was given to me for free. Check around on the web for negative owner comments and see if it's something you are willing to deal with.

The gassification units are not as forgiving as a standaard unit but they will make the same amount of heat or btu's with 40% less wood so weather you are cutting or buying wood 40% is a lot.

I've got a HS tarm gasification boiler that I have in my garage( about 125' from house). I heat the garage and the house with it. The garage has in floor heating and I have a heat exchanger in my furnace duct work in the house. I found I don't have to turn the floor heat on in the garage even though my boiler is insulated. The garage is usually above 55deg F unless its really a cold wind day( it never freezes). From talking to people that have outdoor wood stoves they seem to go through a lot more wood then me, but I have noticed that some installers of hydronic heating systems could be the problem. I even started out running my heat loop to the house all the time as that's what everyone was doing, but after reading up on heating systems it made a lot more sense to only run the heat to the house when it demanded it. I would read up on boiler systems before going ahead with any system.