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Rusty Allis 
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Joined: 16 Jul 2020
Location: Rhode Island
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 Topic: Wood Boiler Question
Posted: 04 Jun 2022 at 9:46pm |
Hey Gang
I'm sure many of you heat or at least supplement with wood. Other than a fire place in my old house, I never really ran a wood stove
at any rate, our house is tight. when we built we did spray foam and wrapped the house with 1/2. As an example, we were doing 1 tank of oil/year (2700 sqft 330 tank) for heat and hot water till we had kids. Now it's more like a tank and 1/2 or so per year
Anyway, my ass is starting to pucker at oil costs much like everybody else's. Seems ROI would be pretty quick on a small indoor unit. When we built, out chimney had room for 3 flues, 1 for the boiler (has a slight jog in it) and one for the fire place (straight) and the 3rd, unused (also straight) in the basement for a 'future wood stove'.
Reality is, we don't use the basement for living quarters, although it's set up to be used as such so a wood stove would be a bit of a waste.
I was considering one of these:
Basically, I have to wonder how much of a slave I'd be to this. Getting wood is no problem and seeing how tight the house is, I'd bet I may be able to squeak by on 2 cords or wood.
Thoughts?
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klinemar
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Location: Michigan
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Posted: 04 Jun 2022 at 10:24pm |
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Never fired an indoor wood boiler as mine is outside and I like it there. Ashes and wood is out of the house keeping it a lot cleaner. Downside is I have to go out to load it. As for amount of wood burning that depends on how warm you want to keep your house and how cold a winter. 2 cords would last me maybe 2 months.
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shameless dude
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Posted: 04 Jun 2022 at 11:06pm |
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we have a wood furnace we used for years, it's in our basement. like you, we have plenty of wood for our use. anyways...i cut a hole in our duct work that i put a round piece of chimney pipe from the furnace up into the existing ductwork, the heat from the furnace goes up and into the ductwork and then thruout the whole house. i don't need a fan to blow the heat, hot air rises and goes to each room on it's own. only reason we quit using it was i'm to old to carry wood downstairs. i wish we had a walkout basement, then we would still be using it. it worked very well. and i didn't have to plumb any water to it. if and when we build a new house, that furnace will go with us. bought it at Menards lots of years ago, can't recall the brand name right now, but they still sell them. when we bought ours it cost us about $600. i'm sure they are prolly double that now, but it wouldn't take long to pay for itself. it looks about like the one you listed
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Walker
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Joined: 12 Sep 2009
Location: oh
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Posted: 04 Jun 2022 at 11:50pm |
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Read up on steam boiler explosions before you buy. I believe some are still out there orbiting earth somewhere,
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Tbone95
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Posted: 05 Jun 2022 at 5:59am |
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I'll second what klinemar said. Outdoors. All the bugs, bark, dirt, smoke, ashes, and any danger are OUTSIDE.
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WF owner
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Posted: 05 Jun 2022 at 6:14am |
Personally, if I was only using a tank and half (I'm assuming ~450 gallons), I wouldn't even think of adding a wood burning alternative, especially if you have no experience burning wood.
Wood heat is great heat, but you get heat out of it several times. You will sweat cutting the wood, stacking it, bringing it in, cleaning the pipes and cleaning up the mess it makes in the house.
I don't know what you do for work, but if overtime pay is possible, I would recommend working enough OT to pay for your increased heating costs.
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DMiller
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Posted: 05 Jun 2022 at 6:42am |
I sat down to figure cost to cut my own firewood, gas, saw chains, diesel for tractor or pickup, shed to store and stove to use. Cannot justify except as a stalwart backup to power outages where a wood stove in the basement is a better alternative. Water boilers outside are a freeze hazard so must be kept running in severe cold, boiler inside our house our insurer drops policy, wood stove adds $400/year to premiums. So remains a conundrum, pay now and for forever or deal with a generator and gas or diesel or propane for backup and live with the Indoor Ground Source heat pump. Can guess what we chose, will give you the first two as do not count!! 
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jaybmiller
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Posted: 05 Jun 2022 at 6:58am |
'thanks but no thanks'...... old,unused flue will need SS liner..$$ you'll have to get wood into basement(any health issues like AGE !!) tripping on the stairs going up with a bucket of ashes makes a 'melluva hess' is wood totally free,all precut into 'boiler sized' pieces ? can it work when power is off ? if not 'boom, BOOM !' are you getting younger ? A LOT of work in heating with wood...
After the second fire, the wood burning furnace QUICKLY left my house, NG went in. Have NG fireplace(workd when powers off...).Sure now that I COULD get all the 'free' firewood and have TIME to run it, I'm not physically able to .Also any indoor 'wood burning appliance' jacks up the house insurance and that's a CERTIFIED unit to boot.
In a near perfect world, I'd go geothermal in my forever home. ZERO 'fuel' to buy,ever.
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Lars(wi)
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Posted: 05 Jun 2022 at 7:20am |
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Like others have stated, at a tank and a half, I wouldn’t fart around with wood.
Currently, I imagine fuel oil heating is atrocious on cost, propane probably not far behind.
If nat gas futures prices stay anywhere close to what they currently are now, natural gas and electricity cost’s are headed for the stratosphere on costs.
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I tried to follow the science, but it was not there. I then followed the money, and that’s where I found the science.
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Dusty MI
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Posted: 05 Jun 2022 at 7:51am |
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A wood burning furnace needs a lot of air for combustion. So with a house that is built as tight as it sounds like you built yours, you will need to do bring in outside air for it to burn properly.
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917 H, '48 G, '65 D-10 series III "Allis Express"
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DaveKamp
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Posted: 05 Jun 2022 at 10:26am |
The reason why he's asking about wood, is likely 1) because he can get quantities for free and 2) Rhode Island, and many other New England states, are predominantly fuel-oil-only areas for residential heat... what wasn't fuel-oil, was coal... not natural gas, LP, or electric. One would NOT want to leave themselves with electric-only heat in RI, as they're totally at the mercy of both power demand costs, and 'load shedding' brownouts from the Megalopolis demand.
 Walker wrote:
Read up on steam boiler explosions before you buy. I believe some are still out there orbiting earth somewhere, |
That's a categorical fallicy. High pressure steam boilers can explode, but a residential heating boiler is not actually a 'boiler'. They are are the operational equivalent of a residential hot water heater, with temperature not-to-exceed 180f. Look at a vapor pressure chart, you'll see that 200F equates to VP of 12psi, you can restrain that in a 1/2" pipe with your thumb.
These boilers require electricity to circulate water, AND to supply
draught air. If you lose power, the blower stops, which quenches the
fire. They are also fitted with pressure relief valves, as well as
crown-plate fuses. If the layers of pressure limitations all
simultaniously fail, AND the crown-plate overheats, the fuse will melt
and spray coolant over the fire. Your residential hot water heater rarely has this level of protection, yet they present no statstically significant risk.
The challenge of fitting such a unit to your home has several challenge layers, the first being, is your home already set up for hydronic heat? If not, the infrastructure materials and labor cost to make use of heated water will vastly exceed the cost of other solutions.
IF you have large concrete slabs with PEX tubing, the situation is different, not only in cost, but operational performance. Heated air (i.e. a heating coil in an existing forced-air handler) is a high-loss medium, but a heated floor is much lower, and the latter provides substantial home comfort.
As noted, your 'tightly sealed' house will pose a complex issue, as you'll need combustion air to make it work. Since the Royal diesn't draw outdoor air, you'll be withdrawing air from your house, which means you'll need to reduce that 'tightly sealed'. The good part, is that you can put an intentional supply air damper into whatever 'combustion room' you'd install this unit, and in doing so, withdraw 'bad' air that is trapped in the home, and draw it out through the combustion chamber.
[People rant about 'radon' and other bad things in homes, and fail to realize that these things have been around forever, it just became a serious problem when we started building houses tight-as-tupperware. Old-school 'gravity' furnaces constantly sucked bad stuff out of old homes and basements by virtue of the firebox draught, which we seem to not believe-in anymore]
Hauling wood into the basement, and stoking the fire sucks.
Outdoor boilers freeze, but only if you don't fire them, and don't use a glycol-water mix.
The best alternative for wood-boiler setup, is an outdoor-type unit, enclosed by some sort of a shed into which one can drive/load in firewood with a machine.
As an 'additional heat' option, I would personally go for an enclosed outdoor, with pipe into the house... and I would also recommend getting controlled ventilation into the lowest part of your basement, so the house's sealing doesn't lead to accumulated high concentrations of bad stuff.
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Ten Amendments, Ten Commandments, and one Golden Rule solve most every problem. Citrus hand-cleaner with Pumice does the rest.
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klinemar
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Posted: 05 Jun 2022 at 11:35am |
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I filled my Outdoor Wood Burner with Boiler Anti Freeze as getting difficult to find someone to fill if I'm going away in winter or if we have power outage and have trouble with my generator. As for operating temperature mine shut down at 175 degrees so that it doesn't create steam.
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DougG
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Posted: 05 Jun 2022 at 12:46pm |
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Wood boilers are awesome- it will be a great inital cost - which I believe you,ll never re coop now a days,
Edited by DougG - 05 Jun 2022 at 12:46pm
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Walker
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Posted: 05 Jun 2022 at 2:21pm |
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I get the heebie jeebies when I'm in the kitchen with mamma's pressure cooker hissing.
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FREEDGUY
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Posted: 05 Jun 2022 at 7:55pm |
Walker wrote:
I get the heebie jeebies when I'm in the kitchen with mamma's pressure cooker hissing.
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I get the heebie jeebies smelling the rancid smoke coming from outdoor boilers when in "idle/smoldering" mode  .
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Bob-Maine
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Posted: 05 Jun 2022 at 8:14pm |
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Rusty, we have owned and used two indoor wood boilers over the past 40 years. I switched to an indoor pellet boiler about 8 years ago. We were burning 8 cords of 24" wood a winter and it was too much work for this old guy.
We had a Tarm boiler (made in Sweden, I think) it was 90,000 BTU and worked great. Don't think they are available any more. When we bought another house, we put in a New Yorker boiler (130,000 BTU) with an oil boiler next to it. We have a lot of heat loss in this 160 year old farm house.
Something I didn't see mentioned is creasote in the chimney. If a wood boiler isn't run near capacity it will produce lots of creasote which can lead tp a chimney fire. I think a wood boiler would be overkill for you, Also, if you don't have hot water radiation in the house, it would be expensive to install. Have you considered a heat pump. they are supposed to be very efficient.
Bob@allisdowneast
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I used to think I was indecisive, but now I'm not sure.
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Tbone95
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Posted: 06 Jun 2022 at 8:34am |
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Like Klinemar said, the term wood "boiler" is actually a misnomer, as it doesn't boil and make steam, rather makes hot water at ~ 175 F. They are expensive to begin with, but I figure mine runs about 1/3 the cost of propane. And THAT is with buying semi load of 8 foot logs. Gas for chainsaw? Please, that literally is a buck or two a week, even now. I heat nearly 5000 sq ft with an outdoor unit, and a tank of gas through the saw gets me through most weeks of a MI winter. Tractor runs two minutes to go from the log pile to the wood stove area, dump, back to the log pile, shut off and cut/ split, fill the bucket again. All things considered, yep, about 1/3 the cost of propane.
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Tbone95
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Posted: 06 Jun 2022 at 8:35am |
FREEDGUY wrote:
Walker wrote:
I get the heebie jeebies when I'm in the kitchen with mamma's pressure cooker hissing.
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I get the heebie jeebies smelling the rancid smoke coming from outdoor boilers when in "idle/smoldering" mode . |
You should smell 'em when you burn old railroad ties! 
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steve(ill)
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Posted: 06 Jun 2022 at 9:27am |
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If i was putting heat or air cond in a house today, i would look at a Mini- Split Heat pump... They are all electric and 2-3 times as efficient as resistant heaters and 5 year old air conditioner.. The new ones use 410 gas ( freon) and an inverter powered pump to vary the speed . They are very quiet and very efficient.. You put the OUTSIDE unit outside the wall, drill a hole thru the wall and mount the INSIDE Unit on the wall or set on the floor.. Many are cooling or heating 1000 sq ft area or more... Some can handle 2-3-4 INSIDE units, or you can put a complete system at the other end of the house to do another 1000 - 1500 sq ft. ........ Can be a stand alone, or setup to do 75% of the work and let your propane or oil system do the peaks.
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Like them all, but love the "B"s.
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HudCo
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Posted: 06 Jun 2022 at 10:15pm |
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splitting alittle wood for a half an hour every other day makes you get younger every day like me
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Tbone95
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Posted: 07 Jun 2022 at 6:51am |
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Hud, do you use the same model wood splitter I do? Emanuel Armstrong?
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Dusty MI
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Posted: 07 Jun 2022 at 7:38am |
Tbone95 wrote:
Hud, do you use the same model wood splitter I do? Emanuel Armstrong? |
I grew-up with that type splitter, until 1965, stopped burning wood.
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917 H, '48 G, '65 D-10 series III "Allis Express"
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WF owner
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Posted: 07 Jun 2022 at 8:25am |
Dusty MI wrote:
Tbone95 wrote:
Hud, do you use the same model wood splitter I do? Emanuel Armstrong? |
I grew-up with that type splitter, until 1965, stopped burning wood. |
I still use mine, but less often and not for very long. Mine seems to be down on a power a bit....
Edited by WF owner - 07 Jun 2022 at 8:26am
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HudCo
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Posted: 07 Jun 2022 at 8:46am |
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yes i do ax and a couple wedges thats how we heat our parts and service counter allways keep a slice of bacon going on there on a skillet customers like it
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Tbone95
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Posted: 07 Jun 2022 at 9:35am |
HudCo wrote:
yes i do ax and a couple wedges thats how we heat our parts and service counter allways keep a slice of bacon going on there on a skillet customers like it |
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Coke-in-MN
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Posted: 07 Jun 2022 at 11:51am |
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Outside would be the choice - both for mess and for insurance purposes -
Next any boiler needs controls as well as water treatment - neighbors unit ended up with corrosion of flues to water side as he never checked water quality and or used proper chemical treatment to prevent deterioration .
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Faith isn't a jump in the dark. It is a walk in the light. Faith is not guessing; it is knowing something.
"Challenges are what make life interesting; overcoming them is what makes life meaningful."
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Rusty Allis
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Posted: 08 Jun 2022 at 8:20pm |
WOW
Ok, so I let this run away a bit haha. Let me clear up a few things and...I appreciate all of the feedback
First, we have a 330 tank, usually filled to about 300 gallons. Using ez math, lets say I do a gallon a day of HHO
Adding a circuit (zone) to our current setup is something we can easily do. Our system is hydronic, and a air handler for each floor (central air/heat)
The chimney/flue is brand new (never used) ok, it's 9 years old, but still never used.
I had in the back of my mind to call for an insurance quote, so that is something that was on my radar. Indeed, it is a consideration
I was thinking indoor just due to the fact all of the 'sub systems' are there and I just don't want 1 more thing to mow/weed whack around.
I guess I'm just greedy. I tell people how much oil we use and they are like "naa, you lie" to the point I actually showed a friend my checkbook.
I suppose I should rethink the whole deal. Wood is not an issue, nor is cutting/stacking and the reality is IF I did this, I bet I wouldn't use a whole lot seeing how the house is built (2x6, spray foam insulation etc) so it was just going to be a 'proof of concept' kind of deal
I do appreciate all of the insight. Really gives me things to consider that I honestly hadn't
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DaveKamp
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Posted: 08 Jun 2022 at 9:32pm |
Rusty, if your house heat is already all hydronic, all you're doing, is adding in another heat SOURCE to your hydronic system. Hydronic systems don't care WHERE the hot liquid comes from, or how it became hot, they just distribute that heat as your circulatory pumps and zones move it around.
Like yours, my house has two hydronic air-handlers- one in the attic, one in basement... both have A coils for AC, and each has a circuit for a TACO circulator, thermostat upstairs so she can set her sleeping-temp comfort one way, and house-comfort another... (I don't ask, I just giver her what she wants).
I also have a hydronic circuit in my south porch, which can ACCEPT heat, but more often, I'm using coolant to COOL it, as this porch is a passive solar collector- black concrete (looks like slate) floor, with complete exposure during winter heating months. I have 2 layers of 2" foam under that 8" slab, and 230 tons of limestone powder poured over four lifts, each separated by 150ft of PEX... it's thermal storage... once it's warm, I can circulate cold water in, and get warm water out.
The other hydronic circuit is in my basement addition... it encircles the original house by 12ft, has 2" of foam under a 6" slab, and the basement walls are insulated from footing to siding with 2" foam. Once that floor is warm, the whole main floor of the house stays warm.
My generator shed is a 10" slab, sitting on 2" foam, and has PEX in it. Two of my four generators are currently 'tapped' into that pex, so when the engines are running, the shed floor... and the OTHER generator engine... is heated by the one that's running. I haven't piped the generators' waste heat into the house YET, but will eventually. The rest of my new workshop's floor will all be poured with PEX, and the solid-fuel boiler will heat the shop floor, and the thermal storage mass under the south porch, and also feed the hydronic in the house. It'll require some babysitting, but once the shop floor is toasty warm, and the thermal mass is warm, I'll be able to let the boiler's fuel load burn out, and not have to go feed it for at least a week. If there's no hot water from that system, the propane-fired units in the basement of the house will do it all automatically.
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Ten Amendments, Ten Commandments, and one Golden Rule solve most every problem. Citrus hand-cleaner with Pumice does the rest.
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