OWB's and lotsa wood.

[autoimage]

go ahead and split my toothpicks? am i being put down for splitting wood? obviously we do this cause we like it dont put my hobby down cause you dont like splitting wood

 

[Jon B.]

I have a CB 5036 OWB and am liking it a bunch. It was just installed this fall, so I don't have years of experience with it. I have heated with an indoor, cast-iron, old-school stove but that was 30+ years ago.

Just in case, I bought a small (800W) generator to power the boiler in case of a power outage. I generally keep quite a bit of gasoline on hand for the mowers, chain saw, ATV and motorcycles, so we're OK there.

Our boiler gets fed in the evening, around 8pm. It still has wood remaining when Mrs. B. checks it around 8-9am. She tosses a few pieces in then, and a few more in the afternoon. If we feed it lightly during the day, the coals tend not to build up quite so much.

I installed it myself, heat about 1700 square feet of house, heat a 105-gallon domestic water heater and a 700 square foot attached garage (to 45 degrees or so). The total cost was ~$10k. A neighbor has a tree service, so I get lots of wood, a mile-and-a-half from my house. He asked if he can dump in my yard, even. Yes!!

I started the season with ~10-12 cords of mixed hardwood - ash, maple and walnut - some seasoned, much of it green. I've used about one third of it in 2 1/2 months. There's a decent pile for next year, so will be burning better fuel next winter.

Jon

 

[AIM]

go ahead and split my toothpicks? am i being put down for splitting wood? obviously we do this cause we like it dont put my hobby down cause you dont like splitting wood

No one is putting anybody down. Hopefully this stays as a light hearted debate.

 

[HEAVY FUEL]

I didn't read many of the previous posts, but the 2 main things that control wood consumption in my view are wind & thermostat setting. When it's -15 with -31 windchill, like it was here this morning, you want all the heat you can get. Even if I do have to burn more wood its labor I'm willing to do.

 

[John R]

go ahead and split my toothpicks? am i being put down for splitting wood? obviously we do this cause we like it dont put my hobby down cause you dont like splitting wood

A little touchy, arn't we?:hmm3grin2orange::hmm3grin2orange:

 

[Blazin]

A little touchy, arn't we?:hmm3grin2orange::hmm3grin2orange:

:hmm3grin2orange: And here I wasn't gonna say anything :hmm3grin2orange:

 

[chaikwa]

Well, I'll tell ya, you won't ever find me using an OWB. What are you going to do?

The same thing I always do when the power goes out... open the door and make sure the generator started on its' own like it's supposed to do. We don't have power run into the property just to run the OWB. The horses need their water, the servers still need to be on-line and I still need to weld.

You guys can keep your complicated heating systems.

The more complicated things are the more things that can go wrong at the most inopportune times.

Complicated??? You heat water and circulate it with a pump. If that's complicated you better just leave your slippers on in the mornin' and stay in the house!

I have had an inside woodstove in the past. After 30 years as a career firefighter, there are 2 things I will never have: an inside wood burning stove and propane ANYWHERE on my property.

 

[John R]

The same thing I always do when the power goes out... open the door and make sure the generator started on its' own like it's supposed to do. We don't have power run into the property just to run the OWB. The horses need their water, the servers still need to be on-line and I still need to weld.

Complicated??? You heat water and circulate it with a pump. If that's complicated you better just leave your slippers on in the mornin' and stay in the house!

I have had an inside woodstove in the past. After 30 years as a career firefighter, there are 2 things I will never have: an inside wood burning stove and propane ANYWHERE on my property.

What's the problem with propane?
Just wondering.

 

[chaikwa]

What's the problem with propane?
Just wondering.

We've had more 'mishaps' with propane than I care to think about. It's very unforgiving. If it leaks, more times than not, it's going to find an ignition source. And it burns so fast that it's more of an explosion than a 'burn'. If an oil tank leaks, you'll end up with a costly mess. If propane leaks you'll end up with dead or injured people and huge property destruction. A 20 pound propane cylinder like what is found on a common barbecue grill has the explosive equivalent of 66 sticks of dynamite.

 

[phantomblack]

We have a OWB and would not think twice about installing it again. It has saved us about 6K in the last three heating seasons, but the end of this one it will be "paid for".

Ours is doing our domestic hot water and is also hooked up to our in floor heating system to keep the house a constant 74 degrees.

 

[AIM]

As far as splitting because you like to do it then by all means have at it. I certainly won't cut anyone down for it.
My point was simply that OWB owners don't HAVE to split. Well ok sure if it's a 3' piece but for the most part if you can lift it, it will go in.
Plus if I was so inclined I could cut everything 40" or so long and they will fit. (by the way I am not so inclined)
I've been on these forums quite a long time now and have heard a lot of bashing from a lot of people about OWB's and how they are so grossly inefficient, smoke to much and of course. Burn WAY to much wood. I'm just trying to point out (and debate a little) that while being all those bad things they are highly efficient to the user.

Kinda like hauling a 10 ton load of dirt. You use a dump truck. Not the trunk of your KIA.

 

[taskswap]

What's the problem with propane? Just wondering.

Propane "can" be dangerous if not well managed because it's heavier than air. That makes it settle in places like basements if you have a leak, makey-big-boom time. But I think the bigger thing for me is cost - it's not actually much cheaper than fuel oil around here (I think it was $3.60/gal vs. $3.80/gal for oil), and it has fewer MBTU so it ends up costing more in the long run.

Devil's advocate: unlike gasoline it doesn't go "stale". For my portable generator it's no biggie. I run it all the time so gas is just fine, and it's easy to get. But I can see how people with a permament "auto-start" generator install might want propane because it requires so much less service.

Every fuel has its use, I guess. I'd cook on wood or propane but not oil or gas. I'd heat with wood or oil (my backup) but not propane or gas. I'd run my generator on gas or propane but not wood (ha!) or oil. And I run on bourbon, which is good in food too but is too expensive to run a generator or heater on...

 

[spike60]

As far as splitting because you like to do it then by all means have at it. I certainly won't cut anyone down for it.
My point was simply that OWB owners don't HAVE to split. Well ok sure if it's a 3' piece but for the most part if you can lift it, it will go in.
Plus if I was so inclined I could cut everything 40" or so long and they will fit. (by the way I am not so inclined)
I've been on these forums quite a long time now and have heard a lot of bashing from a lot of people about OWB's and how they are so grossly inefficient, smoke to much and of course. Burn WAY to much wood. I'm just trying to point out (and debate a little) that while being all those bad things they are highly efficient to the user.

Kinda like hauling a 10 ton load of dirt. You use a dump truck. Not the trunk of your KIA.

You've made some good points, but this and your opening post are framed in "let's have an argument" language, so some people are simply accepting your invitaion. :msp_smile:

I have a buddy that I cut with and he has an OWB and I have an indoor stove, so we needle each other all the time. My favorite is when he's bulling some big heavy piece of wood into his truck or OWB and says, "You'd have to split this", and I reply, "Yeah, but I don't have to lift it". He gets even with me by saying something like, "Your stove is probably going out now", when he knows I've been away for it for a whole day or whatever. We have some fun with it, and like many of the posts in this thread, both sides tend to make the negatives of either type of stove sound worse than they are. The indoor stove owner has to split, while the OWB guys have to cut more wood. The indoor guy has to load more frequently; the OWB guy has to go out in the cold, rain or snow. The pros and cons mostly even out IMO.

For the money an OWB costs, and the extra amount of wood they use it wouldn't work for me. What's the average total cost for one of these things now, $10,000? Even the guy who posted earlier about building his own had $5000 in it. I might not always have the great access to wood like I do now, and if I needed twice as much I could see where I might end up having to buy wood, and I've never paid for a single piece of wood in my life.

I think the best applications for an OWB are when you have to heat more than one building, or like some of you who have a large, perhaps older house that requires more than one stove. I guess in my mind an OWB would best make sense where it will do a job that a single woodstove is unable to do.

 

[Como]

As far as splitting because you like to do it then by all means have at it. I certainly won't cut anyone down for it.
My point was simply that OWB owners don't HAVE to split. Well ok sure if it's a 3' piece but for the most part if you can lift it, it will go in.
Plus if I was so inclined I could cut everything 40" or so long and they will fit. (by the way I am not so inclined)
I've been on these forums quite a long time now and have heard a lot of bashing from a lot of people about OWB's and how they are so grossly inefficient, smoke to much and of course. Burn WAY to much wood. I'm just trying to point out (and debate a little) that while being all those bad things they are highly efficient to the user.

Kinda like hauling a 10 ton load of dirt. You use a dump truck. Not the trunk of your KIA.

It would take a very long time to season?

 

[AIM]

You've made some good points, but this and your opening post are framed in "let's have an argument" language, so some people are simply accepting your invitaion. :msp_smile:

Yeah I did come off a bit gnarly to start with...:taped: Didn't really mean to but yes i anticipated a nice healthy arguement.

As far as the OWB's cost. WOW!!! is all I can say. That to me. Is the only drawback to one.

I built mine and have somewhere between $3k and 4k in it. After having one I would not be afraid to spend 10k if I couldn't build my own. (I wouldn't like it but I'd spend it)

 

[chaikwa]

As far as the OWB's cost. WOW!!! is all I can say. That to me. Is the only drawback to one.

I will have an OWB in place and in operation by next fall. I am anticipating a cost of 15 to 18 thousand. We will have spent that much in oil in 2 years if we do NOT install an OWB. We've already spent 6500 this season alone for oil. We're heating a 17 room uninsulated, (for all intents and purposes), farm house, a training facility, an office, shop and apartment. Now how many woodstoves would it take to heat all that?:msp_biggrin:

 

[zogger]

I would like both, cant afford an owb.

Actually I would rather a wood kiln, fired with scrap wood, oddball chunks, uglies, pine logs, sweetgum logs, whatever, and blow the moist hot air into the greenhouse at night in the winter..

For the money of one of those OWBs though, I would superinsulate (as close as I could)the house first and be done with it. Drop demand to hardly anything at all.

Insulation always trumps in the ROI arena over burning more fuel, in whatever heating device you have.

There is NOTHING made more efficient, furnace, stove, owb, any make or model or price (just talking about space heating now) than not needing it in the first place.

Until someone has actually seen and experienced a true bonafide superinsulated structure..meh, you wont believe it just reading about it.

 

[ric5141]

I've got an IWB and love it. Even with no power I can get some heat with convection (my dump zone runs that way) but that doesn't matter to me. We have a camper and can always cook with propane on the grill or in the camper. And we have well water and need power anyway for the pump - we need our generator during an outage even if it wasn't for heat.

Besides, because so many people around here are on oil or natural gas (both of which need power for the circulators), at least around here, it's REALLY unusual to lose power for a week. Hurricane Sandy did that, but it's been a decade since the last 3+ day outage. Usually it's only a day or two, and we go plenty of seasons without losing power for more than a few hours at a time. I'm happy with a generator being my "backup" option. If society goes THAT bad THAT fast I don't think I'd stick around on my 2 wooded acres. This ain't no farm.

So I get the best of both worlds. We have a 2800 sq. ft. house, and it would be really hard for a wood stove to move the heat around - it's a spread-out colonial. This way we have no cold spots - the entire house is heated evenly. The basement stays warm without having to add separate heat for that (and helps heat the first floor too). I don't have to go outside to fill it, and the "mess" stays in the basement. All of the people we know who have houses our size have at least two stoves to heat it. What a pain to manage.

All the same, we have two wood stoves as well, we just don't use them. One is a pot-belly beastie that came with the house (it's the one I replaced with the boiler). And one is a decorative little box stove that I could throw into the fireplace in an emergency, and even cook on I suppose. "Just in case."

I don't know that I'd call my boiler installation complicated. There's an oil boiler already. All I did was put an aquastat on the wood boiler, run a pair of lines to the oil boiler ("parallel installation"), and off I went. I will admit I'm planning to add more "stuff" to it (like a heat storage tank and solar panels) but that was a choice, not a necessity.

Everybody marches to the beat of a different drum!

Ive been tossing around the IWB since I have oil fired HW. Just curious on what type you have and how long have you had it? Do you have a rough estimate on how many cord you burn a year. Do you still use oil at all?

Thanks

 

[HEAVY FUEL]

You've made some good points, but this and your opening post are framed in "let's have an argument" language, so some people are simply accepting your invitaion. :msp_smile:

I have a buddy that I cut with and he has an OWB and I have an indoor stove, so we needle each other all the time. My favorite is when he's bulling some big heavy piece of wood into his truck or OWB and says, "You'd have to split this", and I reply, "Yeah, but I don't have to lift it". He gets even with me by saying something like, "Your stove is probably going out now", when he knows I've been away for it for a whole day or whatever. We have some fun with it, and like many of the posts in this thread, both sides tend to make the negatives of either type of stove sound worse than they are. The indoor stove owner has to split, while the OWB guys have to cut more wood. The indoor guy has to load more frequently; the OWB guy has to go out in the cold, rain or snow. The pros and cons mostly even out IMO.

For the money an OWB costs, and the extra amount of wood they use it wouldn't work for me. What's the average total cost for one of these things now, $10,000? Even the guy who posted earlier about building his own had $5000 in it. I might not always have the great access to wood like I do now, and if I needed twice as much I could see where I might end up having to buy wood, and I've never paid for a single piece of wood in my life.

I think the best applications for an OWB are when you have to heat more than one building, or like some of you who have a large, perhaps older house that requires more than one stove. I guess in my mind an OWB would best make sense where it will do a job that a single woodstove is unable to do.

Right on.... that's the way I explain it to most who say they'd love to have an OWB.... you'd better be heating some big buildings to justify it.

 

[Woodomaker]

I agree with most comments on this tedious IWB / OWB subject.
One thing that is not mentioned is home owners insurance.....at least in my case OWB lowers said insurance.......