Help me choose how to heat...

[nstueve]

I'll try to make this as simple as possible... The wife likes to play with fire and I don't mind reducing winter heat bills.

We have a 2200sqft house not including the 24x32 attached garage and full poured cement basement. There is only 1 way into and out of the basement through the side of the kitchen. So I think the basement is out (for placement of indoor furnace) since the wife doesn't want wood inside, and I don't want to carry all that wood 1/2 way across the house. We have 2 enclosed fireplace stacks attached to the house (neither is open to be used currently). The previous owner boxed out one with plywood and the other is behind drywall somewhere. The garage is attched and there is probably room in there for the placement of a wood stove. So I'm thinking of five options...

1.) pellet stove insert(s) for the exhisting stack(s). But what is cheaper, cutting wood or buying pellets; has anyone done the math??

2.) OK if Btu value is too low or pellet cost to much... How about a wood stove/furnace in the garage that feeds hot air into the house and heats the garage making it warm to work in over winter? Benefit would be keeping mess in garage and having a truck with topper filled with dry wood a few feet away.

3.) wood furnace outside with air vent into the house to feed house with heat. I have seen these and know guys that love them but how is the efficiency on transferring BTU value of wood into house and how long do they burn?

4.) OWB - Pony up the $$$ and run hot water to furnace and any cold spot in the house to help even the heat. (best option but I've added up the cost and it's not cheap...

5.) Masonary heater - Anyone ever do one of these??? they seem very practicle due to heat storage and short hot burns. the only problem I can think of would be ability to deliver heat to the corners of the house.

x.) an option I don't know about...

 

[NSMaple1]

How is it heated now?

 

[kyle1!]

For whole house heater either indoor wood furnace or OWB. I'm with Del shouldn't be too hard to add a wood chute/trap door. Brian

 

[zogger]

I like the wood chute to the basement idea. Stick a furnace down there, see if one of the existing chimneys could be made to work.

Or..open up an existing chimney inside and stick a stove there. Wood in the house isn't that bad at all with a little care and forethought. A wood stack area like on some tile, etc. or a kids wagon, kept inside, brought to porch, load wood into wagon, haul over by the stove. All the mess is in the wagon, dump it outside once in awhile.

Good clean splits are just that, little mess to speak of.

Whatever it is, I like natural convection and radiation. I do not like the idea of having a simple solid state easy to scrounge heat source like wood, then tie it to having the electricity supply intact. Sure as snot, the nastiest coldest iciest day of the year, poof, no power..now no heat as well. nuts.

We have wood primary, propane backup with wall heaters, neither requires electricity.

 

[cantoo]

We used to be all electric, went to a Hotblast in the basement with wood in the basement. Now we have an OWB and will never go back. Doesn't take much power to run it if hydro goes out. Since we changed to owb we also ran lines to my son's house. The owb and lines ( big $$'s to forget) will be paid off in less than 3 years and we have all the heat and hot water we want. Wood cutting will be much simpler and I can finally use some of the big toys I already have more. Grapple, forks, buzz saw, dump trailers etc. to save wear and tear on my body. Do you have close neighbours?

 

[jrider]

I weighed these decisions 3 years ago and decided to pony up the dough for the OWB. What swayed me was, everything was outside - the fire risk, the dust/mess - I didn't have to worry about getting all of the wood into the house somehow. I knew I could easily burn junk wood that most people burn in firepits. I liked how it's thermostat controlled. I can burn large chunks of wood. I'm sure I'm missing some but I don't have one regret so far. I just hope it stays that way.

 

[nstueve]

How is it heated now?

15 year old LP furnace.

Have you considered a wood chute to get wood into the basement?
It it's possible it can be a huge factor in making the best decision. There are some very nice whole house hot air furnaces on the market.

It's possible but not probably or easy. I'll make a diagram to explain...
The below is an arial of my house. Red lines on upper side show steep drop that is not possible to run a truck or other ATV over during winter months (don't even want to during summer). The blue on the bottom show a very steep hill that is steep and not possible to traverse either. The long blue horizontal line shows a 5-6ft retaining wall. The long angled red line (at right) shows a very steep driveway which is really the only way to bring wood to the house and is tedious to traverse in the winter. The left side of the photo between blue and red lines is the back yard which is gated in and can not be accessed by anything larger than my riding mower and also has a steep decline from the blue top the red. You can see wood storage on pallets or stacks is not really feasible. My solution thus far has been to load from stacks on lower level into truck and then carry from truck to where I am burning.

Which brings us to possible stove/fireplace/burner location... The yellow star is the current LP furnace. We have 1000 gallon tank and I have projected the furnace will eat that propane by March at our current consumption rate (house at 67*-68* with thermostat in warmer area of house). Green circles are the existing stacks (neither accessable in basement). light green ladder is the stair case going downstairs and has a door that goes directly into garage. Garage is light pink and hot pink area represents the main floor and upstairs area. The green stack to the right is a main floor fireplace (blocked off), has basement under but no 2nd floor on that side. Entrance to house is near this living room on right side of house


Here is the house I am standing on blue line steep area and the stack to the right of house is the same stack to the right of arial. (needless to say the wife won't let me do a wood schute on the "entrance" side of the house. There is basement under everything but the garage. The far side of the house from the pic is the steep red side. This makes wood storage a NULL idea up by the house since the only way to get bulk wood up there is through the garage into house or through garage to back side of house.

I like the wood chute to the basement idea. Stick a furnace down there, see if one of the existing chimneys could be made to work.
Or..open up an existing chimney inside and stick a stove there. Wood in the house isn't that bad at all with a little care and forethought. A wood stack area like on some tile, etc. or a kids wagon, kept inside, brought to porch, load wood into wagon, haul over by the stove. All the mess is in the wagon, dump it outside once in awhile.
Good clean splits are just that, little mess to speak of.
Whatever it is, I like natural convection and radiation. I do not like the idea of having a simple solid state easy to scrounge heat source like wood, then tie it to having the electricity supply intact. Sure as snot, the nastiest coldest iciest day of the year, poof, no power..now no heat as well. nuts.
We have wood primary, propane backup with wall heaters, neither requires electricity.

Yea the dirty part is splitting the wood and having all the bark and dirt fall off which makes it inside a little. Unless you are vacuuming your wood off... Wife would probably relent to basement furnace if we put a chute in the back of the house but then you have to walk each arm load of wood from the truck in the garage, out the back and under the deck (kinda seen to left of the left stack on aerial). Then you have to carry the wood back to the furnace area from the far side of the basement (because of ducting the wood furnace would need to be near the current LP).

Also there have been many house fires in my area due to wood burners being installed and not maintained. Result is insurance rates go up if you bring "Fire" inside.

 

[nstueve]

Current thoughts that would be possible...

1.) OWB in the back behind garage where wood can be supplied via truck or pallet from garage.
2.) OWB in the front (behind truck in second pic) and run hot water line into house. Wood still supplied via truck or pallet
3.) wood stove or furnace in garage: easily supplied with fuel but would probably eat 1/2 a parking spot, and fire is now inside insurance goes up,
4.) simple wood fireplace inserts at both ends of house for wood assistance at nite (cheap and effective but still tons of wood through living areas- wife would shoot me)
5.) russian masonary heater hooked to the fireplace at right (lots of construction...grimmace)

Also I have generator that can run furnace fan and hot water pump should electric go out.

Another question that has been on my mind is if anyone has tried the new NEST thermostat with dual fuel OWB and LP?

 

[chuckwood]

For whole house heater either indoor wood furnace or OWB. I'm with Del shouldn't be too hard to add a wood chute/trap door. Brian

When I was a kid, my grandma lived in a big, drafty victorian style house with high ceilings and a huge iron fireman coal furnace in the basement. One basement room was made entirely of poured concrete and was the coal bin. It could hold an entire small dumptruck load of coal. One of my chores at grandma's house was to shovel coal into the hopper that fed coal into the furnace via a long worm screw inside a pipe going to the firebox. There was coal dust everywhere, and the coal bin was loaded from outside via a chute. The chute was designed so the dump truck could back up and empty its load directly into it, the truck had a small conveyor type rig on the back that would shuttle the coal from truck to coal chute, all a one man operation for an old lady's furnace.

Seems it would be easy to build a two man operated simple wood chute going to the basement woodpile. Yeah, more work in handling and stacking, but no coal dust.

I always wondered what would have happened if that massive coal pile in grannys basement ever caught on fire. I used to throw coal dust into the firebox just to enjoy the pyrotechnical display that happened, I burned myself good a couple times before I gave up that game.

 

[nstueve]

We used to be all electric, went to a Hotblast in the basement with wood in the basement. Now we have an OWB and will never go back. Doesn't take much power to run it if hydro goes out. Since we changed to owb we also ran lines to my son's house. The owb and lines ( big $$'s to forget) will be paid off in less than 3 years and we have all the heat and hot water we want. Wood cutting will be much simpler and I can finally use some of the big toys I already have more. Grapple, forks, buzz saw, dump trailers etc. to save wear and tear on my body. Do you have close neighbours?

For cost I do like the Hotblast units and I could make my own unit from steel if I wanted to. We do have neighbors... We noticed that they were burning wet wood the last 2 weeks and really smoking us out. It was pretty bad that their smoke just hung in the air and made our whole house stink of their smoldering wood. It almost feels like I should give them some in return; too bad I'm well stocked with dry wood.

I weighed these decisions 3 years ago and decided to pony up the dough for the OWB. What swayed me was, everything was outside - the fire risk, the dust/mess - I didn't have to worry about getting all of the wood into the house somehow. I knew I could easily burn junk wood that most people burn in firepits. I liked how it's thermostat controlled. I can burn large chunks of wood. I'm sure I'm missing some but I don't have one regret so far. I just hope it stays that way.

Yes keeping it all outside is a bonus and even being able to "zone heat" in cold spots would be nice, or heated kitchen floors, hot water paid for via OWB too, etc etc etc etc... yea there's tons of reasons to go OWB and that's were we would like to be but $5-$8K to set it all up might be out of our financial reach.

We decided to do 1 winter without wood and see what propane cost us (how air tight is the house). The house is pretty good but LP is still expensive. We are plotting for a OWB, wood burner, etc purchase next spring/summer. Which brings me to my next question. Do OWB's ever go on sale? I know fall and winter is not the optimal time to buy...

 

[nstueve]

For 15 yearsI lived in a house that had poured cement walls. Instead of cutting into the wall for a chute I went into a closet at floor level and cut a slot in the closet floor. Then I framed in a box over this slot. The slot fit between floor joist. Also a small door was built to cover the opening in the side of the house. Wood was pushed into this opening and it fell to a makeshift room in an unfinished basement where the wood stove was. To keep down dust I hung 4 mill plastic walls surrounding where the wood fell. I'd bring in a cord at a time and could back right up near it with a pickup truck. The box took up very little room in the closet floor. Saved hundreds of man hours over the years and I'd keep up to two cords inside drying in a super wood heated room. My heating system was all passive including a 30 gallon and 80 gallon water tanks for DHW.

The basement is poured but already framed, dry-walled, textured and painted. All we need is a ceiling and floor covering to add it to the livable square footage of the house (which we plan to do). Another reason the basement doesn't work... The wife plans to finish it with another bedroom and stuff.

 

[NSMaple1]

I'd put an IWB in the garage if it was me. Gassifier. With storage. HX in the plenum.

Or, a gassifying wood furnace in the basement, add-on, tied to existing duct work. Do what I could to make the wood slining easier.

But if 5-8k is out of reach, you might be relegated to stoves.

 

[nstueve]

We are on a pretty fixed budget. No OT pay just a steady paycheck for me and the wife. We have started to save and I'll probably sell a few large ticket items like my motorcycle and some other things along with a little extra holiday cash and maybe a side job here or there. I think we can get into a OWB. There is actually a concrete pad right behind the house which helps. I was thinking of making a pass through boiler/burner. IE: put the boiler face/opening against the back wall of garage so it can be filled from inside the garage but not take up any space in garage. I'm not sure that plan gets me past (fire in the house) since the boiler would be touching the house.

I don't know if you can see it or not but there is a Home Depot kit shed back there on the pad. You can barely see it in the way left side of the pic and to the left of the pink square in the aerial view. I was thinking of moving the shed to a better location like on top of the retaining wall... The better spot would be moving it to the lower level next to the shop for cold storage. Either way the rear concrete pad could probably fit a boiler and 4x4 ft pallet of wood.

Has anyone seen the thread on the rail road system a guy set up so that wood pallets could be pulled along so that a full pallet of wood can always be near the OWB?

 

[NSMaple1]

With trying to put in an OWB that close to the house on a sub-5k budget, I'd be worried about you ending up with a smoker that will smoke you out worse than what the neighbours is. Clean burners are more expensive, and that area looks like it could be a smoke trap with the chimney being blocked to hinder good draft and trees and big walls blocking wind.

Have you investigated putting inserts or stoves where the fireplace stacks are?

I don't see you ending up with something you'll be REALLY happy living with the limitations you're looking at and budget - suspect there will be tradeoffs in the equation.

 

[ash man]

Owb and make your own insulated lines I put in a Earth last year for @ $7500total. I'm heating my house and outbuilding with it and my total utility bills are averaging @ $160. I belong to an electric co-op and every news letter i get talks about electric rates continuing to increase, mostly because of the epa making it harder to generate electricity from coal fired pplants

 

[cantoo]

A Hotblast type is your cheapest option that will heat that square footage but you will be tending it pretty often and moving lots of wood by hand. And when you can swing the owb you can always sell the Hotblast. Not sure about the stove/ furnace in the garage deal though, are you sure you can legally do that there? Insurance companies aren't keen on the carbon monoxide issue garage to house. Sucking air from a car garage and blowing it into the house, don't think that's gonna work.
My nephew had a Heatmor system put in last year, complete cost was CDN $17000. And he's happy, of course he's heating a huge shop now too. I bought a used owb, 1 used exchanger, everything else was new and did all the work myself including digging and electric and my system was around $8000. I'm also real happy with mine. Start looking now and find deals on the stuff you are going to need, they are out there just gotta find them.

 

[sam-tip]

Do some pricing on new super high efficiency propane furnace and owb will look cheeper. Just a few more $$ and you will have wood heat.

Sent from my SCH-R950 using Tapatalk

 

[Cheesecutter]

Another vote for OWB. Do you know why they're so expensive? Because they're worth it. You rarely hear of an unsatisfied OWB owner and if you do it's poor install, inferior unit, or poor operator practices.

 

[brenndatomu]

Any chance of leveling off a little area and set a OWB further down the driveway somewheres? Be easy to get wood to that way...could put it in a small shed if the Mrs. was opposed to driving past that "eyesore" everyday

 

[sam-tip]

If the OP has a smoke problem I think he should get a small gasification boiler or geo thermal. Plus properly insulate. A house of that age could use a little more attic insulation.

I like the idea of indoor boiler in the garage but you need water/heat storage. I think they are cheaper then the outdoor versions. Depends on what you use for water storage. I don't think he has the room to have 500/1000 gallons of heat storage. I like how you burn a fire to store the heat in the water and run the rest of the day with the stored heat. Only one or two small fires a day.

I also wonder if he can keep his stored wood dry enough for a gasification system. He is deep in the wood with little sun. The wood for my gasser must be completely dry. Any snow or rain on the wood causes me smoke problems. It will burn but smokes. Even with a core moisture of 9%.