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
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:
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.Well, I'll tell ya, you won't ever find me using an OWB. What are you going to do?
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!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.
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.
What's the problem with propane? Just wondering.
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.
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 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:As far as the OWB's cost. WOW!!! is all I can say. That to me. Is the only drawback to one.
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!
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.
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