Great site here, lots of info. It seems that many are fans of the outside wood burning furnaces. I cannot decide if this is right for me. I just bought a 1600 sqft home on 5 acres in Maryland. The house has no AC, electric baseboard heat and hot water heater. Electric bills in winter expected to be around $800/month. I am going to have ac installed with the ducts running in the attic. I was then going to instal a central boiler and put the heat exchanger in the ac ductwork....that is until I discovered here that the cost of the central boiler would be about $10k. I would think an oil furace would cost about $3k to install with oil for the entire winter costing about $800. I really do like the idea though of free heat and being somewhat off the grid. Any of you faced a similar dilema? Is it worth the extra cost of the OWB??