outdoor wood boilers

[gearpump]

I was wondering if anybody had any thoughts on these units. I am very close to getting one for our farm. With my parents passing, I now have to heat the main house, my apartment in the barn and the sugarhouse kitchen. I figured out its about 2900 gallons of oil. OUCH! The unit I was looking into was the Woodmaster 5500. I think 10 cords of wood should get my thru the winter. Any sugesstions of thoughts would be great.

Marty

[WESTVIRGINIAMAPLER]

Marty,

A lot of people down here have them and love them. They are basically maintenance free and you are about correct on the amount of wood with what you would be heating. I would recommend getting one that you can heat your hot water with it too. In the summer time when you are not using it, just burn some papers and and junk in it every couple of days and you are set for hot water also. You could pay for one in a year for what you would pay for 2900 gallons of oil. :D The best thing is that the bigger the block of wood, the longer it lasts. You can put anything in them that you are able to lift. Small tractor with bucket would be good as you could slide it off the bucket into the stove. Check with sawmills or lumber yards as a lot of times you can get a huge load of rejects dropped at your door for around $ 100 which would be at least half of winters supply. They good thing is that they burn anything and everything.

[Fred Henderson]

I have had one for going on 6 years now and love. But I will advise you aganist a Woodmaster That company has got some design problems. I have a Classic. Look at them all before you buy.

[cncaboose]

One thing to consider if you are much of an environmentalist, I've read that they release 1000 times as many particulate pollutants as an oil burner and emit at least double that of using wood stoves. Some of my farm clients have them and they seem to be wood hogs, but that may have to do with the fact that they burn green wood.
An alternative to consider would be a modern efficient oil or gas furnace that has computerized controls to raise and lower the temp of the system based on the outside temp. It costs us no more to run ours than burning wood if you have to purchase the wood, plus there's no splinters in your hands, ashes to deal with, costs less to install, and you don't have to go out on a minus 20 degree morning to stoke it.

[gearpump]

Ian, I would love to solve our heating problem with a better furnace, but our house was built in the 1700's and to say the least its a little drafty! I have 40 acres of "heat" to harvest so I think this is the best plan. Fred, what design problems do the woodmasters have? I have done my research, but one company downs the other and ditto for the other one! I have talked to a couple people that have woodmasters and they like the forced air feature. What model of the Central do you have? I was looking at the 6048.

Marty

[Fred Henderson]

Marty, I have the smallest that central boiler makes, offhand I do not know the model. Woodmaster have a problem with their dampers burning away or rotting out. Also beware that whatever whatever you put in that if it has a forced draft blower a lot of heat is blown up the stack. Woodmaster has on some model and adjustable aquastat which is not good because when the water gets below 160drg it becomes very acidity. The last that I new Woodmaster did not include a water test kit with theirs.

[markcasper]

I have a Aqua-Therm wood boiler. I have had it for 3 seasons now and like the fact that my heat bill is virtually 000 directly. My wife worked for a plumbing contractor in the office and that is kind of how we ended up with a aqua therm. We were the guiinni pigs though as this was the first one that he installed or should i say attepted to install. I will not go into that whole story.

My advice-----do not get one that has an ash removal auger. If you want to burn anything with nails in, its hard to get the auger to work satisfactorily, wish I had one with just a simple door i could open to get the ashes out.

They do take a little more wood than burning inside, BUT all the mess is outside and you can burn a fair amount of green wood as long as you have some dry to go with it, or have a healthy bed of hot coals. As far as loading with a tractor....Every time I tried to put just one large piece in, the fire goes out, it can't be so big that it does that, but you don't have to split it as fine as if you were burning in the house.

Mine also heats our hot water, but a word of advice in heating water year around......you also have your windows open in the summer and with the stove being about 50 feet from the house and the wind from the right direction, I have ended up with a house full of smoke before. Its best to shut it down from June to September and just use you other heat source for heating your water. I figure I save about $25 a month by NOT using the electric hot water.

They do not burn the cleanest due to their design and is best suited for use in the country. Mark

[ibby458]

I have the next size smaller Woodmaster, and am not impressed with it. My primary problem is that is will not burn hardwood, especially if it's dry. There are no grates, so the coals pile up until you have a firebox full of dead coals and a cold house. We burn dead standing tamarack, pine and popple, which works good, but takes twice as much due to lower BTU content.

I know Woodmaster made a add-on grate type thing, but the only person I knew that used one took it out due to poor performance.

A friend has a Heat-Mor with grates, and it's perfect. He uses about 10% more wood than he did with wood stoves, but since you can cut it 3' long, it's actually less work.

If you use it year round for heating water (Which is great!) it WILL stink like crazy. Get is as far from the house as you can. Mine is 75' away, and this summer it's getting moved another 75' back. be VERY sure of wind direction. These things REEK in the summer and after filling it.

Plan on extennding the stack when it's installed. It won't help alot, but it will help. Be sure to use Stainless insulated pipe.

I do like the whole system, and wish I had installed it 10 yrs earlier. I just wish Woodmaster was a good furnace.

The previous post about emissions is right on. Fortunately, they are larger particles that settle out of the air quite quickly. Keep that in mind if you have white siding or a nice car. If the smoke blows towards it, it'll be black very quickly.

Oh - DON'T burn pallets! Worst stink I ever smelled in my life. You have no way of knowing what kinds of oil or chemicals are soaked in that wood.

[gearpump]

Wow, that quite a few strikes against Woodmaster. I think that I will look into the Central classic again. Another reason I was going with the Woodmaster is the dealer is having a "special" till the end of May. A free cord of wood and the use of an excavator to install the piping. Seemed like a good deal to me!

Marty

[Fred Henderson]

Look at it this way if a dealer has got to offer an incentive like that to sell his units, how good are they really. If you put that thing on your property you will know in a few years just how good of a deal it was.

[WESTVIRGINIAMAPLER]

Just curious how many different manufactures are for sale there?? There are a ton of different ones down here. :?

[WF MASON]

My inlaws have the Hardy all stainless model , its 12-15 years old and the inside top baffel was just replaced this spring. This brand is not under presser like a 'real' boiler . The circulation pump pumps the hot water through the system. Firebox and outside cover is stainless. He has a big farm house and burns 10-12 cord of 3' green wood.

[saphead]

Just my 2 cents: If your willing to drop thousands of $ on a wood fired boiler you may want to consider the Seton Boiler.This is the real thing,a water tube boiler. I did a lot of homework years ago to get my piece of paper and a few licenses,(I'm not putting feathers in my cap here), but a hot water furnace made without a special steel will not last. Steam boilers made out of boiler plate will last forever(almost),why? under pressure=hot,no oxygen=no corrosion with proper treatment.Remember back in the 70's everyone jumped on the bandwagon making stoves,same today...lot of high priced poorly engineered and designed water furnaces. I just hate to see people spending big $ for inefficient smoke belchers!

[Fred Henderson]

Saphead, You hinted at a lot of things but you really did say anything. Could you be more specific?

I once worked at a place where we has 3 Clever/Brooks boilers that each one produced 50K of steam. These boilers have a special unit to takes the oxygen out the the return condensate water. They used chemicals to treat the water on a daily bases, and someone also checked the return water each day. I don't think that the average homeown can afford a set up like that.

[gearpump]

I am sure that there are a lot of "better" systems out there, but even if I get a unit and it last only 10 years I am still ahead in the game.Right now we use close to $5,000 worth of heating oil for the two houses. Add that up by 10 and the cost of an $8,000 unit seems small! Maybe in the future I can look into something that works better and will last longer. I am kinda looking for the easy way out for the moment! The hardest part of this process is finding a dealer that I can talk to face to face! There are plenty of websites but really no place that you can go to compare these things side by side and really look them over.

Marty

[mountainvan]

I see quite a few dealers at our local county fairs in the summer. Just a thought for you.

[WESTVIRGINIAMAPLER]

Marty,

Would you be able to get access to waste oil?? You can pick up a waste oil burner reman with warranty for a few hundred and if you could find a good source like a large equipment service dept that went thru hundreds or thousands of gallon @ month, all you would have to worry about is hauling it to your house and pumping it into your tanks.

You already have the oil equipment in place, just need to invest in a different burner I think. :?

[saphead]

The boiler I'm refering to is a closed loop system,the liquid in the boiler never leaves the loop. The liquid is circulated- hot liquid out of top header-heat exchanger-circ. pump-bottom header-water wall tubes-back to top header,bladder tank and a few things tossed in. Most outdoor wood furnaces are not boilers,not a closed loop system therefore some water in the system evaporates and water has to be added. Every time water is added so is oxygen. It's interesting that you mentioned Cleaver Brooks,I used to be a field service rep. for them. The device you mentioned is a DA,deaerator,basically removes the oxygen from the steam loop.If you desire to have all this explained ,much better than I can, go to www.rohor.com. Fred is a very knowledgable and honest man and his boilers are $1000 off the regular price this month! One of my co-workers bought one and it's crossing the country as I'm typing this.

[Parker]

I would really think long and hard befor going to waste oil,,I know 4-5 people that have them in their garages and they are a very high maintainance item,, waste oil is (in my area) hard to come by because sevral people use it to heat their garages,you have to be carful about your source of the oil so you know you are getting good quality petrolium oil,,not something like transformer oil or anything with any water in it,I would consider it in my garage,,definatly nothing I would want to depend on to heat my house,,,just my 2cents

[maple flats]

You must also be careful with waste oil. In NYS the Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) restricts how much waste oil you can burn. There is a sugarhouse around here that evaporates with waste oil and would use all WO if allowed. They set the # of gal he can use, I heard the # at one time but do not remember but it was in the hundreds and not thousands. My brother also heats his house/shop/swimming pool (the house/garage is 5000 sf and shop heated area is about 500 sf) with waste oil tied in with an outdoor boiler. The outdoor unit (Taylor) is an open system and the waste oil unit sets in a building right beside it. The WO unit is under pressure and the Taylor has heat exchange coils in it. Either can be used as needed. He has to burn some wood because he can not get enough oil. The WO unit works real well and dependably with the oil tanks in a heated building and the oil lines run beside underground hot recirculating water lines which keeps the oil warm, there is also an air pump as part of the oil pump which keeps everything working. His only problem is that the big shops he used to get oil from will no longer give him or even sell him oil because their insurance companies prohibit it, they must have a DEC certified recycler haul it and pay them to haul it away. Therefor he can only get oil from small garages and then only gets enough to burn oil about 50% of the time, the rest is wood in the Taylor (which is now 16 years old and has been rewelded many times)

[Revi]

There's a farm here in Maine where they heat a bunch of greenhouses with used cooking oil. They strain it after heating it up and end up with some nice stuff. Since they produce greens for the restaurant (all winter) they pick up the waste cooking oil when they drop off the greens. It works out well. The restaurants like it because they get rid of a waste product and the greenhouses grow greens. There's a bit of a process to make it useable, but it's not toxic like biodiesel production. I have a friend who runs his 92 jetta on half diesel and half cooking oil he gets at his job too.
It's a good way to save money if you have a source of the stuff!

[gearpump]

I will stick with the wood burning idea. I have plenty of it and I like the idea of not having to worry about the price of the oil going up. I do admit that I am going to stay with oil for the evaporator because of the constant heat and the ease of production. I am going to see a dealer tommorow that has a bunch of the central boiler units for me to look at. The next plan is to start cutting lots and lots of wood!

Marty

[Father & Son]

Gearpump,
Heres a link for ebay for one for sale it costs $3,950 and heats 5,000 sq. ft. the link is :arrow:http://cgi.ebay.com/NEW-OUTDOOR-WOOD-BOILER-FURNACE-W-Power-Draft_W0QQitemZ6059709586QQcategoryZ41987QQrdZ1QQc mdZViewItem


Sincerely,
Chase (son)

[gearpump]

Went to New England Outdoor Furnaces in Claremont, NH today and put my money down on a Central Classic. Nice looking rig. Wes Smith- the dealer,owner- was great to talk with. He sure has a lot of models in stock, as well as piping and all the fittings. I would recomend him to anybody that is thinking of going this way to heat there homes. Now when I walk thru the woods I'm thinking- I can tap this tree, and that one will make great firewood!

Marty

[Fred Henderson]

That is why I put mine in. I had so many dead Tamrack and others that need to be thinned and no way to use up the wood. Even with the wood fired arch I could not begin to use up what was there. I burn more wood in the boiler burning soft wood but it heats my home, hot water, gararge& workshop. The hardwood culls go to the sugarhouse. Both are now full and waiting for the time to use them up.

[gearpump]

Finally got the new furnace installed this weekend. It feels good to get all that done. If anybody has any thoughts about getting one of these units, I am sure now is the time. I put some photos of the process in my yahoo album.

Marty

[Tim]

Marty-
Your new classic looks pretty good. I've had one for four years and I really like it, you won't be dissapointed.

[Russell Lampron]

Marty-

The new furnace looks good. Who did the excavation work?

Russ

[gearpump]

Kenny Magoon did the site work. I was going to rent a small excavator, but I was some glad I didn't. His big machine had enough trouble with all the rocks that had to be dug up! We had to get two loads of sand fill to back fill the trench because we ran out of dirt. I have Matt Magoon starting at the end of July to cut off the back 40 acres and skid me out 15 to 20 cords of wood. Hopefully it will dry enough to make it thru this winter.

Marty

[Russell Lampron]

I thought that it was Kenny in the picture on your web site. I have had both he and Matt do work for me. They are fast and do excelant work. Kenny came to the rescue when I needed someone to do the site work when I built my house.

Russ

[Fred Henderson]

You will find that the boiler likes green wood much better than dry. So do not worry if your wood is not as dry as you are accostume too.

[WF MASON]

I was visiting with a guy from Wisconsion that night , said the town where he lives just banned the outdoor stoves becouse of excessive smoke. The ones that are there can stay but no new ones can be installed. Its nice to live in the land of the free.

[Fred Henderson]

I can understand the town's way of thinking. These boilers are not made for in town or subria America. If anyone wants to run a smoke stack up 40 ft it might help but certain weather conditions bring the smoke right back down. Many older people choose to live in towns and have breathing problems. We youngers have to think of them. We will be the olders very soon.

[brookledge]

Another thing is that in the winter time when everybody has there house closed up its not bad but I have seen wood furnaces smoking away in the summer (heating their hot watter) and I can imagine that the neighbors who can't hang the laundry or open their windows would not be happy.
Keith

[gearpump]

Started up the new woodboiler last night and enjoyed the "free" heat and hot water this morning. Learned real fast not to open the door and stick your head in the firebox! I am thinking another 4 feet of pipe will help with the blowback. Thanks to everyone who gave they experiences and opinions about these units. It was a wise investment for my farm. I really can't wait for sugaring season to get here because I now can have plenty of hot water and a heated sugarhouse to work in!

marty

[Pete33Vt]

With the outdoor furnance we are putting in, we were told to shut down the pumps when we fire so that the fire will not blow back at you. We are still in the prosses of getting it hooked up. But I am hoping to have all the wood I have blocked up split and stacked this weekend. I can't wait for it to be installed. Especially sense the OIL FURNANCE has kicked on a few times in the last few days. I am not sure of the kind it is. The Landlord is going to pick it up soon. Hoping it won't take long to get it going.
Pete

[sbingham]

Thanks to all that posted the info & tips on the outdoor furnaces. It really helped me to make the decision to purchase a Central Boiler Classic. We did the installation ourselves, started a fire last Sunday - it really works great. The house stays a constant temp and there is plenty of hot water. Nights have been cool here in northern Wisconsin, we are actually looking forward to some colder weather to see how the furnace performs.
Thanks again for a great site.
Scott Bingham

[gearpump]

I have been running my boiler now for over a month and things are going great. For the moment I have to try and not overfill it with wood. I have this "thing" that the wood will run out before morning and the fire will die. Even with heating the main house, two apartments and all the hot water I only have to load a small wheelbarrow load of wood morning and night. I think I gone thru 1/2 cord of wood so far. Hopefully I can get the sugarhouse part plumbed up this weekend. I still have another 5 to 7 cords of wood to put in the woodbunker, but I am ready for the mother load of all winters!! Bring it on!

Marty

[Fred Henderson]

If a person has the resouces and the time to cut the wood I don't see how you can go wrong with and outdoor boiler. I have have one going on 6 years now and all I burn is standing dead wood. Tamrack to be exact. I am retired and I don't have to work hard at putting up my wood . Just putter along.

[WESTVIRGINIAMAPLER]

How often do you guys clean out the inside of the burner??

[Fred Henderson]

I don't clean my persay. A good hot fire takes care of any cresote. I take the ashes out about once a month. Several times thru the heating season I open the cleanout under the stack and scrap that out.

[gearpump]

I made a neat little ash scoop and take about a 5 gallon pail out every two days. It has a magnet on the bottom that removes nails from the pallets that I have been burning. This is one reason I went the Central as compared to the Woodmaster. The nails would have got hung up in the ash auger. I posted a couple of pics under the woodboiler section of my photos. Finally got the woodbunker framing done today. A couple of new tarps should keep the wood good and dry.

Marty

[Russell Lampron]

I just ordered a Central Classic 6048 outdoor wood furnace today. The weekend after next I will be snubbing my nose at the towel heads and feeling nice and warm burning the wood I have laying around all over the place on the 69 acres that I own. It will be just in time for Christmas.

Russ

[gearpump]

You won't regret that choice Russ. It was one of the best things I did for the farm. Are you planning on installing it soon? Hopefully the ground is not to frozen so you can get the pipe in the ground.

[Russell Lampron]

Marty I will be getting it on the 21st. Matt and I are going to pick it up and install it that weekend. I cant wait. It will be nice to walk in to a warm house and not worry about where the money for oil is coming from. Eventually I will be running it to the sugarhouse too.

Russ

[Russell Lampron]

It was nice to wake up this morning and not feel the usual chill. I cant thank Matt Roy enough for all of his help in picking up my new furnace and helping install it. Actually he did most of the installing and I did the helping. I couldn't have done it as fast with him.

We met at the furnace dealers place yesterday morning around 11:30 and had heat coming into the house at 2 am today. No more oil bills and I can set the thermostat where ever I want to and not worry about it. I have plenty of wood on my 69 acres to feed it too.

Russ

[royalmaple]

Russ-

Made it home safe and sound today. Just got back from cutting the opening for the new trunk line to the road. Made it about 1/2 way in. Boy sucks cutting wood & brush on snowshoes. The snow is pretty deep in there, makes me wish it was early fall and no snow.

My pleasure to help you and glad you and Linda are enjoying it. Now your family will always want to stop over to your place to visit.

[Russell Lampron]

Matt,

Thank you again and I'm glad that you made it home safe.

You saw how fast my dad came over, broken ribs and all, to check it out. If he could still cut wood I'm sure he would get one of these furnaces too.

I filled it at 2:00 yesterday afternoon for the first time since I lit it at midnight and there was still plenty of wood in it then. I haven't checked it yet this morning.

Russ