Wood Burners

sonocativo

sonocativo

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Deciding where to put it?
 

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Looking to buy a wood furnace for next year, can directly connect to the ducts and have free heat (except for running the blowers) Maybe solar power?
 
When you say chimney location, does that mean an already existing fireplace? If yes, would you consider a steel firebox insert into the fireplace?
 
Tousi said:
When you say chimney location, does that mean an already existing fireplace? If yes, would you consider a steel firebox insert into the fireplace?
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Not a fireplace, just the brick stack from basement to roof.
 

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better pic of livingroon, stack with air return (before re-paint
 

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Oh, yeah, now I remember seeing a picture from the basement.....
 
Yep, I can install a wood furnace here and tie right into the ductworks very easily. I can get a new FireChief wood furnace for $1750 and connection would be cheap (less than $100) and a flue liner ( its tile lined now ) but I can get a stainless liner for added safety at $500 for a DIY kit.
 

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Wood burning furnace is excellent choice, I would go that route. Wondering is return air near floor or near ceiling?

Don't you have basement?
 
I personally would like a woodstove in the living room . I had one that looked something like this one. It had deer in the forest on both sides .








2942380_2_l.jpg
 
Unless you can run a large duct (bigger then 3 by 13) its not worth hooking up to house duct work unless you got a squirrel cage fan blowing air from stove side. Using furance to suck air is the worse way for efficiency . I been there and tried that. Like diehard biker said - basement is more ideal -- you can connect directly to the upper portion of heat duct over furance and have vent installed to basement before the filter.

I would prefer basement because less work in winter to get wood - nice and dry. you are heating from bottom to up. you can get moisture out of basement and make it more comfortable. Otherwise stick it sunroom. I assume you have a door there to carry wood in. The BIGGEST issue is how to get wood in and not track across the floor to another room. wood chips, bugs, dirt tends to fall off the wood you carry and makes a mess. I been there and done that.
 
radioman said:
Unless you can run a large duct (bigger then 3 by 13) its not worth hooking up to house duct work unless you got a squirrel cage fan blowing air from stove side. Using furance to suck air is the worse way for efficiency . I been there and tried that. Like diehard biker said - basement is more ideal -- you can connect directly to the upper portion of heat duct over furance and have vent installed to basement before the filter.

I would prefer basement because less work in winter to get wood - nice and dry. you are heating from bottom to up. you can get moisture out of basement and make it more comfortable. Otherwise stick it sunroom. I assume you have a door there to carry wood in. The BIGGEST issue is how to get wood in and not track across the floor to another room. wood chips, bugs, dirt tends to fall off the wood you carry and makes a mess. I been there and done that.
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You can buy a firewood carrier like this


3G40M0RG.jpg


sonocativo , do you have gas heat too ? When I was selling my house with the woodstove the buyer could not get a mortgage until I had a another source of heat installed . A woodstove did not count as heat.
 
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Padron me, It is the way I set up mine, I discovered how to make this idea works. Using furnace blower to push warm air from stove to whole house, if doing right is most efficient way.

How? Easy, add another thermostat, and have the cool terminal on thermostat connect to G terminal on furnace, off R terminal must be connected both sides. Then set thermostat on cool, and set to 89 as starting point. That way, when stove room heats up to 89 degrees, Furnace blower kicks in and pull hot air to whole house and shuts off when the stove room cools below 89 degrees. That is to allow master thermostat take over if necessary. I have this system for 4 seasons already, and last February after perfected it, I got only 98 dollars actual reading on gas AND electric bill last February and that was damn coldest month. Mostly around 120 dollars for both.

However wood burning furnace takes care of that if choose that route, and would be better because they control the burning on wood while Stove control is manual.

radioman said:
its not worth hooking up to house duct work unless you got a squirrel cage fan blowing air from stove side. Using furance to suck air is the worse way for efficiency .
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I have electric furnace which is expensive as hell, ran me 300 a month just to make comfortable just working here during the winter. So, now with everyone here and everything running, its gonna bite me in the ass, so I am using the wood burner to cut costs on heating this year and hopefully have a wood furnace before next year and a gas furnace installed in place of the electric furnace. You wouldnt believe the spin those heating elements put on the meter...lol
My cousin had a wood furnace, that was their main and only source of heat, we would stock it at night before bed and first thing in the mornings, kept the house comfortable, it looked like an old giant pot belly stove wrapped in duct work ( looked like a giant octopus in the basement ) lol
I have 8" and 12" round ducts, with 12x22 trunks, so plenty of air will move, and yes a wood furnace will have its own forced air system, but my current wood stove will need to use just the blower or I can install a duct fan to move the air on 12v not 120v which can be powered by solar during the days. We have a company that makes a pretty powerful 12v duct fan that I can cut a slot and insert it into the main trunk or install in the return vent
 
sonocativo said:
I have electric furnace which is expensive as hell, ran me 300 a month just to make comfortable just working here during the winter. So, now with everyone here and everything running, its gonna bite me in the ass, so I am using the wood burner to cut costs on heating this year and hopefully have a wood furnace before next year and a gas furnace installed in place of the electric furnace. You wouldnt believe the spin those heating elements put on the meter...lol
My cousin had a wood furnace, that was their main and only source of heat, we would stock it at night before bed and first thing in the mornings, kept the house comfortable, it looked like an old giant pot belly stove wrapped in duct work ( looked like a giant octopus in the basement ) lol
I have 8" and 12" round ducts, with 12x22 trunks, so plenty of air will move, and yes a wood furnace will have its own forced air system, but my current wood stove will need to use just the blower or I can install a duct fan to move the air on 12v not 120v which can be powered by solar during the days. We have a company that makes a pretty powerful 12v duct fan that I can cut a slot and insert it into the main trunk or install in the return vent
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I love the old pot belly stove ! We had one in our summer camp in NH .
It cooked great blueberry pancakes . Us kids thought it was great but my dad hated it , it remind him of being poor and living in Russia so he had electric stove put in. I know what you mean about the meter spinning like crazy , you can see the $$$ flying pass your eyes . I had an electric heater put in my house so I could sell it. The house was in Berkeley , Calif. and it didn't get that cold there. It sound like you have a good heating system you want to set. I am so glad none of my homes had electric heats .
 
I have fond memories of the kind of heat we got from a coal furnace that was in an apartment I lived in years ago. It was a two story house that had the upstairs changed into a 1 bedroom apartment.

Even with a stoaker (sp?) on it the landlord (who lived downstairs with more room) got tired of dealing the the coal and clinkers and converted to gas.

The fact that both wood and coal would have a constant fire even if the blower wasn't on at the moment makes me think the heat would be similar.
 
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$300? Thats all for electric? I have seen $2,000 in just a month and I am not kidding. That owner was in shock after seeing that bill, didn't believe it was accurate, asked me to check out. True business, it is accurate as hell. She got 400 amp main service, split into two 200 amp services, one of them is dedicated to electric furnace, nothing else. The electric furnace has 48KW (48,000 watts) element in it, just an hour it registered 48 kilowatts, thats how fast it goes. She finally sold that house few years ago as I just found out.

sonocativo said:
I have electric furnace which is expensive as hell, ran me 300 a month just to make comfortable just working here during the winter. So, now with everyone here and everything running, its gonna bite me in the ass, so I am using the wood burner to cut costs on heating this year and hopefully have a wood furnace before next year and a gas furnace installed in place of the electric furnace. You wouldnt believe the spin those heating elements put on the meter...lol
My cousin had a wood furnace, that was their main and only source of heat, we would stock it at night before bed and first thing in the mornings, kept the house comfortable, it looked like an old giant pot belly stove wrapped in duct work ( looked like a giant octopus in the basement ) lol
I have 8" and 12" round ducts, with 12x22 trunks, so plenty of air will move, and yes a wood furnace will have its own forced air system, but my current wood stove will need to use just the blower or I can install a duct fan to move the air on 12v not 120v which can be powered by solar during the days. We have a company that makes a pretty powerful 12v duct fan that I can cut a slot and insert it into the main trunk or install in the return vent
Click to expand...
 
Jane B. said:
I have fond memories of the kind of heat we got from a coal furnace that was in an apartment I lived in years ago. It was a two story house that had the upstairs changed into a 1 bedroom apartment.

Even with a stoaker (sp?) on it the landlord (who lived downstairs with more room) got tired of dealing the the coal and clinkers and converted to gas.
Click to expand...

Did you mean a stoker ?


http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=old+stoaker I looked 'stoaker ' up and I know you did not mean this.
 
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