Heating with wood

[snake35]

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My family and I heat only with wood. We have a Fisher air-tight wood stove. The expense in minimal however we are cutting standing dead on our own woodlots. I want to upgrade to an ouside stove with the hot water to my shower and kitchen sink. this alone will save me 45.00 to 50.00 on our electric bill. It would cut out the mess of bringing wood in the house as well as cut out the dust.

[myakka]

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I have a friend in W.V. that has a huge basin in his basement, (Looks like a truck bed). His family fill it before bed and it goes all night. Not something that we have to deal with down here, but with good for you for doing it off the grid.

[JLBIII]

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There's a company called Central Boiler that specialize in outdoor wood boilers. My daughters boyfriend has one that he uses to heat and provide hot water to his home. He has a back up oil burning boiler just in case, but it hardly ever gets used. Except in the summer when he is away for his job. He's a logging foreman and travels around the whole country for his job. He also got a nice tax break at tax time for installing it. I think he said the tax break he got was almost enough to pay for half of the boiler and installation.

I stayed at their house for 2 weeks at the new year when they were in Ireland visiting my parents and family. The boiler works great, it only needs to be fed with wood twice a day (first thing in the morning and just before bedtime) everything thing else is automatically controlled well worth the investment if you have the wood to feed it.

Joe

[sassy]

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If we go off grid though you will not have a pump to pump the hot water circulation will you? Without constantly running your generator? My husband and I were just talking about that today. We have a wood stove that has a small fan but we could use it with a small fire without the blower fan. We also have a kitchen wood stove we could use if we go off grid.

[snake35]

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If I would install an outside stove I would build the solar powersd pump in when installed. We have an antique kitchen wood stove. It is great in the winter, however in the summer it really heats the house up.

[Oscar Wilde]

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If we go off grid though you will not have a pump to pump the hot water circulation will you?

While a circulating pump makes for a more efficient system, it isn't necessary. The heating of the water induces circulation. The problem here though will be eliminating trapped air from the line or radiators if you use them.

O.W.

[JLBIII]

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While a circulating pump makes for a more efficient system, it isn't necessary. The heating of the water induces circulation. The problem here though will be eliminating trapped air from the line or radiators if you use them.

O.W.

You can easily install a purge valve at the highest point on the piping to vent excess air out of, you will also need an expansion tank if it's used as a forced hot water system, if you're using it as a steam heating system each radiator should have a purge vent on it anyway. You can get circulating pumps that run on 12 VDC as well. Your local heating supply store should be able to answer any questions you have. People have been using steam boilers to heat their homes long before electricity was widely available. Your local library or many websites can help you resolve any installation problems.

Joe

[Mangler]

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Ask how the boiler throttles down when demand drops. There are a lot of those units around here. Some are fantastic. Some are the most smoky, stinking, smudge pots you have ever seen.

If they do not have a powered combustion air system when you load them with wood, but don't need a lot of heat output at the time, they sit and smolder for hours.

[drcalhoun]

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Regency makes some great efficient wood gassification stoves that are great in places with no electricity. They are very efficient and put off tons of heat, we used to cook a lot on ours.

[sassy]

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We heat with wood and our stove has a blower fan but we can use it on low without it just have to be careful to not get fire too hot. We also have a big old wood cook stove we have not used in years and so we bought all the piping to repipe it in to our newer chimney lining to prepare for if we go off grid. We also bought a hand pump and check valve and foot valve (have yet to pick up the extra black pipe as it was to big to fit in car )to be able to take cover off our well and slide it down so we can have fresh water Immediately without running generator.