The log boiler tl-400

[thecfarm]

2 days will still be good.
I know we do what we have to do. Not saying you are doing it wrong.
I experimented one winter with green wood. One winter with soft and the next with hard wood.Cut it,burn it,dry time was sometimes only an hour.    I was warm,both inside the house and the time spent working the wood up. I went through some wood.     I have better burn time with dead standing wood pine. But I wanted these areas cleaned up. Should of cut the wood up and let it dry for at least a year. By dry I mean outside in a big pile that is piled up with my loader on my tractor. I had to try it and now I know what to expect.
Not a bad price for that unit and all that you did.

[Busysawyer]

I think it is comparable to what I would have spent setting up a large boiler from other manufacturers . I have a lot of split, seasoned hardwood stacked that I planned on using but it's so much easier to spend a few minutes with the chainsaw and cut a few bigger sections from my firewood log pile and use the bobcat to load it. I know from past experience that I would get more btu from the dried split wood but it's more work and a lot more time. I am thinking about selling a lot of my split and seasoned wood and just keeping some for the fireplace and campfires with the kids.

[hedgerow]

Busysawyer.
Folks find out in a hurry this [Free wood heat] isn't so free. 10 years ago I ended up with around $30,000 in my Garn by the time I got it running and I did all the work my self other than the spray foam. Back then there were some energy tax credits and I use it to heat my farm shop so I could take off part of it on my taxes. It works good and I run it year around to do my domestic water. Its like all wood burning equipment it likes dry wood the best I pretty much only feed it locust and hedge. As time goes on it getting harder every year to get the 15 cords I am going to burn ready. When we started talking about doing this I thought about building a boiler with a big door to load with the skid loader but I have one farm that has so much hedge on it to be clean up and a lot of that wood isn't big chucks like the locust is. We just cut, split and stack on dump trailers. Trailers are store in sheds and then unloaded into the Garn. 

[Busysawyer]

Hedgerow, where I'm at I'm limited on sqft of outbuilding by the township so no indoor storage for wood for me. I heated my old house for about 10 years with an indoor wood burner that was ducted into my lp furnace plenum. Took about 5-7 cords a year that I cut, split and stacked by hand with no equipment besides a chainsaw and a maul.  A couple years i ran short on wood and had to buy a couple cords from some local. It was supposed to be seasoned but never was. I went through a lot more wood burning that semi-seasoned junk. 
Just for kicks I loaded the boiler tonight with a face cord of seasoned hardwood, mostly red oak, maple and hickory. I was trying to figure out how much time I have into processing that face cord. I figured maybe 5-10 minutes bucking the logs into 16" rounds. 30 minutes or so running it through the splitter. 20 minutes stacking. I've never paid attention to how long it takes me to process a cord so those times are just rough estimates. It took me maybe 15 to 20 minutes to load that face cord in the boiler. I guess by the time that wood hits the fire I have a minimum of an hour of time getting it there. Loading logs I have to make 3-4 cuts and 5 minutes in the bobcat if that. So figure ten minutes tops . The way I see it for it to be worth cutting , splitting and drying I'd need to get at least 2 to 3 times more burn time. I dont care about how much wood it takes I care about how much time I have to spend messing with wood and how many days I can go without thinking about it.