Boiler, woodstove, or furnace?

[jb616]

I am new to this topic but I plan on having a house built on my property when i retire in 3 or 4 years. I have 40 acres of woods so burning wood seems to be a no brainer but the method is what I am looking at. I know there are pros and cons to all but I am looking at the outside boiler, inside woodstove, or inside wood furnace. I do need to keep in mind that I need a backup (propane) in the event that I am gone on vacation or whatever the case may be. Finally what method to transfer the heat, In floor, radiators, or forced air, keeping in mind that it would be best if it is coordinated with the propane backup.

OR?  go with geothermal and forget about all of this....

[doc henderson]

geothermal saves money after the original investment.  I would go with a outside wood boiler with radiant floor heat, with a propane boiler back up.  We bought our house, with NG boiler with floor radiant.  the upstairs has a water heat exchanger and forced air.  we have a woodstove on the mid floor living area, with a passthrough fan to the basement behind the wood stove.  we like to see and feel the woodstove in the living room.  open living room, dining and kitchen space.  bedrooms upstairs, so close the doors if you do not like a warm place to sleep.  I like that the wood and smoke for day to day heat can be up to 200 feet from the house.  put the pre-made insulated pex 4 feet down and should have little danger of a freeze up if the fire is out and winter.

[doc henderson]

or geothermal with a woodstove for fun.
I would retrofit, but would have to tear up driveway and garage floors, or tunnel.

[PoginyHill]

I agree with what Doc said. I had an inside wood furnace for 15+ years. This is our 3rd year with an OWB. Should have done that years ago. Less wood handling. No limit to storage. Keeps the wood mess, smoke, and fire danger out of the house. Like Doc, I have a woodstove for use when the OWB is not running (I run Oct - April) and just because I like it.
Radiant heat is nice. There may be some areas where hot water baseboard might be a good supplement (higher heat loss or want a quick warm-up), but may need it's own thermostat.
I have never had hot air (talking about heat here ;D), but if you want central AC for those muggy Michigan summers, that might be a good way also. But I'd keep radiant floor heat wherever you can.
I can't see any fun in geothermal heat.

[sawguy21]

We had an indoor wood furnace and fireplace while I was growing up, I don't miss it as I was the packer and stacker. Dad had fir and spruce slabs delivered from the mill and they made a mess in the house. Our last house had a wood pellet fireplace, that was nice with ng backup.

[SwampDonkey]

You will thin your woods for your firewood I assume. That's what I do, but I cut firewood sticks for a furnace. Burns a whole lot less wood than an OWB. Yes, more handling, unless you bring the logs by the outside entry, buck into a wheel barrel and stack. ;D Yes, make yourself an outside entry into that new house. ;) I use a forced air furnace, nice and warm, never have to venture out in the cold for icey wood. ;D I stack 4-1/2 cord in the house. I stack the overflow outside under a porch on pallets, I have a rack made on the pallets to stack against. Got most of next winter firewood already by the door in a 7 foot high pile, ready to stack as soon as a rack is empty under the porch. ;) I don't find wood to messy, nothing a good shop broom can't gather once a week.

I have a 20 Kw electric furnace on the side of wood furnace. I've ever paid more than $20 a month for electric heat. My power bill is $30 cheaper in the winter time, if you can believe that. Never paid more than $120 for total electric in winter time. Propane is a lot more expensive up here than down your way. Folks had that in their house, tried not to use it at all. :D Had heat pump with electric furnace. I can tell ya the electric furnace was doing the heating. A guy up the road in small trailer, had heat pump put in, is freezing he said. We warned him. He some ugly at folks that sold it. :D

[sprucebunny]

I am a fan of radiant heat. Have it running off an oil fired boiler and also a woodstove that can almost heat the house is located downstairs from the living area. It's pretty easy to also have a radiator zone or a Modine ( fan type heat exchanger ) on another zone.

You should consider what heat you would want if you were older or incapacitated for a time. Running out to feed the boiler my not always be easy as you age ( ya...it's gonna happen ! )

I bought a house recently and am going to replace the 30 year old hot air heat with oil fired boiler, radiant, Modine and the bedrooms on electric radiator because there is already a finished ceiling and I never run heat in my bedroom.

[thecfarm]

I have a OWB. I have the old style that will burn anything. With a control burn, even cedar. That is why I got it. Needed something to burn all that dead pine and fir. I have burned that dead stuff since 2009. This year I am clearing more land and I am burning good hardwood this year. Sometimes the wood I burn is kinda on the rotten side, but it makes heat. I tried to burn that dead stuff in a wood stove, did not work for me. The OWB likes it. BUT those OWB are pricey now!!!    I don't know what I will do when mine dies. I doubt another OWB will be on The Farm.

[gspren]

 I've had an OWB for maybe 15 years and there are some benefits, it definitely paid for itself BUT the wood boilers were much cheaper then and oil was $4.00 a gallon, I filled up recently for under $2.00 so I think the pay back time would be too long to justify one for me. I still like to cut wood so if I needed to start over now I'd just get a wood stove and burn some to supplement my main heat source.

[Trackerbuddy]

OWB with radiant floor heat.  Use a propane domestic water heater as a backup.  For cooling use a ductless mini split AC. The mini split also comes as a heat pump

[Wood Shed]

Everyone has given good advice started by doc and my way of thinking is much the same especially thecfarm as we both burn dead wood mostly.  You are on the right track as I did not hear anyone say to use wood heat as a way to save money, those people never last and the up front cost has weeded most of them out.  

Warm floors under your feet coupled with air conditioning are all comforts that pay dividends and things you enjoy like cutting and burning wood will warm you twice.

Like thecfarm my OWB is getting old, so am I, now I am thinking of adding a wood stove to one of my barns (shop) just as incentive to go tinker when it is cold.  Have to come up with a way to do that safely for me and my (beloved) antiques.

[nativewolf]

I also love radiant floor heat.  Otherwise I might give some contrary advice.  

Our nations energy mix is quickly changing, renewable wind and energy are driving fuel sources like coal out of business and in fact coal will fall out of business world wide because it can't compete.  

There are no nukes being built because renewables are so cheap.

Natural Gas is next.  This summer the only new power sources to be commissioned were renewables.  The reason is that they are cheap, like really really cheap.  Battery capacity is exploding, cars are soaking most of that up but not all of it and it will complement solar.  Already the battery facilities are killing the most lucrative aspect of power supply, critical load balancing, in Australia.  Saved consumers millions and millions and killed a gas peaker plant.  These same plants are being built here in the US and Canada at a ferocious pace.  It will kill the economics of the gas peaker plants.  Sometime in the next 3-8 years NG will no longer be able to compete as a power source and you'll see no new NG power plants.  When that happens, and it will happen quickly, what happens to our nations demand for NG?  If they can't compete on power plants what will they compete on?  Industry will ditch NG for energy very very quickly and the federal govt might very well help pay for them to transition.  Then who pays for the costs of an expensive to maintain and aging NG distribution system, one with few new wells, etc.  I expect NG prices to have to increase as load costs are spread across a smaller rate paying base.  

Anyway, my suggestion would be that you plan for a world where the least expensive energy supply will be electricity.  I like radiant floor heat and an electric heater can do that as well as a NG or Wood or Geothermal.  Instead of Geothermal I'd be looking at solar incentives coming from this new administration.  A tesla solar panel install and a couple of powerwalls would go a long way to solving day to day energy needs, even in Michigan.  

Minisplits are great for cooling.   

I love cooking on gas and have a 500 gallon propane tank for our backup generator but I'd love solar even more and solar and 3 powerwalls and I'd sell the generator (love cooking on gas too much to sell the tank).

[dougtrr2]

We built our house in 1993 with radiant floor heat. Due to allergies we have all hard surface floors, so warm floors are wonderful.  We have an inside wood boiler with built in natural gas back up.  Our first boiler was an HS Term.  When it finally failed (leaks around the boiler stays) we replaced it with a Woodgun with natural gas back up.  The Woodgun has a forced draft which is a great improvement.  Our furnace room opens directly to the outside so I don't have to drag wood through the house.  I can store several days inside.  I can't imagine have to go outside to stoke a fire in the middle of a blizzard.

Since we planned on radiant floor heat we changed the typical HVAC ductwork.  Our supply ducts are high on the wall.  Theoretically this helps reduce temperature gradiant and mixes up the air better.  It does theoretically reduce the effectiveness of using the forced air system, but not enough that we notice.

Radiant floors are the way to go, especially in a garage if you work on cars/tractors/mills.

Doug in SW IA

[Hilltop366]

I have a similar setup as Doug describes with a pressurized indoor boiler and utility room with outside access. After the initial build I added a store room to add some more indoor wood storage so I could heat for 4 or 5 days from the wood stored inside.

If I were to do over and it still made financial sense to burn wood I would lay things out a bit different to be able to store more wood inside with a unheated wood shed connected to the house that could be loaded with wood on pallets on one end (or back) and accessed through the boiler room on the other end, also would add a large thermal storage tank to store the heated water in (cleaner burning/ more efficient/ more even heat) and maybe a few solar/hot water panels , I talked to a guy who had done this, he makes a fire every 3 days in the winter and 5 to 7 days the rest of the year for a little bit of heat and domestic hot water. (not sure he has solar)


The layout and size of the house and insulation level should factor in your decision too. A smaller well insulated home should be very easy to heat that a wood boiler with no thermal storage or furnace would be idling a lot of the time and/or over heating your house, a wood stove for the colder days and power interuptions may make more sense in this situation.

[hedgerow]

JB616  I grew up in the fuel business selling fuel oil and propane. I am sure my mom is turning in here grave that haven't bought propane in eleven years. With that said. The thing I would do would be build a house that doesn't use much energy. Will your insurance company allow a wood stove or wood furnace in the new house? In my area its getting tough to get insurance on wood stoves. I run a Garn and burn 10-15 cord a year run year around heat domestic water with it also. I put this in 11 years ago at the tune of about $30,000 and I did all the work. I also heat my farm shop radiant floor heat with also. I have a fair amount of farm ground to clean up is why I installed it. Its been ok but knowing what I know today I wouldn't do it again. It doesn't sound like you are cutting wood and burning wood now so I don't know why you want to start when you retire. For me cutting wood is no fun but I sure like the looks of my farms when the fence lines and pastures are cleaned up. I would look real hard a geothermal. If sized right they work great for heating and cooling. I have installed a fair amount of them. I will probably put one in my own house in the next five years or so to cut down on the wood cutting.   

[peakbagger]

The residential heating guru John Siegenthaler (do a websearch for him) , is an advocate of low temp radiant heating in the walls and ceiling. He has some pretty convincing arguments that radiant heating in the floor for a living space means having to run higher loop temps. The goal is to heat the space with the minimum supply temp and radiant walls and ceiling typically have less thermal mass between the tubes an emitters. Once you have that built into the equation you can go with water to water geothermal rather than the more common water to air. Heating with water is generally the best option as water moves a lot more heat than air, pipes take up a lot less room than ducts and going with multiple zones is lot easier with water. He is also an advocate of air source water to water units but to me that is a bit bleeding edge as I havent seen a lot of mainstream manufacturer interest in them. With low temp radiant if you do add a wood boiler into the mix, the water storage tank required of most modern wood boilers get a lot more effective with supply temp of 90 compared to a minimum of 140 for baseboard. That means the storage holds effectively double the heat meaning longer cycles before starting the boiler again.  

[stavebuyer]

I am a wood stove guy.

They run without electricity and burn the least amount of wood. You can cook and heat a pot of water if need be. An ice storm in 2009 left us without power for 3 weeks. I didn't have a wood stove in 2009. The first thing the government did after declaring the state of emergency was to appropriate all the fuel so if you didn't have enough stored for your generator you were out of luck.

When I sold firewood the outside boiler people wore me out. KY is not all that severe a winter state and the amount of wood the boiler guys went through is insane. For what the systems cost and the wood they burn I can't fathom how that math works.

Spend the money to insulate, then solar, woodstove for ambiance and emergency.

[OH logger]

We built a house 6 years ago. I log and sell firewood for a living. We put in geo thermal and a high efficiencey fireplace. I feel it's the best of both worlds. T most nights the last thing I wanna do is go out late in the evening to fill the boiler. I'm amazed at how much wood my outdoor boiler customers go through. We have since put a wood stove in our basement too. We don't really need to worry if we lose power. Plus we can heat and cool our house very cheap with the geo. Call me lazy but for the most part I'd rather sell the wood and buy electricity 

[Al_Smith]

I have radiant electric ceiling heat ,a geothermal plus an insert stove .The radiant heat only comes on if something happens to the geothermal. The woodstove only gets fired when the temps get into the mid 30's .The geothermal is less expensive but it's not free .It is very well laid out and the temp does not vary much room to room .
The wood stove only runs about 4 months out of the year and like yourself I have firewood galore .Plus it's real close and all good Ohio hard woods .
The fire wood not only keeps me in shape it's also a place to exercise my chainsaws as I seem to be somewhat of a gear head .Restore them, modify them and use them .

[Trackerbuddy]

Anyway, my suggestion would be that you plan for a world where the least expensive energy supply will be electricity.  

I hope you're right but it's deja Vu all over again.  My first house was a gold medallion all electric home.  That house was expensive to run.

[Al_Smith]

They still have so called perks for all electric which is a farce .I get a whole $1.00 a month off for the geothermal ,big deal .
Out in the boonies  you only have a few choices .Natural gas would cost me around 9 grand just to get it on the property .Propane AKA profane  gas is like dealing with pirates, been there and done that .Never again unless I own the tanks .
In the event it was a natural disaster I do have an infrared heater on a cart that uses 20 pound propane bottles that would heat the house and usually at  least half a dozen full bottles .Which I should take inventory and get the empties filled up before the weather might get nasty .It's Ohio ,the weather can go from toasty to nasty over night when you least expect it to .Thank you very much Lake Erie .

[gspren]

  I wish I could hook up to natural gas but not likely. The funny thing is I have a gas pipeline across my property about 150 yards from the house but it's a 30" high pressure line and they say they can't branch off it. On the bright side when they put it in they paid enough to heat the house for at least 15 years.

[Al_Smith]

The problem might be if it's a cross country transmission line it could be 800 pounds per square inch pressure .To take 800 PSI to a usable pressure it would act like freezer with the lowering pressure drop .
I once worked on a high pressure line that took it from 2 48" transmission  lines to one 20" with the end pressure of 200 PSI going into a chemical plant 42 miles away .It took 4 stations of pressure drops to do it .Between were about 10 miles of ground zero,50 some degrees to warm it back up again before the next pressure drop .
42 miles of pipeline in 42 days in the coldest weather I had ever seen including the edge of the polar  ice cap from my submarine days .This was Ohio not Alaska or Siberia .

[peakbagger]

About 20 years ago a pressure reducing station was about a million bucks. In order to deal with cooling associated with reducing pressure, the station had gas fired heaters to reheat the gas. The local utility would not install these for free unless we signed a long term contract to buy enough gas to pay for it. We needed to guarantee to buy a lot of gas for a long time. 

[Al_Smith]

When you deal with high pressure pipe lines of anything it's  quite an ordeal  just to shut one down .You can't just shut a valve because it will buckle the thing up and snake it right out of the ground like "water hammer " on a water line in a house . It's done by gradual throttling sequentially of the valves .