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hattie
Member
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# Posted: 5 Jun 2010 00:24
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Hello: I'm new to the forum and was wondering if anyone knew anything about outdoor wood furnaces. They heat water which is used to heat your home/cabin. Has anyone used them? Advantages/Disadvantages? Thanks for any input you may have.
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Kramer
Member
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# Posted: 5 Jun 2010 00:42
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They don't work very good, IMHO.
A lot of people around here have them. They don't have enough chimney to draw correctly, so they smoke in anything but ideal conditions. In fall/spring when you don't need as much heat, the fire is choked down to the point that it will smolder terribly, creating massive amounts of smoke. Also, if you're trying to get a long burn out of it between reloads, it'll have to be choked down and smoke badly (again).
They're also pretty inefficient, lots of wood required because a lot of the heat is just plain lost since the fire is in a little structure a ways from the house.
Also, the cheaper ones are problematic when it comes to the firebox cracking.
It just doesn't make sense to me. But I'm sure lots of people love them.
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hattie
Member
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# Posted: 5 Jun 2010 01:09
Reply
Thanks for the input. I had never heard of them before, so was curious. We live in an area that gets occasional power outages and I always worry about heat (it gets cold in these hills in the winters). We have electric baseboard heat only. Our place is too small for a wood stove. We do have a small backup generator and have used catalytic propane heaters, designed for indoor use, in the past when the power has gone out. I'm always keeping my eyes open for other alternatives. *S*
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lawnjoky
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# Posted: 5 Jun 2010 17:26
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There is no such thing as too small for a wood stove. Somewhere here I posted a picture of a wood stove I made for a teardrop camper I built. The box is about 9"x9"x14". I welded it up out of a piece of 1/4 steel from the recycle yard. The damper and air/fuel disk were found on line. The flue is 3". I made the roof jack out of 1/8 plate and some 3 and 4" exhaust pipe scraps from a muffler shop. The two sizes were needed to make it double wall where it went through the roof. You can literally put one of these on a shelf. I have also installed small wood stove on small sailboats, even on a 24' sailboat I lived on far several years.
Use you imagination.
Jocko
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hattie
Member
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# Posted: 5 Jun 2010 22:38
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WOW - I didn't know that Jocko...I didn't know you could put a wood stove on a boat! hmmmm...I think I need to go a googling and find out more *S* Thanks for the information :-)
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lawnjoky
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# Posted: 7 Jun 2010 19:14
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Do a search for sardine wood stove. There is a whole world of little stoves out there.
Jocko
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VincentBaxter
Member
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# Posted: 19 Oct 2011 11:57 - Edited by: VincentBaxter
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The outdoor wood furnaces that we use in our town are higher-end ones that save a ton of money and produce very little smoke. I generally recommend going for a high quality line of wood boilers when considering switching from your heating system. If you go for the cheaper ones, you will actually be burning fuel less efficiently and generate a lot more smoke.
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