School Me on Outside Wood Boilers.

[nedly05]

Thanks for all of the input guys,I really appreciate it. I'm glad to hear both good and bad experiences.I don't want to go into this hearing good input only. I've been doing a lot of reading online and plan to do a lot more. Keep it coming!

 

[OldandWorn]

Nedly, now that I have some time here is a bit more info. I have never owned a OWB but did research on lots of different systems. Some information might not be entirely accurate but here are some of my concerns. When the weather is mild during the day but the nights are cold what do you do? Once I fire one of these burners up it would be nice to keep it going during the heating season but that is not practical. You end up wasting wood and/or producing the sickening choked down fire smoke. The alternative is to let the fire go out but I wouldn't want to be starting one of these things on a daily basis outside in the elements. I have the same issues with my indoor wood stove but it's on a more manageable scale and I don't have to be constantly running outside to baby the fire until it gets going well. A phrase I saw a lot is "you become a slave to your OWB". Maybe it's the type of system they had but some were complaining about not being able to go away on the weekends or on vacation without someone keeping the OWB burning for them because of boiler freezing problems.

No matter what the specs say I would think there is a good bit of efficiency loss with the boiler outside and pipes in the ground. Some were quoting 3 times the amount of wood per season over an indoor stove. My neighbor installed one last year and built a nice little hut around the unit. He placed it a reasonable distance away from the house but when his fire is choked down the smoke hugs the ground and envelopes his house. This year I noticed that he extended his chimney way way higher and now it looks like something out of a Dr. Seuss book but the smoke still manages to find its way to the ground and around his house. Last year he was raving about how well coal burned in his unit but I noticed this year he has a huge pile of wood there. I haven't talked to him yet to find out what that's all about.

I'm not trying to be super negative but these are some issues that I read about. There is one system which seemed nice but whoo boy is it expensive. A basement wood/coal burner with a backup heating system of your choice all wrapped into one unit. Same negatives as with a indoor wood stove however. Dirty and getting the fuel to the stove in an efficient manner. An OWB in a out building that you want to heat may be a good option to consider and most people seemed to be happy with this setup.