Triple 6 Outdoor - They usually have a booth at the outdoor show coming up
I purchased a Central Boiler E-Classic 2400 IR maybe 4-5 years ago. Where I live there is no residential gas service (or water or sewer) and liquid propane spiked to almost $5/gal. Knowing I'm likely never moving I decided to take a step toward being able to control my fuel cost exposure long term. The furnace has been great so far and my wife and I very much prefer it over the propane system. It is outside the house and burns wood/wood gasses to heat 340 gallons of water that is pumped into my house and then back out to the furnace in a loop.
I burn ~6-8 cords of wood per year, all dead-fall from my property or trouble trees that needed to be removed, that way it's carbon neutral. The unit has 3 pumps, but I only run one that loops into the house to a hot water heat exchange plate first that fills the regular holding tank first and if the tank is exhausted it provides unlimited hot water direct from the exchange plate. Then it pipes over to a coil that sits on top of my AC coil on a forced air ducting system that most homes with central air have. The heat is provided by just running the fan on the HVAC unit. The piping exits back out through a large passive radiator in my garage that keeps the garage around 50-55*F when it's ~30*F outside. I really need to insulate the doors to get better heat retention, right now they are just bare metal. The piping inside the house also gives off radiant heat, so the floors are warm in spots and it heats the basement where there are no vents.
The boiler needs to be loaded twice per day when it's in the 30s, once per day if in the 40s or up. The quality (dryness) and type of wood will vary burn time as well. The unit takes maintenance that includes cleaning the ash pile every week or two and making sure the air ports remain clear with a poker as well as making sure creosote doesn't build up (if it's burning properly creosote isn't an issue). The furnace turns itself on and off or allows the fire to burn or be smoldered as needed to keep the water within a max/min temp range based on how much air it allows into the burn chamber.
The reason I went with this unit was because it has a WiFi connect that allows me to monitor all the info ... burn time, water temp, burn chamber temp, water level, outside temp and door status ... on my phone or any computer. It's basically a scan gauge for the furnace. I use it to tell me when I need to add more wood and make sure there are no issues. Here is an interactive demo of the program the way I use it:
FireStar | Log On | Central Boiler, Inc.
The ultimate goal is to use the 2nd pump to radiant heat a large garage and the 3rd pump to radiant heat our driveway so we don't have to shovel snow when we are old. The wood prep takes a bunch of work, but I love doing it and it keeps me connected to the property since I'm always paying attention to what trees have died or fallen in storms.
Currently I only run the furnace 5-6 months or until the wood from the previous year runs out. The entire system is backed up with the propane system that turns on automatically if the house dips more than 2*F below the temp set on the thermostat.
@Pacer ... do you heat with wood as well? Would love to hear about your setup if so.
