jdemaris@usadatanet.net

Posted by jdemaris on January 09, 2011 at 06:28:18 from (67.142.130.46):

In Reply to: Re: OT:Firewood post posted by massey 333 on January 08, 2011 at 19:40:54:

Things are changing fast, but most outdoor wood furnaces are old tech and ineffecient. To make things worse . . . most people I know that use them are nowhere near as careful with using good wood. The attitude seems to be, if the furnace is outside - it's so safe you can burn anything in it. I see many people burning wet and/or green wood in them. My farmer/neighbor has a 10 year old Central Boiler outdoor furnace. Before he had it, it's cut wood in the summer, split it, stack it, let it dry, etc. Some oaks take two summers around here to be dry enough to burn right. Now?? With the outdoor stove, he cuts trees in the winter, drags them home, cuts them up and burns - frozen and green a few days later. Preferably white ash, since it has the lowest water content for hardwood green tree.

Outdoor furnaces with the present state of technology will probably be banned soon (for new sales), and replaced with only EPA rated furnaces. That was already done with "woodstoves." Many companies that had been previously selling inefficient units called "woodstoves" had to start calling them "wood furnaces" instead - to be legal.

Here in New York, some new laws already came into effect on Jan. 1, 2011. All outdoor stoves MUST have 18 foot chimneys within 6 months -and all new ones must have them. Soon they will also have to be EPA certified for efficiency.

No matter what you do or use - one general principal exists. You need a hot fire to burn clean. If you have a huge furnace, and must keep it turned down so the house doesn't get hot - it builds up with creosote and wastes wood. If you run it hot enough to stay clean, but can't use all that heat - then you still waste a lot of wood.

In Europe, some setups use a system where the wood fire only runs hot and is never turned down. That requires a heat-storage system that you rarely see in the USA. You run the fire only once every few days - heat up a huge amount of water, then shut down the fire and heat from that water for days.

I installed a big, low tech wood furnace 20 feet from the side of my house. I then built a well insulatred room around the furnace, connected to the house. This way, we get all the heat and it does not sit out in the cold. We can store around 4 full cords of wood around the furnace. Even if wet and green, it bakes and dries before we have to use it. Works very well, but. When outside temps are "warm", around 40-50 degrees F, the big furnace cooks us out of the house - unless we choke it - which can plug the chimeny. So, we have a EPA rated woodstove in the middle of the house. With just a few chunks of wood it easily keeps the house warm all night when it's not very cold out. It's a Hearthstone Mansfield. EPA woodstoves are pretty amazing. We had a huge Royal Oak coal/wood potbelly stove there before the Hearthstone. If we loaded it full, it would barely hold a fire for 3 hours.

Note that when I bought my big Myers 4000 Woodchuck furnace, it was not my first choice. At that time, there was only one wood furnace that had been tested and certified for high efficiency by the EPA. It was made in Québec, called the "EPA Caddy." I tried to buy it, but the Canucks up there refused to sell it to me because I live in the USA. That makes me wonder why they spent the money to get it EPA certified?

By the way, I worked a place that made "air tight woodstoves" back in the 70s. They worked well then, and still do - but only when someone knows how to use. They also caused many houses to burn down. Main problem is - people turned them all the way down at night, and plugged their chimneys with creosote. I.e., ran them too much, too cold. That is much harder to do with the new EPA rated woodstoves.

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