As many know, I heat my home with a wood stove. Always have, always will. I've gone the last 3 winters without using any oil, the tank for the boiler is empty. We have an electric hot water heater and the wood stove for heat, that's it. The house is currently uninsulated, but the walls are getting insulated this month. I'll probably do the ceiling myself in the spring or something. The windows are original and would probably keep more heat in if I opened them. My first winter in this house I ran the stove with no liner, just 4 feet or so of black pipe going into the chimney. The rest of the flu was wide open and thus I lost massive amounts of heat up the flu. Not only that, but with a pipe that short on a wood stove it just won't run right. Take your pipe off your 250R and take it for a rip and you'll understand what I mean. Once I installed the 6" stainless liner the house was heating much, much better. The heat loss up the flu was addressed and the stove was running the way it should be. I went from having to clean that black pipe two or three times per winter to never having to clean the liner and a stove that put out gobs of heat. Still, my roommate is chilly in the converted porch in the back of the house and the cold mornings suck as well. The oil fired boiler was an option to consider, but it was spent. It was probably at 3% efficiency or so, maybe less. It smelled, it looked like holy hell, rust everywhere, leaks... I was just kind of sitting idle for the moment as I don't have the 6k or whatever to go drop on a boiler that I don't "need". Craig is a furnace/boiler guy and he was gonna hook me up really good, but then I found out about indoor wood furnaces.
My coworker was telling me about his and I thought how nifty that sounds. 12 hour burn time, takes big logs, ducted heating... That would solve a lot of my problems. But I don't have the dough for that. Then he told me it was like $1300 brand new, just honk on down to Tractor Supply Company. I went by his house after work to see his in action, went home to shower, then drove over to Tractor Supply. That night I ordered a stainless chimney liner for it (as it will be in a different chimney than the stove so I can keep both) and a pyrometer so I can see what the EGT's are from upstairs as it is in the basement. The furnace was $1220 after taxes, the liner $180 (which somehow showed up at my door in under 24 hours after ordering it on Ebay), $100 for a pyrometer. That's what I've got so far, but the ducting is going to be more dough obviously.
I had the best duct guy I know come over, was it Jesus? No, no it wasn't. Let's just call him "Dirtcrasher", and he "built" the entire system on paper using a CFM calculator as well as some other tools and know how. I initially was just going to fire some holes through the floor and run a couple ducts, done. Well I'm glad I decided not to touch anything until Steve came by. He suggested ripping the entire old heating system out, boiler and all. I balked at the concept but I knew right off he was right. I slept on it and this morning the first thing I did when I got up was go down and rip the boiler out. If I ever need to convert back to oil I'd just install a forced hot air furnace in the ducting we're going to be putting up. Ta-daa! Today I ripped the boiler and much of the plumbing out, but I'm going to rip all of the baseboard system right out of the house as well. I'll keep 'er updated!
Reply With Quote
Originally Posted by fabiodriven
