Outdoor wood burner

[Nitetimes]

Anybody using one, built one?? I am thinking of building my own. I need to find sources for pumps , switches and such to make it work. I don't think building the furnace itself will be too tough but getting the water to flow right will take a little ingenuity.
I want to run to both my garage and house. Fuel is getting out of hand, wood I can get.
Seen any plans anywhere for one of these? Preferably free ones only because I would rather not buy 5 different sets of plans that turn out to be useless paper. I know there's gotta be some out there some where, just need to locate them.
Been doing some searching, haven't turned up anything useful yet.

[WarPony]

Rich, are you talking about an outdoor wood burner to heat you whole home? There's a local company (can't remember the name) that makes a home burner that uses VERY little wood to heat a home. I'll do some investigating tomorrow and give you a link.

I know you want to build your own but these units seem to be pretty efficient.

Jeff

[Nitetimes]

Rich, are you talking about an outdoor wood burner to heat you whole home?
Jeff

Yep, I know I can get enough out of one to do my house and garage. Lots of plumbing because they are separate but it can be done.

[WarPony]

Cool, I'll do some vestigaitin' tomorrow.

Jeff

[Nitetimes]

Thanks!

[signs]

Not Free, but might be worth a look

http://cgi.ebay.com/Outdoor-Wood-Burner ... dZViewItem

This may be more what your looking for.

http://www.motherearthnews.com/Do-It-Yo ... -Less.aspx

This one has plans, I am sure their plans call for parts they sell

http://www.heatandmore.com/


Jay

[Nitetimes]

Signs- thanks, those could be a good start.

[madprinter]

Hi Rich, I've done a little studing on this in the past.
Basically its a steel firebox, could be an tank . It has a pipe spiraled around the firbox wall . the pipe has an inlet and outlet like a waterheater. Guess you could think of it as an oversized waterheater thats heated with wood. The firebox is located a safe distants away from the house . the pipes run to a tank in the house. Some systems have a pump, some just use the fact that heat rises to pull the hot water upward and draw the cold water into the lower section of the tank. inline going to the tank is anoughter spiral of pipe usually in a duct work pipe. The air moving over the hot pipe heats the air. The reason for the other tank is the system has to have room for the hot water to expland without exploding. A 40 Gal. waterheater exploding can level a 3 bedroom brick home, so please be carefull. One of my uncles had a house in Tenn. That had a coil in the fireplace to add extra heat to the central heating unit , and a seperated coil going into the waterheater. It was a nice setup.

[madprinter]

http://www.green-trust.org/2003/fireandwater.htm
Heres one site that explanes it a little better than I can.

[Grumpeyyy]

Rich

YOU SHOULD BE ABLE TO GET ALL OF THE CONTROLS THROUGH MOST ANY HEATING CONTRACTOR, PUMPS INCLUDED.
ALL OF THE COMMERCIALY BUILT UNITS, THAT I HAVE SEEN, ARE NOT PRESSUREIZED SYSTEMS, SO THEY ARE OPEN TO THE AIR OUTSIDE IN THE BOILER. THE PROBLEM WITH THIS IS YOU CAN NOT PUT ANTIFREEZE IN THEM,IT WILL EVAPORATE, SO YOU HAVE TO FIRE THEM ALL WINTER LONG OR DRAIN THEM IF YOU GO AWAY.

IF YOU NEED PARTS OR HAVE QUESTIONS AND CAN NOT FIND THEM IN BUTLER GET IN TOUCH WITH ME AND I CAN HELP YOU. I AM A HEATING CONTRACTOR IN NEW WILMINGTON PA.

[Nitetimes]

I was talking to a friend of mine last night and he has a book full of stuff like that, need to look at it closer. I have a Johnston Supply down the road from me, forgot about them, have to see what they can get, they're pretty reasonable most times too.
The last one I saw installed (Nov 08 ) I'm sure, had antifreeze in it. Not sure what type of system it was tho. Spent a lot of time last night reading and most said they used it in either system. I would imagine you'd lose some and have to replace it occasionally in an open system. I was just a little confused about the open thing anyway, I didn't see anything that was actually open on any of them. Some that I saw had an expansion tank, others were just vented but I didn't see any difference in the way they were built?
A few years back when I was looking into this I found some real good pics and drawings of a manf'd one, cutaways and such but can't recall which one right now.

[Mark72]

http://www.centralboiler.com/
http://www.woodweb.com/knowledge_base/Outdoor_wood_furnaces.html


Mark

[Nitetimes]

[Grumpeyyy]

Rich

Johnstone Supply will have just about everything that you need, but if you know someone that has an account there you will save yourself some money.

I have worked on a few of them over the years and they were open nonpresureized. They only had a vent pipe on the top of them but they were still open. The antifreeze would evaporate being that you are heating it all the time, and the stuff we used in boilers was expensive.

Hope this helps alittle

Gene

[Nitetimes]

Any first hand info is good info! I've just been going from what I have read and it's most likely not all correct and some of it isn't very clear. I have seen plenty of them and understand how they work, it's just the exact workings I'm a little unclear on.
I did a lot of looking today and found some good info. Including getting a pretty good idea how to build a downdraft one. Much more efficient wood burn from what I could gather. I'll figure it all out before I start welding.