Happy thanksgiving y'all, one thing I am thankful for is having reliable heat during the coldest of days. Spending a year in Virginia we have already encountered temperatures in the single digits. During this time our heater cannot keep up and we find ourselves quite cold on the most extreme of winter nights. A solution to this is to use an alternative heating system, which makes our conventional heaters redundant and only needed if the wood furnace had trouble. As long as you keep feeding it wood, cleaning it out and keeping it powered you will get heat. There is a fan inside that runs off the main house power that stokes the flame once in awhile and runs full time when calling for more heat.
Using burning wood to heat 420 gallons of water, it circulates through three buildings on my homestead to keep them warm. Water temperatures are around 185F (85C) and used to add heat into home and also warms the water heaters for the shower and sink.
It took months of preparation to get the wood furnace online, it all started with building the foundation and running the hot water lines.
Here we have a 120V mains power coming in along with 2 water lines, we add one more later for my workshop.
Another part of this project was getting the homes ready for wood heat. The plumbing needs to be redone on the water heater for this to work.
The heat for the homes comes from a radiator that is installed in the air handler. 185F (85C) water flows through this copper heat exchange and will heat the air quite nicely.
PEX is used for all the lines ran, this is coiled but alot of straight pipes were used as well.
Normally the water heater is operated using electrical heaters or a gas heater system. We bypass this and only use the water heater to hold water.
With the right plumbing installed now the water is heated by the wood furnace setup.
I do the trenching for the workshop. Using my skid steer and its attachment I make quick work and get it done in about 1.5 hours.
The furnace arrives on a hoist, it weighs about 2000 pounds empty and about 5000 pounds full of water.
It gets set down on the foundation and then the wiring can begin.
Opening up the side panel we can see the water line connections. All of this ties into the lines ran into the ground which go into the homes and workshop to keep them warm.
Many of the lines are ran inside the wall, it took quite a bit of work getting them all through, including cutting out some dry wall in one area to get access.
Soon when I finish off my basement all of this will be hidden. Here is the trunk line going in to the side of the main house holding the two PEX lines for water.
At the air handler there is a series tubes that a pump valve controls. When a thermostat calls for heat it opens and lets hot water flow through the heat exchanger heating up the air.
Its all very complex and I am glad I hired someone to do this work. I am just watching him set it up.
With the water heater all plumbed up its soon time to fill the lines with water.
We start a small fire in the furnace once 420 gallons is added, this takes about an hour.
With the unit taking most of a day to get up to temp the plumbing can all be connected in the mean time.
A water sample is taken, required by the maker of the wood furnace to warranty it.
With the smoke stack installed I can see how big this thing is.
We bring over dirt to level the area, as the next step is getting a carport installed over the furnace.. Not the smoke stack but the main unit, so when it rains its not so bad loading firewood.
A few hours of work and its mostly leveled, we will check it again after a good rain and add more if needed.
Now I have two thermostats, one controls the conventional AC and heat. The other one on the right controls just the wood furnace.
Outside there is a display on the wood furnace that tells me its current state, the water temperature and fire box efficiency. It is tied into my homes wifi so I can access its state online and know when I need to add more wood.
The byproduct the furnace produces is ash, we can use this on our fields. Soon I will test my outdoor soil and see if its needed. But great to have if so.
With the workshop lines trenched and installed I cover up the area.
Inside the workshop we can see the two heaters, they are powered by a fan that blows air through. My small solar array can power one of them if need be. But they also passively add heat into the building even when the fans are not running as the water is always flowing.
Going to be really careful around them, last thing I want to do hit them.
We can see where the PEX lines are coming into the building. The insulation was moved to the side for the hole.
Finishing off the workshop these will be covered, but for now we can see all the water lines in the workshop.
I set up a thermometer in the workshop, we got a freezing cold day and it stayed close to 60F throughout the night. So looks like the heat is helping. Would probably be 10 degrees colder without them.
Having a constant wood supply has been working out. We chopped up many truck loads before the furnace arrived. But going forward we will need to spend time finding trees and making more fire wood from them now.
Chopping wood is optional for the wood furnace, we mostly cut to size and throw them in.
Since we have a forest road trees are constantly falling during storms, so I think we will have a steady supply of wood just from fallen trees. But if not we plan on cutting down softwood pines on the property as they are not really wanted.
But for now we should have enough to get us a month or two. Just hauling it over once a week or so. They are still drying out under the barn, but soon we will have more green wood to let season while we use this.
Glad to have this on my property, now we wait for some really cold days. We have been using it already and it works great. We will be extra thankful when it gets so cold our old heaters would not work but we know this will keep us warm.
This wood furnace has electronics on it that allows remote monitoring of the unit. I can go to their website and upon setting up. I can keep an eye on the water temperature and get alerts when the temp gets too low or the fire goes completely out.
The reaction chamber can also be monitored, this helps to tell when I need to clean the ash out of the boiler once in awhile.
Charts can be viewed showing the cycles of this unit, this is a 24h but I can view shorter and longer timeframes as well.
Setting up alerts I can get emails or texts when certain things happen.
Timestamps in the history also help me know what is going on across the day.
Long term we shall see how this works out, but after a few weeks of use I am very happy with it. Now I just need to give it a constant source of firewood.
