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Thread: RE: Outdoor wood boilers

  1. #21
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    I wish someone would invent a mosquito burning stove! The biomass in Maine could fuel New England, no problem

    Wouldn't want to have to collect a 40lb bag though....

  2. #22
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    Quote Originally Posted by Sudonim View Post
    I wish someone would invent a mosquito burning stove! The biomass in Maine could fuel New England, no problem

    Wouldn't want to have to collect a 40lb bag though....
    Did you hear about the insects scientists have discovered which, when fed a diet of wood waste, sugar cane, or other certain materials, produce crude oil?
    DNFTT! DNFTT! DNFTT!

    "The funniest thing about this particular signature is that by the time you realize it doesn't say anything it's to late to stop reading it..."

  3. #23
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    Quote Originally Posted by brdad View Post
    Did you hear about the insects scientists have discovered which, when fed a diet of wood waste, sugar cane, or other certain materials, produce crude oil?
    No, but I had heard that if you take a kazillion dinosaurs and put them under lots of heat and pressure you can make oil.
    Or maybe it was two kazillion...

  4. #24
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    Take a look see at todays' editorial page of the BDN. Calvin Luther has a good article of the BTU content of the different fuels and a paragraph or two on heat pumps. I think it is pretty factual.

  5. #25
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    Last year we made the decision to not burn wood in the house anymore. Put the stove in the basement for burning all our burnable waste. No more wood mess in the house, no more cutting, splitting, lugging and cleaning out the ashes. Decided we could afford the oil. Well that was last year! I just came back from scrounging a load of fire wood out of the woods. The stove will be coming back upstairs. What was I thinking? As said before in this forum, if you are going to burn wood, it has to be free wood to save any money. At two hundred plus a cord for wood, plus all the work involved, there is no savings burning wood.

  6. #26
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    A heat pump is actually an air conditioner in all reality. All it does and reverse the condenser and evaporator flow. We had one when I was stationed in Maryland in the military and it worked fine but then again we did not get much snow down there either.

    As Andy said about pellet stoves it is nice to be able to load them and set the thermostat and leave for the day know you do not have to stock the wood stove all day. It is cleaner burning but does not put out the same kind of heat a wood stove does. I can heat my house from a dead cold to really warm with my wood stove in about 20 minutes. Your not going to be able to do that with a pellet stove. Another thing to consider is if you lose electricity then you can not use your pellet stove unless you have a backup generator. There are pros and cons to both a wood stove and a pellet stove. I would love to have a pellet stove but I would have to hear more good stuff about them. My neighbor hates his. My friend at work loves his but he spent over $1,000 in pellets last year to heat his house. I spent under $400 for cut split and delivered fire wood to heat my house last year. This is a savings of $600 over a pellet stove. So far the wood stove still wins. Another thing I do expect in the future after everyone starts on the pellet stove wagon. I think the price of pellets will go up a lot because they are going to have everyone right where they want them.

    Don't get me wrong. I am not against pellet stoves. So far from what I have heard I would spend less on my wood stove then I would on a pellet stove to heat the house. I can list a lot of things I hate about my wood stove and there are a lot but price wise I will stick with the wood stove for at least one more year.
    Blazing Troll

  7. #27
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    Quote Originally Posted by vicbiker View Post
    Last year we made the decision to not burn wood in the house anymore. Put the stove in the basement for burning all our burnable waste. No more wood mess in the house, no more cutting, splitting, lugging and cleaning out the ashes. Decided we could afford the oil. Well that was last year! I just came back from scrounging a load of fire wood out of the woods. The stove will be coming back upstairs. What was I thinking? As said before in this forum, if you are going to burn wood, it has to be free wood to save any money. At two hundred plus a cord for wood, plus all the work involved, there is no savings burning wood.
    There's no such thing as "free" wood in my own opinion . . . unless someone has (because they're just so darn nice) cut, chopped up and delivered the wood to your house for free since even "free" wood in a woodlot will cost you something in terms of gas/oil to cut it up, split it and haul it to your home . . . that said I do have a woodlot and am leaning towards wood since the small investment of gas/oil I think would be far less than $4.50/gallon for oil. I am also considering an outdoor wood boiler rather than a woodstove or pellet stove due to space issues inside the house (and the lack of a real cellar . . . more of a crawl space with a rock floor.)
    "Courage is not the absence of fear, but the realization that there is something more important than fear."

    "Death is only one of many ways to die."

  8. #28
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    I have actually looked at a pellet stove, but as mentioned earlier space issue is such that I am now giving more thought to a wood boiler . . . either an outdoor unit or an indoor boiler that I can build a small shed around and connect to the home's existing oil boiler. The other reason I am shying away from a pellet stove is that I would like the ability to heat the entire home with an equal amount of heat.

    That said, I know the Fire Inspectors here in town really like the pellet stoves . . . in fact they like them so much that one replaced his propane space heater (a Waterford propane stove which is quite attractive) with a Harman pellet stove and the other Inspector also bought a pellet stove along with a domestic hot water solar heating system. The Inspectors like them from the safety standpoint, ease of installation, cleanliness of the pellets vs. wood, convenience of dumping the pellets into a hopper, thermostat system, etc.

    Pellets really seem to have a lot going for them right now . . . but as one Inspector pointed out you really need to do some research since all pellet stoves are not created equal . . . one stove he inspected he found to be so unsafe (made in China with a German-sounding name) that he took the highly unusual step of reporting it to the Consumer Products Safety Commission. If anyone does go this route I would also recommend talking to various owners who have used their pellet stoves and find out what they like and dislike about their stoves . . . apparently some stoves burn very clean and the ash clean up is very easy while other models tend to produce much more ash and/or clean up can be quite the task.
    "Courage is not the absence of fear, but the realization that there is something more important than fear."

    "Death is only one of many ways to die."

  9. #29
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    Jan 2008
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    Quote Originally Posted by firefighterjake View Post
    There's no such thing as "free" wood in my own opinion . . . unless someone has (because they're just so darn nice) cut, chopped up and delivered the wood to your house for free since even "free" wood in a woodlot will cost you something in terms of gas/oil to cut it up, split it and haul it to your home . . .

    Don't Forget Taxes!

  10. #30
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    Apr 2008
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    Albion, Maine
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    Quote Originally Posted by firefighterjake View Post
    There's no such thing as "free" wood in my own opinion . . . unless someone has (because they're just so darn nice) cut, chopped up and delivered the wood to your house for free since even "free" wood in a woodlot will cost you something in terms of gas/oil to cut it up, split it and haul it to your home . . . that said I do have a woodlot and am leaning towards wood since the small investment of gas/oil I think would be far less than $4.50/gallon for oil. I am also considering an outdoor wood boiler rather than a woodstove or pellet stove due to space issues inside the house (and the lack of a real cellar . . . more of a crawl space with a rock floor.)

    The actual cost of the wood could be free. The labor involved getting it prepped for the stove and the actual use of the wood might cost dearly in physical labor and cash. Let's face it, the grass on my lawn is free but I pay to mow it. Taxes are for the land, with or without trees; with or without lawn.

    I have always heated my home(s) with wood as a primary source. We have the fortunate circumstance to have 1000's of acres of wood lots. Many folks who harvest the wood for us and all the equipment necessary to get the wood to where we need it. This part of the wood is costly, no question about it but over all, my labor included, it's still the cheapest source I've found to heat our home.

    I recently looked into a Whisper wind power generator . For 14K a company in Augusta would set it up and hook it into the power grid. It produces something like 600 Kilowatts or about half of our electrical consumption. (We could reduce this dramatically with some conscious effort.) There are low cost loans to help and a federal tax credit. Heaven forbide the Maine gov't would help by offering a tax credit. These systems have the inverter in the head of the generator meaning no batteries or needed changes to the current meter box or house wiring. These systems will turn your meter backwards if you are using less electricity than you produce. Plus they can be cascaded meaning I could put up 2 and connect them together to produce all my electricity. They predict that it would be about a 10 year financial recovery if the price of electricity doesn't go up dramatically. For those considering new heating systems, electric heat wouldn't be so bad if you were generating your own electricity. Just another thing to consider!!
    There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.~~Albert Einstein
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    Many wise words are spoken in jest, but they don't compare with the number of stupid words spoken in earnest. - Sam Levenson (1911 - 1980)

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