Anybody built your own? How did you go about it?
Wanting to heat a house....possibly by blowing warm air into the crawl space/cellar.

I have a 275 gal. tank I was going to turn in to a boiler ,but never got around to it .

I have a central boiler CL 4030 that I just rebuilt the control panel door it was surprisingly cheaper than I expected and would add features to a DIY boiler for ease of use. Not much to a wood boiler besides the tank and controls really the control panel in the side door (brain) and the solenoid in the feed door is very simple add a temp sensor and your golden. The control panel even had 2 plugs for heat pumps or fans in your case.

It could be done easier than a guy would think with water being pumped I’m not 100% sure how dry heat would work but it’s doable I’m sure.

I think Cousin Roy on here built his own I never did see the setup in action.

An add-on wood burner will work for what you want. You could build one but a lot of work and expense. Any wood stove with a squirrel cage will work, just put a button thermostat on pipe going under house then it will only blow when hot. I do this in garage, heats garage with radiant heat and when fan bows it blows under crawl space. If you set it outside you will lose all the radiant heat

if you got a basement put a woodstove down there.
Best place for a wood burner.
Make a chute to fill a section of the basement with wood.
The wood burner dries the wood to a point that if a match looks at it its on fire.
The hot air rises thru the whole house. Add some old fashion registers on the floor to aid it or leave basement door open.
Biggest issue is chimney.

Outdoor wood burners are expensive, inefficient, require electricity and a pain in the but to run. Nothing worse than trudging out in the wind and snow on a January morning to load the stove .

Outdoor boilers have advantages and disadvantages. I've got a 4400 woodmaster since 2002 and glad I purchased it.what I like,mess is outside not as much splitting as it handles bigger pieces, don't have to worry about chimney fire heat my hot water with it also.i miss the feel of the wood heat of having it in the house.the old ones are less efficient then the new ones.think on the new ones you can get 26%tax credit.the wood has to be good and dry though.i wouldn't hesitate to buy a new one tomorrow. In my opinion the pros outweigh the cons.

Had a friend who had a large woodstove in his basement. The stove sat inside an iron box. A fan drew heated air from the box and distributed it into his existing ductwork.

THIS 1000%. I will emphasize the mess staying outside, safety factor can't catch the house in fire when it's 160' from the house, no bugs warm up and come out of the wood in the house. It has a 2 foot by 2 foot door and 47"x36 fire box. I don't do much splitting and I don't care what I burn. Infact I have burnt green pine 98% so far this year. Several blew down and I neded to clean them up. So I'm burning them heating the house. I would never have done that with any of my indoor wood burners. And I would have been burning them in brush piles instead. I can be the 5th in line for a shower and never run out of hot water. Between the pipes, heat exchanger for the hot water and the hot air going through the duct work my crawl space stays worm and the kitchen floor is warm on my feet. Don't worry about pipes freezing down there .

Now it was expensive and I would not have spent the money if I had a modern aot tight and well installed house. BUT I have a large very old farm house with old windows and lots of drafts. The propain furnace could not heat it above 68° in the center of the house when it got cold and would never shut off. All other rooms were colder. I was going to go through 4 to 5 500gal tanks a year and still be cold. There was no good spot to put in a wood burner that would heat the entire house, i had just put nrew carping in and the old fire place needed workk to be safe .I did the math it took 4 years but what I sabmved in lp paid for the outdoor unit and installation. Last 2 years heat has cost me electric for the water pump computer and blower, and a few cains and gas and oil for the saws. The house can be 90• if I wanted it to be and never run out of hot water. 2 more years and it will have saved me over 13k in lp more than I paid for the unit. And all my trash downed trees are being put to good use .

I have had 3 different indoor wood burners over the years and open fire places. I much prefer the outdoor unit. It's less work.

And they come in camo even. LOL I figured mine paid for itself in the first 5 years and is still going strong. I had to do a bit of maintenance on it this year after the fire melted the electrical panel but the whole door was around $350 surprisingly cheap I thought. Found a couple cracked valves and a leaking spin down filter from it sitting last winter fixed those issues and added seal tape to the clean out cover and it’s going like when it was new in 2008.

Added a brick wall removed any exposed railroad ties and I am stacking the wood further away and will gravel all around the landing area.

Cheapest way to blow hot under a house air from wood stove

Every time I price out building one from scratch I just can’t justify it for what I can buy one for.

How much wood do you burn in a year with an outdoor boiler law dog ?

Heated 2 buildings for years went through a lot of wood now that I’m just heating the house it’s holding way longer than before. I found out the one end of the fur shed was not insulated above the overhead door it was sucking the heat out of the building. I have a small boiler that’s heating just the house now it would go 24 hours on a good fill with freezing temps at night.

Looking at 4-5 cords maybe unless it gets super cold I’m thinking it will take this winter. I’m burning smaller stuff in this mild weather but when it gets subzero I will go to bigger rounds then so the fill last longer with the bigger pieces.

I built one for my shop that was force air, it was close to the building I believe it had to be 10 away for insurance, basically a wood stove with a building around it I insulated in well and duct in into the shop with a 4-foot square duct work, the stove was 2foot wide and 4 foot high and 6 foot long we burned used pallets it was a pallet shop, it heated a 36-60 build very good,

Uncle Gordon heated the old shop with a 250 gallon fuel drum he had a big door at one end it took some long logs of wood.

I probably go 10 cords at least.my house was built in 2007.it takes alot of wood to heat the hot water as we use alot of hot water showering,washing clothes and doing dishes.

How did the fire start ashes that you threw out when cleaning or sparks from the chimney ?

Yes my fault I had a old railroad tie that was away from the boiler but we had hurricane winds that day when a coal dropped out in that wind then the second water line that went into the building from the side I should of ran that under the foundation. The fire walked up that plastic water line and got into the fur shed luckily the building was steel framed so it’s not as bad as it could have been.

I put in that fire wall to limit the distance a coal could travel now, no more the 1 nights wood goes in that area, the replacement line is underground and the wood pile is further away the whole area will be covered in gravel and the fur shed will be covered in steel siding with a firewall by the boiler.

Had I run the water line underground the building would have been fine then.

We go through roughly 12 full cords a winter heating the house (4000 SQF) and my work shop (about 700 SQF), I'd have to look at the model I bought it used and it's paid for itself for sure. Works good for me I buy a couple log truck loads of decent wood and I have a buddy with a wood processor takes about 2 eight hour days to put up all the wood for the winter. I'd recommend buying a couple spare pumps, solenoids

One problem, you got my favorite spot for quick frying LOL

Great idea !