inside wood stove vs outdoor boiler

Ok, I am considering putting in wood heat again as I miss it. New house and I really miss the inside wood stove, the warmth, feelings, and how it heats. That said, we now have 2 kids and the wife is a bit worried about burning down the house.....I figure I can get an inside one put in for around 2k and an outdoor boiler type is going to cost around 8k plus installation costs. I am not that mechanical and would be having either one put in. What are the advantages of the outside type compared to inside other than safety and not a wood mess?

Never owned an outside wood stove, but I assume they hold more fuel and require fewer refills. Probabably supply heat more evenly without peaks and valleys. Inside stoves have surely improved since I had one 30 years ago. Still they must be cleaned from inside and that used to be a source of frustration for me.

Probably less smell on warm damp days when stove is not in use.

With the outside boiler your heat is controlled by a thermostat, which allows for a consistent temperature 24/7 in every room in the house.
Can heat your water with the boiler and if you want you can heat a outside building with the same unit.

The mess outside that you brought up is a big one.

inside VS outside

2-3 K vs 8-10K initial cost

no electric needed vs electric needed

3-4 cord of wood for a Wisconsin winter VS outside 10-15 cord for a Wisconsin winter.

intense heat that really warms the bones VS heat like a hot water boiler

can really dry out the house VS doesn't dry out the house

no chance of heating your shower water with it unless you like bucket showers VS domestic hot water heated by wood.

Drag the wood mess inside some VS drag your but out in the cold but leave the mess outside

decide not to use it and let the furnace run while you are at the inlaws for christmas VS are you running antifreeze in the boiler and lines ? or will they freeze with no fire?



can have one installed in your home in virtually any city town county VS more and more places prohibiting them


I have an indoor Quadrafire , maybe the only thing I don't like about it is it does make the house very dry if you have a newer house than my 109 year old structure you may want to do an outside air to your wood stove duct , this reduces how much drying of there air there is.


where will you store your wood?

can you get a steady supply of wood in great enough quantity ?

You will have more mess in your house with a woostove….But if I'm burning wood I want the house to have that wood heat feel. It's far far different than any other heat source. Can't be described but I'll never own another house or shop without a woodstove in each.

Put the fire hazard 100 feet away from the house is the #1 advantage for me, if you can do floor heat they say there is nothing better then that! Like Calvin inside stoves are messy and are a dry type of a heat, too dry is many cases the boiler heat is a more confrontable kind of heat.

Yes they are a investment but the wood boilers pay for themselves in just a few years and the yearly cost is more controllable then other heating fuels that you have no control over. Less wood handling also get ahead and you can burn bigger rounds without splitting and cutting them so much like a wood stove.

We have electric heat currently and it's warm - I just miss the true warmth of a wood fire. I have a lifetime of wood on my land and will have tons of cords dropped this winter after I have some forestry management done and walnuts taken off. I can run a humidifier if I get it too dry in the house in winter. I think I will lean towards the indoor. I had an old Earth Stove years ago in my first house and I just miss that wood heat in the middle of winter. And, I didn't feel bad about opening the door up to let the heat out.....

In our area it is getting very hard to get the proper permits allowing outdoor burners.Installation only allowed in conservancy, agriculture, rural residential, and industrial zoning districts. Otherwise they are considered a public nuisance.

So far nothing said about my indoor stove where I burn about 5 cord on average. I do know when looking for a tempered glass that cracked last year, I couldn't believe the little fire boxes the new stoves come with. Mine will take firewood cut 20" long, the ones I saw took cook stove wood by comparison.

As said, hard to beat the feel of a wood fire on a zero degree night.

WS

Indoor burner is a no no for some insurance.
The mess and smell outside is what i like about the outdoor burner.
Don't have to deal with that inside and no bugs in the wood either.

I have a Outdoor Woodmaster for about 8 years no problems. Has a huge door so I do not split any wood. Heats my house, fur shed and lure bottling building, plus hot water. Add about 10 coon carcasses and extra warm.

I have had an outdoor furnace for 15 years. Without question,it has saved me money.1 thing I will say, unless you really enjoy cutting firewood, don't buy an outdoor furnace! I actually like cutting. People ask " how much wood do you burn"? My answer is 10-15 gallons of chainsaw gas!

Maybe its a U.P. thing but the insurance companies we have dealt with flat refused to insure a home with a wood stove inside.We burned wood for years because it wasn't an issue when we moved in,then one day our agent had come over and spied the stove and said"I know you're not using that".One company after the other told us the same thing when we looked for one wood stove friendly:no.

A wood stove is a unit heater- you stick it where you want it and it heats the room it’s in. The only way heat gets out of that room is airflow, conduction or convection. A wood boiler is just a boiler- it makes hot water and you have to pipe it to where you want it. You mentioned you currently have electric heat, so I’m assuming you don’t have any hydronic heat plumbing at all. So you’d have to install baseboards or other radiators, and a lot of plumbing to convert to hydronic. Did you figure that into your costs?
Also, a wood boiler just makes hot water. It doesn’t make the house feel any different than a gas boiler. If it’s the “wood heat” feel you’re after, you want a wood stove.

I had a outside boiler for 15 years I like it went through lots of wood started to leak call guy that fixes them said mine lasted longer than any he has seen he said about 10-12 years is average in new house I put wood stove in basement ,I have walk out basement ,so wood is right out door ,we love it ,stove was about 700 ,build well will last my life time no problem with insurance

Well from what I have read so far I’m unique in that I have a wood boiler that is in my garage. House was built in 2001 and insurance company only wanted the boiler room in the garage covered with fire rated drywall and a steel door. So for about $2500 we installed an indoor boiler with room. Ideally I would have liked an in home wood stove but chimney location and wood storage didn’t lay out real well for that. So each fall I haul in 4 cord of wood into the garage and load trailers with another 2 cord that goes in a shed. Wood mess stays in the garage, keep boiler room door open so garage is passively heated (do have baseboard heater if want more heat) and Family will fire up when I’m gone. Don’t think they would do that with an outdoor boiler. Heat exchanger tied into a conventional LP forced air furnace so we have backup heat and can run AC in summer. For our two story house we go thru 6-7 cord a year and gives me another reason to get out in the woods.

Dave

OK....the insurance/safety thing always comes up in these threads. I assume we are talking a newer URL rated woodstove...and NOT some a barrel stove kit you get from harbor Freight. Newer stoves are DESIGNED to use in your house. That means they are safe. Mine are rated for a 2" clearance from combustibles on 3 sides.
My home insurance went up a whopping $20 per year (after I had the insurance agent inspect it upon installation...which is important if you insure your house). All new stoves come with installation paperwork and requirements for safety. This is all your agent is looking at. Buy a decent URL rated stove and install it properly (or have it installed), and enjoy the wood heat feel. Again, its a far different feel than hot water....Like Kenaikid states.

My insurance went up 50 bucks a year because I had wood. Big deal. My house now is only wood heat, no backup. Cheap way to heat. Outdoor boilers eat wood. One reason is that they are extremely inneficient at getting every last btu out of the wood and into your house. That said, a house needs to be designed Ed for wood heat. As was stated, keep doors closed and the bedrooms will be real cold. I have a tiny house, and my wood stove is oversized. Nice to feel that blast of heat opening the door on a cold day! I know a few people who have outdoor boilers here. Aside from losing efficiency heating the water, running a pump, and heat loss all around, notice how they are always smoking heavily? That is because of incomplete combistion. A good hot wood stove never has smoke coming from it once hot and burning. Most of them have a secondary burn that burns the smoke also, which makes them very clean. Just the fact that a woodstoe is already inside the house when it burns increases efficiency too.

I have a friend that has an outdoor wood burner. He heats a 2200 sq ft house, 4400 with the basement and a 40 by 80 shop with it. Keeps the shop at 65 degrees and the house at 68. The burner sits between both, 100 ft to each. This is his only source of heat. Can't remember the name of it. He fills it in the morning and at night when temps get around zero, otherwise once a day.

Another choice is a Masonry heater.

Cost is much more, but if one is thinking about putting in a fireplace a masonry heater would be a much better choice.

Cost approx 20K

uses the least amount of wood, burns the most efficiently. I use 3 cords for 2800 sq ft house not including basement.

Lot less mess than a wood stove, typically load once/day, burn fast and completely and shut off air supply, your done for the day.
Safer than a woodstove, you are never loading wood when there is a fire in the firebox. In a properly used masonry heater you do not have to worry about chimney fires as the fire is clean, no creosote.

The evenness of heat is dependent upon how well insulated. Poorly insulated, not so good. Well insulated, nice even heat, no spike and not overly hot like a wood stove.

Does not use electricity, power outage and you have issues with outdoor boiler. One of the big reasons to use wood heat in my opinion is you want to not rely on power/gas co to keep you warm/survive in the winter.

Of course like a wood stove or an outdoor boiler one can have water heated if you wish. All forms of wood heat can be used to heat water.

Will last the longest of the 3 options with no moving parts. Should last 100 years if not used incorrectly.

Best value for the long term. Last a life time, uses less wood, uses zero electricity.



Spend time on make sure your house is as air tight as possible and insulated well over code.
These 2 things will pay you back constantly for as long as you live in the house.
They should be done even if it means you have to cut out more expensive finishes inside the home.
There is zero payback on granite counter tops.
You can always upgrade the finishes later.

If you go with a masonry heater you will need to think about placement in the house for best efficiency in heating the house.

Do you get insects and spiders in your garage? Lots of bugs around wood piles.

I have a 900 sq ft separate building that I use as a work shop, it uses electric hydronic heat.
I still get bugs in there.
I get bugs in the house, bugs are everywhere.

I store 1 winters worth of wood in my attached house garage.
I don't think there are any more bugs in the garage with or without the wood.
I also store 2 years worth of wood outside under a lean-to, not alot bugs in there.

Yes, there is wood chips, bark and some dirt after the winters wood is burned up and gone but its not very much.
A quick sweep job and its clean enough for a garage.
If your not letting the stuff sit for years at a time I don't think the critters move in as badly.

i have an indoor stove. spray your wood pile with cyper (https://www.amazon.com/CYPER-814176-Comparable-Demon-Cynoff/dp/B01E9I067K). no bugs. i put in duct work above the stove with a filter and a fan in the attic. it is plumbed back into the plenum. i run the fan with a cooling thermostat. turns on at 72 degrees . if we leave and the fire goes out the propane furnace kicks in at 70. even heat throughout the house except the stove room which runs 5 to 10 degrees warmer depending on outside temps. wife keeps the house between 75 and 77 all winter. to warm for me but she babysits little ones during the days.

i ain't going outside to stoke the stove in the cold.

Another plus for the outdoor burners is that you can burn green wood. Seasoned wood does burn a little better tho. This will be my first year burning only hardwood in it (green). I mostly burned slab wood (hemlock). Can't give exact numbers but I know it doesn't burn twice what I burned in the inside stove. I used about 5-6 cords inside (seasoned hardwood) and 10-12 cords of hemlock outside.

Dirty D, lets hear more on that masonry heater....another thread so no highjack?