I got tired of watching the news and seeing all of my oil, gas, and LP $ going to mid-east countries helping to fund the lunatics....so I made a move towards personal energy independence....I bought a 5600 model Cadillac Outdoor Wood Burner. I'm calculating a 3 year payback on this baby. I have good access to a wood supply, I have a 5500 sf house and a 2500 sf shop to heat. If you don't have one of these i'd strongly recommend you look into it. I installed this completely by myself.
It looks like a Cadillac. I'll never need one but I'd like to look at the website to see how it works.
Casey
Google is your friends...
http://www.nsteelmfg.com/cadillac_3600
$7 G .......
I have seen a few, never liked all the smoke down low to the ground. Slow cold burn and that bitter smoke just dosn't go anywhere...
So how do you get the heat from the stove to the house and shop? How far do you have to move it? How big of storage do you have at these spots? Radiators or radiant floor?
What's the plan?
Casey
Cadillac : So how many have you sold?????
7K is ridiculously overpriced! Everybody and his brother makes these things. Stay away from the stainless steel (SS) models. Since SS is so expensive they are made a lot thinner than cast iron and will burn through. Also be aware that there are a lot, and I mean a lot of counties/municipalities that have banned these things. Check first before you buy.
Randy B
Even Fairbanks Alaska has banned these things... but just another political football in my opinion.
Hydronic heat transfer to the buildings and hot burns is the way to go!
dieselgman
Yep, a hot clean burn and store the heat to be used slowly. But that will mean more operator attention, and perhaps unplanned trips out to the boiler in the middle of a dark and stormy knight:)
Umm, he has 1 post, his username is cadillac, and he's promoting.... "He's a witch! Burn him!" oooppps, ban him! (Sorry, too much Monty Python..)
Looks quite inefficient to me........
I've had one of these things for over 10 years (not a Cadillac, but a Pacific Western, now out of business) and I find they work well. Mine will heat up to 10,000 square feet and I have it connected to 6 buildings in my "compound". The main reason for getting it was that we had a house fire caused by a poorly installed wood burner chimney and SWMBO would not have another wood burner in the house.
I like that I can heat multiple buildings with it but here is the BIG downside - it can be a a pig on wood, in the coldest days of the year up here (around -35 C at night) it can burn 1/3rd of a face cord a day. My buddy has a smaller unit and it also uses a fair amount of wood, but obviously not as much as mine.
Nowadays I tend to use my WMO boiler for most heating and use the wood furnace if it is going to be cold to supplement. I'm getting too old to cut and split all that wood!
Quote from: JohnF on January 17, 2012, 03:41:50 AM
..... I'm getting too old to cut and split all that wood!
But cutting and splitting the wood is where all the benefit is! You get all that exercise, plus it keeps you warm before you burn it! If you cut and split your own wood by hand, it warms you twice! ;D
Yes it does warm you twice, but damn! The cost of Absorbine Jr at my age and condition is getting out of hand. ::)
Really, I have a couple thousand dollars tied up in Stihl chainsaws, another couple thousand in a 35 ton splitter(that's a gas hog),
5 grand or so in my Belarus with the front end loader, and another thousand in my 68 Chevy log truck(that's a real gas hog).
The wood is free, I have a guy with a commercial sawmill that saves his cull logs for me, but I still have to haul, unload,cut, split and haul the stuff in. Not to mention getting up every 5 or 6 hours to fill the furnace in 20 degree weather. Anybody else want to live in a 70 year old house?
5-7k isn't out of line with the outdoor boilers I've seen around here either.
It's all in your perspective in where you want to spend your money, there's no free lunch. Just my admittedly biased opinion!
Ron
Quote from: vdubnut62 on January 17, 2012, 12:20:47 PM
Anybody else want to live in a 70 year old house?
I'm trying to buy a property right now with a house from 1928 and another from 1937. It's got a heat pump and stays pretty nice and cozy. ;D
If the deal goes through I'm looking at heating the whole place (5 buildings) with a central hydronic system probably mostly wood fired. I'm looking at investing in a 40 acre timber lot on the side of a mountain to provide me with firewood for the rest of my life and then some. ;D ::)
I do have to wonder how much a good wood gas cogen setup would cost compared to one of these boilers...
I've priced out an outdoor Econoburn 200000 BTU gasifier unit and they are just under $10000 on the east coast of Canada and that includes the heat exchanger and a fan. From what I can understand the indoor unit costs the same but it doesn't include the exchanger or fan.
From what I've read on various websites these units burn clean, use less wood then the non gasifier boilers and the manufacturer has been building commercial boilers for a lot of years.
My biggest concern is that you still have a water jacket that isn't likely to get above boiling so that might impact your burn, but at least the upper firebox is refractory so that should help with the smoke.
A cousin of mine bought a Greenwood Furnace a couple years ago, it's basically one huge refractory and uses boiler tubes instead of a jacket. In my mind this makes a lot more sense, this will allow you to keep your firebox walls very hot allowing for a hotter fire and a cleaner burn. Unfortunately Greenwood was bought by another company and they discontinued this model. They now offer a gasifier as well but I haven't looked into it yet.
Jason
For those prices, you could almost build a really nice thermal mass masonry stove in the house. Just sayin'. Of course you couldn't heat multiple buildings that way...
For me it all about multiple buildings. Right now I only have the house to heat, but I plan on building a small workshop for my wife, a bigger shop for myself and maybe a greenhouse further down the road. I know these boilers need constant attention but I sooner have to service one stove rather then four.
Jason
Go Jason! I just hope you are young, strong, have plenty of time and have a good place to cut firewood! Do you have any idea of the amount of wood all those buildings will consume? ::)
Ron.
Don't worry Ron, I'm still fairly young and I have 3 kids who will be old enough in a couple years to start helping out, plus I have a horrible addiction to tractors and Unimogs so I have MORE then enough machinery to help out with the work.
The house is in New Brunswick and if there is one thing that grows well in New Brunswick it's trees. At $80 per cord for 8' logs I can do a lot of heating for a reasonable amount of money.
Jason
Jason I share your addiction to machinery I'm afraid. Now if I only had a firewood processor.......hmm
Ron.
A processor is most certainly on my list. Hopefully they will start popping up in the used market a little more in a few years, doesn't seem to be a lot right now and most of them are far away.