Duel fuel OWB (outdoor wood burner)

[d34]

It looks like this company has a good idea.  OWB with duel fuel.  It can burn wood or waste oil.  What do you guys think of this brand/idea?  http://www.heatmor.com/archive/dualfuelmodels.html

[slowspeed]

I bet it would work just fine
I have made and am using my wast oil burner as i type
would like to see the inside of one

[vdubnut62]

Says it has to have a 12-15 psi air supply, but no mention of cfm?
Ron

[SteveU.]

Hey d34
Heatmor is a Know NAME in the heating industry.
The wood hearth side of their furnace looks real good with the cast iron grate and thermal brick lining.
The pictures of the oil burner assembly looks to be professional grade too.
Just had the old 50's-70's in ground tank supplied central oil furnace system to an electric forced air furnace in the folkes old place now a rental. Because it IS a rental. Even with "free" wood suppiled been having to $$ subsidize the oil supply.
Point is I know wood heating and now looking over this boned out oil funace system I can SEE it's operation too.
One of the furnace installers described an old Portland Or duel wood/oil furnace system he services and this Heatmor has all of the same features. He said the new owners learned to use the oil furnace burner to heat up the hearth and the wood fuel  in the hearth for a no smoke wood light up.
Does look to be very expensive though.

Regards
Washington State Steve Unruh

[d34]

I'm sure it's expensive. I will try to contact a retailer tomorrow for pricing.

[d34]

The 200css/ob retails for 11,345.  The 200css without the oil burner is 7,345.  The oil burner is a slide in unit.  So its not as easy as flipping a switch.  He said it takes about an hour to switch it over. 

[Randybee1]

I would stay away from the stainless steel models (ss). SS is expensive so manufacturers use the thinest possible metal they can get away with. I've read too many stories and seen too many people trying to sell their "burned thru" ss outdoor wood furnaces. Go with thick cast iron. I've had a multi fuel furnace now for 20 years. It is an indoor model. It burns wood or oil. I like it a lot but when I build my next house (10-15 years from now when I retire) it will be an outdoor furnace.. no sooty smell in the house or bugs from the wood.

Randy B

[cognos]

I've often thought about a wood-fired furnace. I heated a house in the past with a wood stove - had a free (almost) supply of good hardwood, and scraps from a furniture maker nearby.

The house I'm in now, I don't have hardwood, but I've got plenty of red and jack pine on my property. I wonder if I could use this crap wood in an outdoor furnace - with a short, easy-to-clean chimney...

Anyone have any experience with this?

[vdubnut62]

I have had a whole house furnace now for 25 years, hand built for me by a Mennonite ( sort of like Amish) man locally. It's in the attached garage.
I had it rebuilt year before last-it cost me $200.  The total price, installation running duct work and all (somewhere around 1988 I think)
was under $1500. It will burn ANYTHING. Wet, dry, green,seasoned,pine, hardwood-I do mean anything....And I have never cleaned the flue. Custom built double wall stainless 8" diameter about 14' tall, no elbows.
But it will burn a whole bunch of wood, this drafty old house is hard to heat, just the way they were built around 1950.
I probably can go thru 15-20 rick in a bad winter. I 'll bet 50% goes up the pipe. I am planning a heat exchanger and a hot water storage tank. I'm getting too old to cut this much wood. If the hot water storage, and a couple antique radiators  doesn't help, I'm just going to use it for a backup, and put in a Tarm and hydronic loops under the floor.
Ron

[JohnF]

I've got an outdoor wood furnace made by a Canadian company, Pacific Western (since gone out of business or changed their name).  Had it for about 8 years, no complaints except the amount of wood it burns.  However, this is one of the larger units designed to heat up to 12,000 square feet and it does my house, workshop and a couple of other smaller buildings so I shouldn't really complain. It has a water reservoir of 360 gallons which is my primary holding tank to keep everything warm including the engines.  All of my engines are connected to the furnace, in the summer an engine will heat the water up to about 100F and this heat goes into the domestic hot water tank to keep the house water warm.  Doing that I only need to run my propane hot water tank for 1 1/2 hours in the morning, the engines (or furnace) keeps the water warm for the rest of the day.  It will burn anything - green, scraps, pallets even hay bales if necessary.  I've often thought about adding a waste oil burner and was wondering if the best way to do it would be to build a new door with the WMO burner built into it.  I do have experience with WMO boilers, my "other" method of heating is a WMO boiler set in yet another shed - also connected back to the wood furnace - BUT, the run is so long I am experiencing quite a bit of heat drop before I get that heat into the house.  Iirc, the burner portion of my WMO boiler cost me about $2,000 3 or 4 years ago, so I think the price quoted is a tad on the high side unless there is a bunch more stuff with it.

Last year I installed 5 antique radiators in the house (swapped out ugly modern ones) and they stay nice and toasty!

[Crofter]

Cognos, I have used a fair bit of red and jackpine at times and it is fair wood but different for sure than hard woods. Much much more of the btu's are in the volatiles so it does not do well damped down. Also once it gets down to the coals stage it gives up fairly quick and hard to relight. It sure will creosote your chimney if you let it smolder but is no worse than hardwood if you keep the stack temp. up. I really like it in the wood cook stove as the longer flame from it is better for heating up the oven than is the red oak.

[Geno]

I dropped a few Cottonwoods in the back yard Sunday. They have a very low btu value per cord.

Just this morning I read up a bit on creosote buildup in chimneys. There was very little difference between hard and soft woods. It was the moisture content that made the most difference followed up by how hot you burn it. Don't let it smolder and don't burn wet wood were the pertinent points. A couple friends with outdoor wood stoves burning poorly say the chimney will just ignite once in a while which isn't a big deal unless your in a fire prone area.

My wood stove is in the living room. It can be a bit of a mess and a chore but I burn way less wood this way.

Thanks, Geno

[vdubnut62]

The rate of burn is probably why i have had no buildup in my flue, the furnace  is either wide open , burning hard - or off.
We have White pine, Yellow pine, Hemlock and something my "Grand daddy" called ..the "N word" pine, which I think is technically called
Virginia pine?
At any rate it's all gummy and I would NOT burn it in a smoldering slow burning Ashley type stove because you would be asking for a chimney fire for sure. A fast and hot burn should be fine.
Ron

[cognos]

All good info, thanks.

I do have some monster poplars, and a bit of black oak that I can cut over the next few years. And all my ash trees will have to be cut in the next year or so, victims of the ash borer.

I've heard that the pines will burn OK in the outdoor stoves, you just don't get a very long burn time. I can live with that.

I'd put a wood stove in the house -  want it in the centre of the basement - but the installation would have a couple of bends in it - and would make chimney cleaning very difficult.

When I bought this house, it had a very good woodstove insert in the fireplace - that was completely useless. Was on the south wall of the house in the living room. The south part of the house would be a sauna, and the north parts of the house were frozen... I only used it a couple of times. I finally removed the thing and sold it, and replaced it with a (mostly cosmetic but very efficient) gas-fired insert, when I discovered that it was impossible to clean the chimney - the fool that had installed it had two 180° bends in the corrugated aluminum outlet pipe which was for a gas fireplace flue, not rated for a woodstove, which ended 10' short of the rain cap, just dangling free in the flue...
And this installation had been passed by the building inspector, and the home inspector I hired before I bought the house...

Guess they figured I'd probably be gassed and/or incinerated before I could complain...

[Crofter]

Poplar burns OK  if you can get it dry but it has to be split really fine and out of the weather or it starts to mold and goes punky instead of drying. Almost the same number of moves as other hardwoods for only a fraction of the BTU,s. I am not sure if the process yields any net energy or only constitutes an exercise program