My cousin uses an outside boiler mounted on a slab 100' from the house.
All the ash, mess, bugs, logs, etc are kept well away from the house.
Firebox is sized to take 48" logs without need for splitting. There is a
roller on the firebox door, if you can horse it in, it will burn it. In
moderate weather you may not have to load it more than every other day.

Another friend was using a basement boiler, what a mess it made. But he
was lucky on his wood supply: in his area the pulp log cutters have a
steady supply of non aspen logs that they can't sell to the mill. He
would have a 7 cord truck load delivered to his backyard for a few
hundred bucks. Mostly basswood, ash, and maple.

wrote:
On Oct 24, 4:29 pm, Butter wrote:
Guy at work is constantly talking about this now that its getting
cold and I had the idea that the place to find someone who had done
this was people with the skills to do it. What would be the point of
asking office people for example how to do anything. We have acess to
steel sheet from 12 ga to 3/8 thick.
He can get slabs from his brother-in-laws sawmill and wants to run
hot water from the outside furnace into the house. Then use radiators
to warm up the place. I know that there is more to doing it than just
a box to get it very efficient and thought he should find a book on
how wood stoves are constructed. Anyone here with any experience at
this or wood stove construction? I think I remember that if you use
steel plate that it won't last as long as cast iron for some
reason. ??
Rosce

The niece has this in their place, combination corn and wood pellet
stove. Feeds hot water to a set of loops in the house. It's welded
steel construction, probably about the size of two phone booths back
to back on a slab outside about 20' away from the house. It's got a
pretty sophisticated controller to handle things, thermostats in all
the loops. Personally, I wouldn't try to cobble something like this
together myself. It's got a hopper they have to fill about once a week
and clean out the ash at the same time. Pellets have less ash than
the corn, corn they can get from the tenant leasing the land. Not
sure what they're using this year, ethanol is driving up prices on
corn. Has a backup propane burner that can also supply domestic hot
water.

Hand-fed and wood fired is going to get awful tiresome running out in
the cold at least twice a day, maybe more. The b-in-l has had wood-
fired hot water heat for decades, stove is inside. Also plate steel
construction. He's lost his source of free wood and doesn't want to
spend the time cutting and splitting anyway so is going back to
propane for heating as soon as the current woodpile vanishes. Had to
fill the basement with wood at least once a week and feed the stove
several times a day, takes up a lot of space down there. Brings in
bugs, too. With his system, there's a pump involved, if there's a
storm that takes out the power, there's no heat in the rest of the
place. Has a backup generator for that eventuality, something that
you need to keep in mind.

One thing about a do-it-yourself furnace is the effect it might have
on the fire insurance, like maybe you can't get any? Insurance
companies are usually a lot more willing to insure places that have
proper testing agency stickers on the heating equipment, particularly
where sealed vessels heating water are involved.

Stan