On Jan 24, 1:56 pm, ransley wrote:
On Jan 24, 11:46 am, FBWNDR wrote:



I'm trying to determine the pros and cons of having a wood boiler
installed on my property. If you haven't heard of these, the boiler
is built to circulate water around the firebox. The water gets pumped
into a heat exchanger which is located in the main heating duct of the
house. The existing indoor furnace pushes the air around the house.

Anyway, I'm looking at a Heatmor boiler, and I'm now looking for
people who have experience with these. The website says that the
boiler has a forced draft fan (75 cfm). It also says that the boiler
can heat a 3000 square foot house. I know a little about combustion,
and I calculated that with 75 cfm, you cannot burn more than 10 lbs of
wood an hour. And if the wood is 45% moisture, then the available BTU
is around 40,000 BTU. A 40,000 BTU furnace is very small for a 3000
square foot house.

So, has anybody dealt with these Heatmor furnces? Can you tell me
anything about performance and maintenance?

thanks,
FB

If boiler is outside full of water , you must put antifreeze in the
water, antifreeze doesnt transfer heat as well as water, is that
included in their btu output calculation. Do you have to feed it every
hour that would become a hard full time job

The anti-freeze heat transfer difference is pretty small, as least
compared to some other assumptions, so I didn't include it. But what
I have heard is that most people don't put anti-freeze into the tank.
I don't understand this at all. The system holds 85 gallons, which
would require 42.5 gallons of anti-freeze. This is not a small cost,
but it is a very large risk to run the system without antifreeze. The
furnace area is large enough that it can hold 12 hours worth of wood
at a time.