Wood Combination Heating Systems

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Hi all,

This summer DH and I will be putting up a modular house. Right now we are exploring heating systems. We would like to heat with wood with a conventional fuel back up(oil or propane). Does anyone have any words of wisdom or personal experience with combination heating systems? TIA

Amy

-- Amy Powarzynski (powers6566@yahoo.com), February 11, 2001

Answers

Amy! My $2 worth of advice! ON a modular it's kinda hard to hook up but not entirely impossible. I would recommend an outside wood burner/boiler with an air handler under the house. Water is much easier to transfer heat with than air. I'm not trying to sell you any because you're not in my area anyhow. Check out centralboiler.com for info. You can still have a gas furnace that comes with the house for backup.

Lil Dumplin and I live in an Amish built Modular and heat with propane. With the price of propane out of site and the anticipation of it never going back to a reasonable cost, we will have a boiler in here next winter. Ours is a 28 X 48 and is really easy to heat and cool. Too much work to hook the heat exchanger to the side or bottom of the furnace so I'll install an air handler under the house. An air handler is a coil with a blower behind it basically. Matt.24:44

-- hoot (hoot@pcinetwork.com), February 11, 2001.


We recently put up a double wide on a basement. It had an electric furnace (aaaachhhh!!) which we ran for a month in mild weather just to see how the place heated etc. $350 for one month. The good news is it also had an earth stove in the living room. I took the electric thing outa there, capped the plenum off and built and installed an air handler in the basement which is hooked up to an outside boiler.

Since you're still in the planning stages I'd suggest you look into a hydronic system. Like Hoot sez you can move alot more heat around easier and cheaper with water than you can with air. And the really good news is with an LP/wood hydronic system the hydronic can be not much more than a commercial grade hot water heater. Translate that to a savings of $1000 or more. The only reason I say "commercial grade" is because they last longer and are better designed for service. The typical house these days can be serviced adequately with a 60,ooobtu heat source but that gonna vary depending on size and location.

-- john leake (natlivent@pcpros.net), February 11, 2001.


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