Outdoor Wood Furnaces, A Comprehensive Guide to Heating Your Home with Wood
by Samuel Kalenga on Oct 01, 2024
Wherever energy bills are rising and the eco-value of being green is growing, homeowners are looking at alternative heating. Outdoor wood furnaces (or outdoor wood boilers) are increasingly viewed as a sustainable and efficient way to heat a house with a renewable fuel – wood – whose benefits are becoming better known. These outdoor wood furnaces are very powerful systems designed to offer substantial heating capacity and keep homes warm all year round.
The fact that they are mainly sold in rural areas of the US where wood countries are abundant att as a low-cost, environmentally friendly and long-term energy solution. This practical guide explains what an outdoor wood furnace is and the various benefits it offers. The discussion will provide examples of different types of furnaces and the factors you should consider when choosing one, as well as details about the installation process and some of the fears people often have about these systems.
The guide will also consider the role of continue maintenance, recommending some best practices. The guide will be a thorough resource of information for anyone who wants to learn more about outdoor wood furnaces, whether you are a home owner who is considering switching to this heating system, a contractor who is considering installing outdoor wood furnace systems, or you are just trying to get a better understanding of how they work.
What is an Outdoor Wood Furnace?
An outdoor wood furnace is an outdoor heat source that burns wood to create hot water or steam. This hot water or steam is then transferred to your home by means of a series of pipes and radiators that deliver circulation and warmth throughout your home. Outdoor furnaces are located outside your home, in a waterproof enclosure. Some prefer outdoor furnaces because they eliminate smoke and ash from entering your living space.
An outdoor wood furnace operates in the simplest of ways: wood is burned in a chamber to create heat, which is then transferred through a heat exchanger to water that is pumped through a closed-looped closed-system of pipes into radiators or baseboard heaters, or even a radiant floor heating system, providing consistent, even heat throughout your home.
Types of Outdoor Wood Furnaces
Outdoor wood boilers fall into two common types, each with its own advantages and drawbacks: 1. The mid-rise design is good for zone-heating, but emits more smoke than the high-rise option. 2. The high-rise design efficiently produces more usable heat with far less smoke compared to the mid-rise design.- Forced Air Outdoor Wood Furnace: A blower forces heated air into your home from an OWF. Most forced air systems have lower initial costs than hydronic systems, are provide quick heat response times, and are great for quickly heating up rooms. While less efficient than hydronic systems and often resulting in less even heating around the house, forced-air systems usually have lower capital costs compared with hydronic systems. They also tend to be simpler, with fewer power and moving parts.
- Hydronic Outdoor Wood Furnaces: A hydronic system heats water that heads into your home to radiators or baseboard heaters. Some hydronic systems even have the option of radiant floor heating, which distributes warm water to pipes underneath floors and, in turn, heats them with gentle warmth that rises evenly throughout the home. Because hydronic systems distribute water, they are inherently efficient since water is a very effective conduit for heat. They are also good for homes with larger square footage (more than 3,000 square feet) or many floors, as the heat is well-distributed. That’s why hydronic systems are often thought of as the ‘premium’ option – they cost a little more upfront, but have the potential to be less expensive to operate over the long term.
Benefits of Using an Outdoor Wood Furnace
Outdoor wood furnaces offer many benefits that make them an appealing alternative to more conventional heating systems: 1. Effectiveness – An outdoor wood furnace is significantly more effective at heating water than a typical boiler for a conventional system, due to its larger size and more efficient operation. 2. Comfort – Unlike heating water tank-by-tank, where there may be a delay before the hot water reaches the taps, an outdoor wood furnace provides a more constant supply of hot water. 3. Lower energy bills – Heating water by burning logs is much more cost-effective than using a conventional system.
- Cost savings: Wood is a usually renewable, often inexpensive source of fuel as compared to oil, gas or electricity. Although outdoor wood furnaces are initially more expensive than space?heaters, the lifetime savings on fuel could be an excellent trade?off. Wood may be abundant in many areas and can be harvested locally at very low cost.
- Efficiency: Outdoor wood-furnace designs produce extraordinarily high combustion efficiency, and some work at combustion efficiencies greater than 80 per cent, the wood’s energy is put into producing heat as fuel burns. This translates into a more efficient use of fuel and thus less energy lost as waste. There are fewer emissions also coming from more complete and efficient combustion.
- Earth-friendly: Combusting wood as fuel is a ‘carbon-neutral’ way of generating power and electricity, unlike carbon-rich fossil fuels. This means the carbon dioxide output is balanced by the carbon dioxide absorbed during tree growth. When wood is used as a heat source (wood fireplace, pellet stove, chiminea, fire pit, etc), your carbon footprint could be decreased because the plants that became trees pulled this amount of gas from the atmosphere before being reduced to heat inside your house. It’s also earth-friendly when wood is sourced locally, with minimal transportation emissions attached. Plus, it can support sustainable forestry.*
- Dependable Heating: Outdoor wood furnaces don’t rely on electrical power to operate and function reliably in cold weather and during power outages. This is undoubtedly important for residents living in areas with frequent power interruptions or during severe weather events. An outdoor wood furnace can help to ensure you have heat when the power grid goes down.
- Home value benefit: You probably expect to add home value through home improvements. Installing an outdoor wood furnace may assist in this endeavour. Central heating provides a very obvious benefit to your home (cutting heating costs), and hot buy products and an outdoor wood furnace can provide an energy-efficient feature to distinguish your home. If you live in a high energy cost area, the furnace may be more of a selling point due to the high value added to the purchase price. An outdoor wood furnace is a large investment that should add value to your home.
- Multiple uses: These furnaces also can be used to heat household hot water and some systems ‘integrate with other home systems’ such as a swimming pool or greenhouse where the heat year round is a major benefit. For instance, you can circulate the water from the pool in the summer or heat a greenhouse. This adds to the multiple capabilities and benefits of owning an outdoor furnace to heat your entire home.
