Wood Boilers??

[NAMASafetyDirector]

I am planning on putting in a wood boiler this fall to heat the garage and supliment L.P. furnace in the house. Just wondering who else uses one and if there is any "must do" or other advice things that I should keep in mind before I start the install. Thanks in advance for you comments!

[fishandshroom]

Are you talking about an outdoor wood burner or are you ganna put it in the garage with a heat-o-lator?

[Outfitter17]

Call Northland Distributing in I. Falls, They sell tons of wood boilers and can give you all the advise you need.

[NAMASafetyDirector]

Sorry, yep an outdoor wood boiler. Heatmor to be specific.

[jerkbait]

I have installed 2 of them. 1 at our old place in Becker and now 1 up here at our new place. I have used Aquatherms both times, only for the reason that I can build my own shelter instead of theres. The reason I like my own shelter is 1, it matches the rest of our buildings and 2, we built them big enough to store the wood inside and we are out of the elements when loading. We have infloor heat in our new place and love it, we are heating 2 buildings. Are old place we had heat exchangers mounted in the furnace and heater in the garage. The heat coming out of the furnace with the heat exchanger was like 3 times warmer than when the propane was running, loved it. I would also recomend the add ons to heat your hot water also, might as well save as much propane as possible. If you are doing the install your self, make sure when you do the pipe fittings use teflon tape and pipe dope with teflon in it together. Learned that the hard way on the first one.

Good luck,

[NAMASafetyDirector]

J.B. What kind of pipe did you use? Did you use just standard pex or the pex-al-pex. I was just wondering if it's worth the little extra money to go with the al-pex for ease of working with it?

[LwnmwnMan2]

NAMA -

I know you're far enough north where this isn't an issue, but I know down here around the cities (Wyoming for sure) alot of town boards are drawing up ordinances for these, because people live too close to them.

I'm not trying to bring this to your attention, but rather others that may be reading this thread to get some information for themselves.

Before a guy buys one of these, you may want to check local ordinances before purchase.

[Lip_Ripper Guy]

New Prague has an ordinance against them in the city limits.

[jerkbait]

J.B. What kind of pipe did you use? Did you use just standard pex or the pex-al-pex. I was just wondering if it's worth the little extra money to go with the al-pex for ease of working with it?

We used the 1" Al-pex. With the metel piping is you have any cast iron in the system you need to use the pipe with the oxygen barrier. We wrapped the pipe in the preformed styrofoam the stuffed into 6" plastic drain tile and buried it about 4' deep, ours runs under the driveway.

I personally think the al-pex is worth the extra money. Look on hsolist, you can find some deals on there.

[jltimm]

I've been seriously looking at these as well.There are quite a few makes to look at. Central Boiler (Classic),Woodmaster, Heatmaster, Taylor, Aqua Therm... just to name some that I know.I know several people that have the Classic, and they all seem to like them. I wish I knew someone that had the other brands for several years, to see if they are reliable and built well. The Classic seems to be the most $, and they are selling this good this year.

[jerkbait]

We had the aqua-therm since 2001 and worked great. A co-worker of my wife back in 2001 had there aqua-therm for about 10 yrs before we had got ours.

[NAMASafetyDirector]

Anyone interested may also want to check out the "Shaver" outdoor boilers. I believe there is a dealer in southern MN. I got a good deal on the Heatmor I got but otherwise the Shaver was my next choice. They have an excellent HSOforum full of infomation and they are one of the more affordable boilers I found. I thought they were probably one of the better built ones as well along with a pretty darn good warranty.

[jltimm]

Thanks, I'll check them out!