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[mkelso02]

I have been researching OWB's for some time now. I'm pretty sure I've decided to purchase the wood master 5500 for next years heating season. I live in SE michigan in a 4000 square foot newer build with decent insallation. I would also like to heat my two car garage and in the future a 30x40 pole building.

My main question is :  will this furnace adequately heat at least my home?  As it is currently. My natural gas forced air furnace will not keep the home at a reasonable temp during the very cold temps we have been having. I'm hoping this investment will be the fix.

Also. Is this going to be a big enough furnace to heat my two car garage and pole building? 

Obviously I am new to OWB but I really enjoy the idea and love this forum. I look forward to it. Thanks for any replys.

Mark

[Scott7m]

Thats a nice unit, Big stove, if insulation quality is good I should handle it easily

[hondaracer2oo4]

Welcome to the board. A word of advice before you decide to move onto a owb is that you need to get your in house heating system working correctly. Something is wrong if it can't keep up with temperatures. We need to figure out if your furnace just doesn't produce enough BTU's or if you don't have enough air registers or a big enough blower. After you figure out what is wrong with your current heating system I would then look for what you need to fit your needs. I would say that you would  be at  max capacity to heat those three items though.

[Scott7m]

Welcome to the board. A word of advice before you decide to move onto a owb is that you need to get your in house heating system working correctly. Something is wrong if it can't keep up with temperatures. We need to figure out if your furnace just doesn't produce enough BTU's or if you don't have enough air registers or a big enough blower. After you figure out what is wrong with your current heating system I would then look for what you need to fit your needs. I would say that you would  be at  max capacity to heat those three items though.

The 5500 will hold half a truck load of wood at one filling, its huge.

[mkelso02]

Thanks hondaracer. This was my biggest concern. I hate to invest 10k into a owb and still have the same result. I'm going to call a couple hvac companies come out and take a look. I'm starting to believe there are not enough registers in the house and also not a big enough blower.  I don't know if it is a btu issue yet it not. Thanks again. I'll let ya know how it goes

Mark

[mkelso02]

just a little more info on my current heating system.  I have about a ten year old Gibson furnace 90% Effficient 110,000 BTU output.  Again I have a little over 3000 square foot home not including the basement (another 1000 ft or so).  Just thought this may help to figure out if the 5500 is going to work.  I am going through my past bills to figure out how many units i went through last year.  thanks for the help

[hondaracer2oo4]

Unfortunately the current btu rating isn't going to help much since we don't know why the current system can't keep up with the demand. Find someone that is knowledgable, there are a lot of hvac hacks out there.

[Scott7m]

There is hardly no way your home could be using 110k btu per hour....   


At your 90% figure, if it couldn't keep up youd be usings a whopping 28 gallons per day of were talking gas???

[willieG]

without a heat loss calculation done it will be impossable to tell...but that being said there are charts that give an average to use for differnet areas of the country...michigan falls into (for sizing a furnace) 50 btu per square foot per hour for worst case scenerio (perhaps never, perhaps a few hours on the coldest days of the winter)  the poster said 4,000 square feet x 50 btu = 200,000 btu per hour....,is it true?

kind of like having that heat pump and on those really cold hours of a fridgid storm your heat strips are working full time...it can happen

[Scott7m]

At 3.50 per gallon and a heat load of 200k, hes be spending 100 bucks per day on those days, surely noy

[agriffinjd]

At 3.50 per gallon and a heat load of 200k, hes be spending 100 bucks per day on those days, surely noy

I think he's heating with natural gas now not propane right? 

[willieG]

At 3.50 per gallon and a heat load of 200k, hes be spending 100 bucks per day on those days, surely noy

scott i have a house on electric heat (about the most expensive) it is a small house only about 1600 square feet, one day this month(jan 09, the heating tab was 229 KWH @ 21 cents per KWH the electric bill was 48 dollars! this house is now running on a home made OWB.... a home of 4000 square feet in my opinion could very well (on occasion) use 100 dollars a day

ther are folks near me on oil heat that used last year 6000 dollars worth of oil for teh winter, if we figured 150 heating days...taht would be 40 dollars a day..well in those 150 days we will have some days that we use hardly any oil so we h ave to use a lot more somewhere in the heart of jan or feb...i think it is possable to use that 200,000 btu..even if only for a few hours 1 time (like in the cold we have been experiencing as of late)

[mkelso02]

I am heating my home with natural gas. I'm still not sure if the actual units of gas I'm using. Last month my gas/electric bill totaled $450.  I was just looking at the sticker on the furnace to see how big of a unit it was and it said 110,000 btu.

I have an hvac guy coming out on Monday to see what the issue is. I'm only able to heat the main floor of the house to 55 degrees during the coldest part of the night and the furnace is running constantly. I'll keep ya posted