Outdoor Wood Furnace Info
Outdoor Furnaces - Manufacturers WITH EPA-Certified Models => HeatMaster => Topic started by: Jared43758 on December 28, 2014, 01:48:36 PM
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Using a 5000e or c250, how much wood would a person figure to use with a moderate insulated 2500sqft home and dhw.
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What climate region do you live in? Are your underground lines well insulated?
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Southern Ohio. Rehau insulated foam filled line. 50 ft underground. Red oak wood.
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I'm going to take a non-binding no implied liability can't blame me if I'm wrong guess and say 5-8 chords of good hardwood.
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Now figure in the use of bit coal to supplement
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I don't own a Heatmaster 5000 or a Heatmaster for that matter but I am going to guess higher at 8-10 cord minimum.
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From what I understand a Hardy uses double the wood
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Countryboy, didn't I read somewhere u used 8-9 cords to heat 4600sq ft and dhw from September to march in a mf10000?
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No. I burned 13 last year, but only 6 cords were hardwood. And I burned from mid October to the end of March or April. And I was heating 3500 sft of poor insulation up to 74°, domestic water and a hot tub. And last winter was nuts!
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Time will be the only sure answer as to how much wood you will burn. Yes Hardys are less efficient then the e series from heatmaster. I go through 12 cords in the 6 months of heating. I am heating 2400 sqft in New England. He should have a little bit better efficiency with the e series and he is probably a little bit better insulated then I am. That is why I say 8-10 cords. I don't think anyone is using under 8 cords with a conventional owb on this forum unless they have 1600 sqft or less. Pipe in if you are someone who used less then 8. If you want to get below the 8 number you will need to be looking at a gasser.
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As I break that down it is unbelievable to me. That's two cords a month. That is a entire 8 ft bed truck clear full of wood every single week, repeat every single week for the entire 6 months spand. Burning that much wood is what gives owb the name forest eaters. That blows my mind
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It's all in perspective. I have no problem cutting, splitting, stacking, hauling, and burning that much wood because it makes my home comfortable and affordable. My hearing bill was over $700 a month in the winter and now it's $150. That makes it with it for me.
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First year with a 5000e and live in southeastern Ohio. I also have rehau insulated pipe. My house is aprox 1500sq ft with a 1500sq ft unfinished basement. Started the boiler on Halloween and probably have burned 2 cords of wood. Just want to say thanks to all the guys on this site, all the info helps newbies like me.
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Jared hear also. Also from southeast Ohio. Morgan county you?
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Live in Vinton County now, but grow up in Blue Rock in south Muskingum County.
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Jared, You must be new to the owb scene. Looks like you just bought your first boiler. Congratulations. Now what were you expecting to burn for wood for the season? Anyone that heats solely with a wood stove in the house goes through around 8 cords per year and that is relying on the heat to be distributed through the house from just the stove. They have a very warm room that the stove is in and the rest is much less warm. My house is heated to 70 degrees evenly all of the time, night and day. No feeding the wood stove every few hours and waking up to a cold house etc. What were you told or what did you expect to be burning for an amount of wood for the year? OWB got there bad name from people burning green wood and trash in them which causing extreme amounts of smoke to be put off. OWB never got a bad name from the amount of wood they burn, who cares how much wood I burn to keep my house warm?
Lets do a little math here. I burn mostly oak so lets say that I have semi seasoned oak and I get 20 million btus per cord out of it. Lets say that my boiler and system is 50% efficient. Probably a little high but lets go with it. That means I am getting 10 million btus per cord. Now multiply 10 million by 12 cords which equals 120 million btus per heating season or 666000 btus per day for an average over the 180 day season or 27,000 btus per house average.
So fuel oil being 138000 btus per gallon multiply by 75% efficient furnace equals 103500 btus. So 666000/103500 = 6.4 gallons on average per day for me. So 6.4 gallons x 3.00 per gallon =$19.30 per day or $580 per month or $3475 per year for oil.
So as you can see I heat my home with 12 cords for $1200 per heating season vs. $3500 per heating season. No brainer for me.
What did you go through for heating fuel per season before you bought this owb? We can do the same rough calcs for you.
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I core drilled a bunch of holes in the Vinton county courthouse about 4 years ago, and I used to go to turkey shoot in bluerock when I was a kid. Kind of a don't ask don't tell about beer kinda place.
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I've always heated my house with a inside wood furnace with 4-5 cords a year. It hooked to my existing duct work and heats my whole house evenly to about 76-78 degrees no matter if it's 32 or -10 and I get 10-14 burns times with it
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What was your indoor furnace before for a make and model? You don't use any other heat source, just the indoor furnace? I still stand by my statement that I will be very surprised if you burn less then 8 cords for a 6 month burn season.
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I have a electric furnace which I will not use. I burned 5 cords from as soon as it gets cold till it quits
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Well let us know at the end of the year how many cords you burned. I have been burning since October 29th this year. I have been through about 3 cords so far. How much did you expect to burn?
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Jared43758, are you getting any water condensation in the front of your ash pan. I've been getting some with my 5000e. I turned my damper to 100% open and trying to keep small fires going. December has been so warm here, stove is hardly running.
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Several other things need to be considered with a OWB and a lot of people don't:
1: Your indoor air quality will be much better. Humidity in the home will stay higher, also won't have that ultra fine dust floating around the home. Less dusting means a happy wife, a happy wife almost always results in a happy life.
2: Might want to inform your homeowners insurance company that the wood burner is now outside, it could lower your rates.
3: Heating DHW takes more wood than most people allow for.
4: Insects will stay outside in the wood where they belong.
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Not sure if this helps...we just installed our MF5000e in a well insulated brick 1400Sq Ft ranch with full basement (2800ft heated) with DWH. We live in the New Philadelphia, Ohio area. We split our wood into medium size chunks due to my 115lb wife loading the stove. Larger than you would for a fire place but smaller than for myself loading the stove. Pieces are marked at 20" so that they stack in the building neater. We try to get exactly 12 hour burns out of our stove as it seems to be more efficient than 24 hour burns. We were putting 4-5 pieces of wood (cherry, hard maple, elm) every 12 hours. As a note: 18-20" pieces keep the fire burning better than fewer 24-30" pieces. This appears more efficient right now with the weather just in the teens for lows. The more shorter pieces stack higher and burn down slower keeping the fire going. The less longer wood would burn out quicker as there would be no wood stacked in a pile...
I recently added a heat exchanger for the garage and that nearly doubled the usage. it takes 7-8 to get through the night now. I may want to rethink that heating the garage move...lol I do need to insulate the pipes that are going up through the attic though. That should help some I hope...
That doesn't put it into Cords as everyone wants to use on here but you can tell that the type of accessories you are using may have a dramatic impact on wood use. Our brief 2 month history has us using a 20"rick of wood (4' x 8' x 20") 10 days to 2 weeks without the garage being heated. I anticipate that to improve as I start using oak and hickory.
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7-8 cords with just the house or house and garage?
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7-8 pieces per 12 hour period. Was 4-5 when just heating house.
House and garage. No long term numbers as I just hooked it up last Saturday. Thermostat set at 45 in garage.
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Thanks for the reply. How many months did u burn? Hot water also? My first level is only aroud 1450sqft. Prolly 800sqft of basement which I won't really heat but it doesn't get too cold down there prolly cause my air handler is down there. I have around 300sqft upstairs but I don't heat it. And my home is brick and stays pretty warm cause the brick holds the heat when the sun is out but not so much when it's shady.
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Jared, you said that you wanted to know how much to heat a 2500 sqft home in your first post. Now you are saying that you are only heating 1450 sqft. I can now understand how you only went through 5 cords heating with an indoor furnace. I will guess that you will burn somewhere in the 7-8 cord range only heating 1450 sqft.
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I have a 2500sqft home. With a indoor wood burner I am heatin 2300 sqft of it cause the stove in the basement is keeping it pretty warm. With a outdoor stove I'm justing going to heat the first level. I may heat the basement to keep the floor warm and cause heat raises, I will see. I'm saying 6 cords max
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Since you are already 2+ months into the heating season this year I would say that if you started today that you would burn 6 by May 1st which is when I usually quit. If you burned a full season I am going to say 8 min. Let us know at the end of the season!
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Come on! There's no sure way to tell unless you figured out the exact btus of the house, and then figured the exact btu's of the wood you're going to burn, considering moisture, etc. Even the btu usage formula uses a Delta T which is extremely variable due to the changing temp outside. Just cut plenty and call it good.
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https://www.duke-energy.com/pdfs/BTUperYR_South_Nov.pdf (https://www.duke-energy.com/pdfs/BTUperYR_South_Nov.pdf)
check out this link (hope it works) for an estimate of btu usage.
remember you must also take into account of the efficiency of your stove, the chart is for btu that must enter the home
from the chart if you have an energy star home and require 50,000,000 btu for the season and your stove is a conventional stove you could get my with 5 cords of good mixed hardwood (about 100,000,000 btu)
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Hey Jared43758. I am new to this site and I have already found plenty of great tips. I've been heating with a heatmaster for 5 years now so I thought I would confuse you a little more with my wood usage experience! Our house is 2200 square feet and has a 1200 sq ft 3 bay garage all built 6 years ago and very well insulated. Our heatmaster heats the basement and garage floor, domestic water and I also use a rad in my forced air furnace. Garage is kept at 45 and house at 72. We heated with electricity the first year we built and used close to 29,000 kW.h of electricity for heat alone. That would be around 100 million btu's. Keep in mind that I live in Manitoba, Canada so we might be a little colder. It is not uncommon to have windchill temperature get to -50 this time of year and in fact it is in the forecast for tonight. Last year was brutal and I used around 15 cords of wood of which 10 was oak. All my wood is cut at 40 inches, split and stacked in a shed. I hope never to use that much again but this is also when the furnace saves you the most! I expect to use 10-15/year depending on type of wood and temperature. Impossible to predict exactly since there are so many variables. If I need 100 million btu's and used 11-12 cords of oak and ash to get it my efficiency is at 40-45% so i would think you could use that number with some confidence. Budget for 8-10 to make sure. Hope that helps and by the way these are great furnaces! :)
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hey guys, I always burn approx. two cords a month, which I consider a joke, I heat my entire house, approx 3500 sq feet, two bay garage and loft above ,so total would be around 4000sq feet, house is at 73 or 74, garage is 64 plus dhw, so I go thur about 12 cords a year which is a joke,consider this , most guys who have wood stoves go thru approx 5 cords a year, but as stated by someone else earlier,they are really only heating that room and maybe a bit more, no dhw and usually their floors are cold .mmmm no brainer really for a few extra cords of wood for all that comfort...unless you are heating a home under 12oo sq feet ,budget for 10 cords at least,u can take that to the bank....
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Lol, He MAY believe us when he has heated for a season.
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7 or 8 cord sounds sweet.i`m in southern quebec.usually go through 15 cord or so but i`d say 8 of it is trash.
softwood poplar etc.its free so yoy take what u get i guess
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I'm in my first year of heating with wood, and I've already gone through 5 cords of wood. I'm heating a 5000 sq ft home(including basement) that has 25' ceilings and DHW. I sure wasn't expecting to go through this much wood, but I haven't hardly budged the gauge on the LP tank. I'm just cutting and piling wood now, so it will be tough to get a gauge for cord usage going forward. It's a lot of work, but its definitely worth it. I wouldn't be going on vacation in February if I had to pay for LP.
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I'm through 6 Justin. My first 4 cords was gone by mid-December, but it was 100% cherry. I'm into my hedge now. So, even though it's been colder, I'm getting more heat out of my hedge and I'm still at 2 cords per month or so.
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This is also my first year with an OWB. I used to heat with a conventional indoor wood furnace in the basement which was ducted to blow the hot air upstairs. I am in Wi heating 1600 sqft main floor and was burning 5-6 cords per year. But I would come home from work to a house in the mid 50's to mid 60's and keep it at 70-75 when I was home. With the OWB this year I am heating DHW and the house stays at 70-72 all day. I am on track to burn about 6 cords this year but I am running a gasser.