We are living in a 3,000+ square foot stone house (built in 1760s) from now until we build a MUCH smaller abode on the land gifted to us by Michael’s brother. An oil furnace that pumps water through tall, cast iron radiators in each room is the house’s current heating system. We are not convinced this is the best way to spend money this winter, nor the most efficient use of resources from this farm.
So, the dilemma presents itself: how do we heat this home more efficiently this winter, and perhaps move anything we purchase to do so to our newly constructed home next year?
We are considering several options. One is to install an exterior wood burning furnace capable of tying into the existing furnace system. Garn and Greenwood offer such products. My parents’ home in NW Ohio has Garn heat and hot water, and while they might in retrospect run the pipes a little differently they are extremely pleased with that system. There are many such furnace systems out there, and as usual they are rated quite differently.
See here for a directory of all furnaces currently producing heat with water. I’d recommend considering emissions if you ponder such a purchase, and strongly urge you to choose a model that burns in a manner that doesn’t release much at all. The EPA’s most recent regulation of emissions from wood stoves occurred in 1990. Read here for an very brief overview of this regulation history and for links to the EPA’s much more in-depth texts.

What are we in for? An un-lined (pure stone and chinking) chimney ascends the eastern edge of the stone house. One possibility for depending less on the oil furnace is to purchase a free-standing wood stove, and pipe it out the chimney. After chimney inspection (which we already did to the tune of $250 – camera scan and all), stove, piping and pipe cap purchases and pipe install, we’ll probably have spent over $2,500.

Another option is to purchase an external furnace (such as mentioned above), which will involve the cost of the unit (probably $10,000 or so), a plate exchanger ($300), $12.50 per foot of underground piping from unit to interior furnace location, 2 circulators (stove to plate and plate to boiler, for $90/apiece), plumbing pieces inside the boiler, a concrete pad outside for the external furnace to sit on, contractor costs to drill a hole into the stone basement wall (YIKES!!!), and then our personal labor of wood acquisition.

Did I mention we recently purchased a 5 x 10 foot trailer, a log splitter and a chainsaw? Money appears to be evaporating quicker than the dew off a cactus out west. Perhaps we should just bite the bullet and pay for oil this winter?

Our ultimate goal is to consider using any system we come up with now in our future abode. While we plan to use geothermal for the house, we’ll need to bump up that temperature during cold months, and we’ll need to heat water. Do we bring along a free-standing stove that stood in the stone house, or do we disconnect the external furnace and bring that on over? Underground piping would stay behind (and install costs would hit us again).

Thoughts from anyone reading this are much appreciated.