Anyone ever mess w/ a water stove to heat a house?

Tacoma747

Tacoma747

Well-Known Member
Joined
Mar 20, 2005
Location
Winston-Salem
Planning on making a water stove to keep from using the fireplaces (with inserts) to heat my house. The upstairs insert works great, but the living room stays WAY too hot, the air just doesn't circulate very well. I'll probably end up selling the upstairs insert (large Buck) and the smaller one in the basement (not sure brand).

Has anyone ever dealt with the pluming/wiring etc. with an outdoor water stove?

If you don't know what it is, you heat water with a large woodstove, pump the water through a radiator in the ductwork in the house and use the original furnace blower.

I will be getting what was a sterilizer out of a hospital, firbox will be pretty large, and the construction is perfect for a water stove. Figuring out what type pump to use and all the little stuff is the tricky part, just wondering if anyone has done it before.

Thanks
 
my dad used one for years the first one we plumbed our selves. we used a central air unit just removed the A-coil and added a radaitor and ran water lines from the water stove to the unit and a return to the stove. then he used it to heat the water for the house. It cut his power bill in half the first month.
 
When you sell that buck give me a shout....All my wife's family heat with water stoves. Most of them have a small building just outside the house and have a huge firebox that they don't have to fill but every so often, the work awesome and the heat cheap to boot!
 
I knew an old dude that took up CP&L for a discount on buying one back in the 60's when they first came out. He plumbed his to go through an old truck radiator in his basement and had a fan that pushed air into his ductwork that heated his house. He operated 2 sawmills so he always had scrap to burn.
So the uses from it is not only for hot water if you are creative...

For those that live out west, they're making them that burn corn now.
 
When I was younger I had a friend who's dad built a new home. He had an outside wood stove, it was sealed up tight except for the exhaust and the door to put in wood. The metal stove was inside a concrete house with air space around the stove. He had a large pipe, I'd say around 8" or so that went from the intake to the "stove house" and then another back to his duct system. There was a fan in line on the return side that blew cool air into the stove house, and since it was sealed, it then blew it back into his house via the duct system. HE also had a custom made heat exchange made where the water also heated up the water going to his water heater. So the power used to heat water was minimal since it was pre-heated. But that's not all,... He also had a lever he could pull and send the hot air to his cloths dryer and dry his cloths with the same hot air. Took a little longer to dry cloths, but much cheaper than running the power for the heater coils in the dryer. His stove house was big, as was his stove, he had a roller system where he could put as big as a 5' log in at a time. I always thought it was the coolest thing I had ever seen!, oh and he could keep the hot air from going inside his home duct system by pulling some levers that would only heat water or dry the cloths in the summer.
 
BIGWOODY said:
When you sell that buck give me a shout....All my wife's family heat with water stoves. Most of them have a small building just outside the house and have a huge firebox that they don't have to fill but every so often, the work awesome and the heat cheap to boot!
Click to expand...

Same as my father-in-law... has a building outside his house w/ a huge firebox and works great...

I'd say I heat my house 60/40% in the winter w/ a Fisher wood stove and to heat 2600SF I'm averaging $70-80 utility bills in the winter...
 
My $.02... having wood stove heat at the folks house from '72-'92 & in mine rental from '88-'90

Why not MOVE the large Buck downstairs and use the old "heat rises" deal? The large Fisher "Papa Bear's" we used had no problems heating my folks house, but suffered badly in the 100 year old farm house (less insulation than would fit in your pockets! :rolleyes:)

OR use the central air "Fan Only" to circulate it within the upstairs? The folks had CA and would do that to disperse the high heat from cooking it hard after clean outs, etc. We used a an oscillating fan in the farm house with similar effect.

Outside of that, the water stoves typically heat a bit better if the thermostat (inside) is wired to control the circulation valves (outside). A bud in WNC has a really nice water stove with electronically controlled dampeners & valves controlled by the houses (multiple in his case) t-stat. that allows you to fine tune the firebox (fires it hard early morning for heat/water, slows it down during the day, and fires it hard before everyone gets home in the evening), kinda like a programmable t-stat to conserve wood. The downside to that is it does require AC (he has a huge genset that runs off his tractors PTO)... not sure if it can be overridden manually or not?

A gal I work with has a HUGE water stove that they load pallets of hardware (4' square) with a RT forklift... usually about once every 5 days!

In all cases, you'll still be forced to cut/bust/haul/stack a large truckload each week. While it was great exercise & I cherish the time spent with my Dad, there are a couple drawbacks... make sure you have secured the actual supply! Dad had a bud that gave us all the wood, provided we kept his shed stocked! Unfortunately around '92, the bud sold off all 125 acres and moved to an assisted living home. Another "gotcha" is if you get injured and can't cut/bust/haul/etc... while she'd probably be able to keep the firebox filled, your wife isn't built for wrestling 30" blocks under the splitter and touching every chunk 3-4 times (avg.) to get it home & stacked.
 
Greg, if the Buck doesn't fit in my dad's fireplace I'll let you know. Dave, the buck is too big for the basement fireplace, and we tried the fan circulation trick, it still stays unbearably hot in the living room (~80* +). 6bangbronk, that is my main plan is to run the water through a radiator in the ductwork to heat the house.

I'd like to wire it all in with the t-stat, gotta do some more researching on that that though.

Just got home from work so I'm too tired to do much of anything, I'll get pics of the sterilizer when I get it to my house, and Dave, I have a friend that cuts trees on a regular basis, so I have a good supply of wood. I don't plan on splitting much of it though, the firebox is big enough to put probably 3' long logs in rather easily.
 
putting a thermostat in each room that was supplied by the duct system would be easy. each thermostat operates an automated damper to open/close the duct to that room to adjust the temperature. Or the thermostat could operate a solenoid valve in the supply line to the radiator/coil. The last method would prob. be the easiest and cheapest as the solenoid valves are pretty cheap.

I've done a lot of this, however, most of it was figured out by engineers, I'm just somewhat familiar in the system and its setup and a lot of the parts that would be needed

Making something cheap out of what you already have should be fun and fairly easy and mostly affordable.
 
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