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Outdoor wood stove
Andy, thanks for the info. I'm leaning against LP for a few reasons. We have a geothermal heat pump that provides most of our heat and use LP for hot water, cooking, clothes dryer and generator. Propane has gone from .85 cents/gal to $2.15 in the last few years, and signs are it won't be dropping anytime soon. Even with our limited uses it runs us about $1600/year. We have a huge supply of firewood on site so it's essentially free energy (well, there's labor). So my goal is to reduce our energy bill further and increase comfort (the heat pump is marginal in the coldest weather).
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Outdoor wood stove
KW, your home is setup a little different than mine, only the water heater and furnace run on propane. everything else is electric. that $1600, is that just for propane or electric included. If I had to pay 1600 for propane for a year I probably would not have done the outdoor stove, I do understand about reducing gas bills.
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Andy, the $1600 is just for propane. Electric averages about $200/month. We live in a heavily wooded area in the boonies and lose power frequently, so the generator runs quite a bit. It rains a lot, the ground gets saturated, trees blow over, and out goes the power.
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KW, your geothermal unit, will it run off of your generator. I have a neighbor that has one, but he says it takes a huge amount of surge power to start it, and he would need a sizeable generator to run it and his house? The power draw from the stove I have is not noticeable. There is a small solenoid to open the draft door and a 1/8 hp pump to circulate the water continuously. I guess it's the price we pay to live in the great outdoors, and not in the city, but worth every penny.
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Our generator is only 14kw so it won't run the geothermal unit. Backup heat during outages is a couple of fairly efficient fireplaces with fans, which will keep the house above 60 degrees in the winter but not much warmer. That's another reason we're considering an outside woodburner feeding radiant floor heat. As much as I'd like a 25kw generator the expense is hard to justify if we can get decent aux heat cheaper a different way. And you're right about living where we do, it is definitely worth the expense and occasional inconvenience.
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When you do your research on the stoves, The more water capacity the better, the stove i have takes 385 gal. because the fire box has heat transfer to water on all sides of it. At the back of the fire box there is a heat baffle that comes half way down that the smoke and not the heat has to go down and under and back up and out the back of the box to the chimney, seems to work good, you don't see a lot of heat coming out of the chimney. I don't cram the box full either, but rather a nice bed of coals with a camp fire size stack of wood once a day.
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I went with Heatmore because the floor of the fire box is a grate with sand around the edges with 1 row of fire brick. The ashes fall through the grate and you auger them out the back, auger included. Mine came with a water circulating pump, although my dealer said he buys extra good ones.
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11-06-2005, 17:18 
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