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residential wood furnace use
My house is approx 5600 sq ft ranch including the basement and have plenty of air to handle a 90 plus furnace drawing air from the basement. My father in law has a small tri level house with basement smaller than my garage and he has a 90 plus furnace and draws the air from the basement as well. We both have never had any issues with drawing the air from the basement. I always figured it takes less time to heat 68 degree air than to heat 20 degree outside smelly air. I just know that i breath in fresh air inside my house regardless of who burns outside, including myself.
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residential wood furnace use
Maybe we have two different style of basements. Our basement is part of the insulated building envelope so drawing air from it would cause the air inside to become very stale and unhealthy. We have to bring in fresh outside air.
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residential wood furnace use
nosteiner4me: Are you talking about your cold air return (the air that actually gets heated) or the air supply for combustion? Because if you're talking about the combustion air supply, that should come from outside if possible so that you're not making up the air from other, non-controlled sources such as gaps around windows and doors. If you have combustion products leaving the house via a chimney (which, hopefully you do!) you need to make up that air somewhere, hence the outside air intake. 
Regarding outdoor wood furnaces, the problem I see with them is that they are generally operated in a "smolder" mode a lot of the time; that is, a fire is kept at a low level, starved for oxygen by the damper. This will create more smoke to linger around. We use a indoor masonry heater in which you make smaller, more intense fires that burn quickly, heating a large thermal mass (rock). This then radiates heat through the house. It is definitely more work, however, as it requires building two fires a day. I understand that there are some outdoor furnaces available in Europe that also work by heating a large thermal mass and you burn them hot and relatively briefly.
The crux of your situation to me sounds more that these folks are apparently using their wood furnaces as garbage burners. I know in our township that wood furnaces are legal (except in town) but burning garbage is NOT.
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residential wood furnace use
Acerguy; 20 yrs. or so ago air to air heat exchangers were used around here to pre warm the outside intake air for the combustion of the furnace with stale inside air being exhausted. Most of the heat was supposed to be retaind in the incoming airstream that was given up by the exhausted air. I haven't heard much about them lately, maybe they weren't all they were claimed to be? Someone here spoke of the European mass heaters. There was a show on History/ Discovery/Science channel, not sure which a while back about the older homes that were built in Europe where a massive stone fireplace was the center of the home and the rest of the house surrounded it. I forget now but it was a long period of time that the stone would hiold enopugh heat to keep the house warm.
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residential wood furnace use
acerguy...Now for the last 4 years in winter i have been burning wood 24/7. 2 of those years with an insert and the last 2 with an indoor wood furnace. I really never gave it a second thought that i needed outside air to replenish air that was used to keep fire going inside an insert or a wood furnace. I do have plenty of draft up the chimney in my wood furnace and lighting a fire has been no problem at all.
My basement is part of my house and is insulated and a walkout. Maybe just the normal use of doors,opening and closing letting the dog out and so on everyday lets enough air in and out to not be a big deal. It is a newer house 5 or so years old, all brick with all casement windows.
I did get worried last night reading about carbon dioxide levels so i unblocked the fresh air inlet from the outside and lifted it off the gas furnace inlet to let fresh air in somewhat to the wood burning furnace. When i burn the wood furnace, my gas furnace will never come on.
Anyone else burn 24/7 and doesn't feel the need for a fresh air pipe inlet from the outside? I'm going to get a carbon dioxide tester just to make sure. I have all the smoke detectors and carbon monoxide testers.
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residential wood furnace use
Broken...didn't mean to break off from your main point but you really need to call the local EPA and the health department about the toxic stuff being burned by your neighbors.....they will shut him down right now!! A wood smell is just that a wood smell, but toxic trash smell....thats just a bad neighbor. My guy down the street is burning some kind of trash with a rubber kinda smell to it in his outdoor furnace....His days are numbered!
good luck
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residential wood furnace use
Broken, I agree with nosteiner on the EPA, that is why I asked about the same thing. Many things that are burnt are not legal to. kt
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residential wood furnace use
When we built our place 3 years ago, we used Insulated Concrete Forms so we have a pretty tight house. The centrally located masonry stove that we fire twice a day has it's own 6" dia outside air inlet that I open and close when the fire is burning. The stove is hot to the touch for about 12 hours from a 1 hour fire (about 15lbs of firewood). In addition, we have a tiny cast iron stove in the walkout basement that we use when we're down there. It also has it's own fresh air inlet that we open when the stove is fired. You can really feel the air rushing through when the fire is burning. We do have a propane backup furnace which has a PVC pipe fresh air inlet as well as exhaust. It doesn't go on very often though. Finally, for indoor air quality, we do have an air-to-air heat exchanger. While we could run it continuously, we choose to run it periodically via switches in each bathroom; i.e., after a shower or whatever  you hit a button on the wall and the unit runs on max for about 20 minutes.
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acerguy...sounds like an awsome system that you get heat out of 15 lbs of wood for 12 hours!!! I load my wood furnace with 3 to 6 cubic feet of wood and load it 6am then load again at 6-10pm for nite then wake up to 67-70 degrees at 6am again. I think most wood pcs i put in mine are 5-30 lbs each. Yours sounds like a really efficient system,and i am just starting to learn about the fresh air thing.
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Well, we designed it as a passive solar house so it is pretty efficient. Plus we keep it pretty cool. When it's below about 10F or so outside overnight, the furnace will occationally kick in at 5am for a bump up to 68 so we don't have ice in the corn flakes. As much as I would have hoped, we can't quite heat it with a match and cool it with an icecube!
Anyhow, sorry for dragging this off-topic. To the original poster I would echo the suggestion that someone is burning trash that they shouldn't be and that's just not being a good neighbor. As much as we all hate to get the "guv-ment" involved, this may be one of those cases.
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12-26-2007, 17:32 
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