An Experimental Wood Chip Furnace

We are heating our Vermont home with wood chips this winter. The chips were cut from brush growing on our 67 acre property — a mix of black birch, red maple, and cherry saplings, hemlock boughs and assorted other species, burned green, straight from the chipper, with an average moisture content of 43-47% (wet basis).

Not only are we burning green wood chips, but our experimental furnace runs at high efficiency, virtually smoke-free. We fill it with four buckets of chips and in two hours it produces an estimated 175,000 Btus of hot water in a heat storage tank to feed our home baseboard heating system.

Thanks to a single chamber stratified batch combustion method, we have even burned chips mixed with snow and well composted chips, again, cleanly and efficiently. The only noticeable difference with these unlikely fuels is a partial reduction in total heat output.

Vermont Heat Research