[MarkJ]

Not a bad option since many furnaces are generally oversized (short cycling), have poorly designed ducting, no duct zoning, radical temperature swings and *net efficiency* is low due to short cycling and duct losses.

[frankthetank]

Get a couple of those oil filled electric heaters for about $30 from Menards. Heat the rooms your in. Steal heat from your neighbors if you are connected. Don't blow a bunch of money on a gas furnace, you probably won't have gas to heat it in 5-10 years. Stop walking around the house naked.

Move in with mom and dad?
Go south for the winter?
Super insulate one room and live there?
Turn your house into a bakery, cook all the time

[vision-master]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('MarkJ', 'N')ot a bad option since many furnaces are generally oversized (short cycling), have poorly designed ducting, no duct zoning, radical temperature swings and *net efficiency* is low due to short cycling and duct losses.

[vision-master]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('frankthetank', 'G')et a couple of those oil filled electric heaters for about $30 from Menards. Heat the rooms your in. Steal heat from your neighbors if you are connected. Don't blow a bunch of money on a gas furnace, you probably won't have gas to heat it in 5-10 years. Stop walking around the house naked.

Move in with mom and dad?
Go south for the winter?
Super insulate one room and live there?
Turn your house into a bakery, cook all the time

[frankthetank]

Yeah... We did it once with a bedroom and it added about $50 to the electric bill, although the bedroom did stay pretty warm when it was on.

Pellet stove? Those are cheap ($1K) and pellets are still reasonable. About a bag a day if you keep it on the cool side. We have one...only downside is that last year it was just as cheap to heat with natural gas and they can be noisy, depending on where you put them. If you have the room you could also store enough pellets for next winter too. I think i used around 110 bags or so the one winter.

The one and only way to do it is wood. Its where we are heading sooner or later. I have the wood stove, piping, etc all ready to go, but i've put off installing it for lack of wood and because NG is still dirt cheap in my opinion.

[vision-master]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('frankthetank', 'Y')eah... We did it once with a bedroom and it added about $50 to the electric bill, although the bedroom did stay pretty warm when it was on.

Pellet stove? Those are cheap ($1K) and pellets are still reasonable. About a bag a day if you keep it on the cool side. We have one...only downside is that last year it was just as cheap to heat with natural gas and they can be noisy, depending on where you put them. If you have the room you could also store enough pellets for next winter too. I think i used around 110 bags or so the one winter.

The one and only way to do it is wood. Its where we are heading sooner or later. I have the wood stove, piping, etc all ready to go, but i've put off installing it for lack of wood and because NG is still dirt cheap in my opinion.

[Heineken]

When I drive by one of those outdoor furnaces, I'm startled by the vast clouds of smoke they emit. Far more than a conventional indoor woodstove.

I sure wouldn't want to live near one of those "smokers."

Is this an "issue" or is it just my imagination?

[frankthetank]

About a mile from my house someone has one in their backyard. When i was driving down the road i thought i was seeing the exhaust from the POWER PLANT! it was the outdoor furnace! Those things belch huge amounts of exhaust. The temp was around 0F so it was really smoking. Think of all the heat escaping in that exhaust. Another thing is these morons will burn ANYTHING. Green wood, treated wood, i think about anything goes. I'm totally against them and wish they would be outlawed all together. Very expensive too. For the price you could almost do a geothermal setup.

[Heineken]

Interesting, Frank. I'm surprised this subject hasn't generated more discussion---or friction.

[WyoDutch]

A fellow I know has one. He operates a small sawmill, so he burns the scraps. Seems to know what he's doing, as the only time I see any smoke at all is when he first fires it up.

As an aside... I use a BlazeKing Catalytic wood stove. Once it's up to temperature, it produces so little smoke that you honestly can't look at the chimney to see if the stove is in use. Effecient too. A load of plain old pine will burn for 6 hours or so.

[Don35]

There are several northern states adding legislation regarding OWFs. Apparently they release about 1800 times more particulates than a regular wood stove. My brother is getting one and I've read about them online. They are a controversial, but can heat a pretty large area for cheap

[Heineken]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('WyoDutch', 'A') fellow I know has one. He operates a small sawmill, so he burns the scraps. Seems to know what he's doing, as the only time I see any smoke at all is when he first fires it up.

As an aside... I use a BlazeKing Catalytic wood stove. Once it's up to temperature, it produces so little smoke that you honestly can't look at the chimney to see if the stove is in use. Effecient too. A load of plain old pine will burn for 6 hours or so.

[frankthetank]

Really they are so expensive that it really limits who has them... so i guess thats good.

[MarkJ]

Most of the outdoor wood boilers we see are grossly inefficient, grossly oversized, highly polluting POS units.

One region is lifting their moratorium on outdoor wood boilers even in residential areas. All older units will be grandfathered in and new units only have to comply with stack height regulations.

Outdoor Wood Burner Stack Height Proposals

Some of the wood gasification units have fairly low emissions, but they 're ultra expensive.

I'm glad I don't have neighbors with OWBs.

[MarkJ]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('frankthetank', 'R')eally they are so expensive that it really limits who has them... so i guess thats good.

[RdSnt]

The vast majority are bought by amateurs who treat them like gas furnaces, a device that's "supposed" to be automatic.
The furnaces are poorly attended, usually placed too far from the house, which means the owns don't go out much to look after them. In addition they are not sheltered, thus reducing even more the likelihood that someone is going to go out regularly to tend it.

The smoke stacks are too short, which reduced the draft terribly. Again the noobs who buy these don't know the difference. Plus those that sell them know little about wood burning.

One more thing, they tend to be used as garbage burners as well. Stinking up the area and fowling the innerds with all sorts of chemical junk.

I see lots of these things rusting, unused, after the first year or so.

They should be banned completely.

[Ludi]

Hey, at least people there are getting some tiny return for burning stuff. Here folks just burn huge piles of wood and trash to get rid of it, stinking up the entire valley.. I frickin hate it!

[Heineken]

What I really can't understand is LEAF BURNING. That has to be the dumbest thing of all. Totally unnecessary.

I saw a guy with a house next to a patch of woods burning the leaves he'd raked off his lawn. Immense clouds of smoke. All the cockadoody guy had to do was rake them onto a tarp and drag them into the woods!

[Plantagenet]

Some guy here had one running next to a grade school. After the classrooms filled with wood smoke and the teachers and students started getting sick, the borough asked him to shut it down, but he wouldn't.

There isn't any law against OWF, so all the borough could do is buy him few cords of kiln-dried firewood to cut down on the smoke.

[Ludi]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Heineken', 'W')hat I really can't understand is LEAF BURNING. That has to be the dumbest thing of all. Totally unnecessary.