Wood / Coal Forced Air Furnace Comparisons ?

Does anyone know where I can find comparisons on the various coal / wood forced air furnaces?

Here is my situation:

I live in a tract neighborhood. Modern home builders just keep going and going. The slow economy is only forcing them to reduce their prices. This means the likelihood that my home will appreciate much in the next 10 years is questionable. So, I need to be very cautious about what kinds of upgrades I make to my home.

I had the fortune of paying $350 for gas during the coldest month for 2007 here in Indiana. So, I am now looking to install an add on furnace. Understanding that I will not likely get my money out of this upgrade, what price range should I be looking at? How much money in gas bills will I save ? That might be a better way to look at the situation.

Menard's sells a Vogelzang Norseman 2500 for under $1,000 but after looking at the design, it appears like it is not built to really capture as much heat as possible. Many other more expensive units (Harman, Charmaster, Blaze King, et. al.) have designs that seem to hold the heat a little longer through better heat exchanger designs. I really want as little heat going up my stack as possible. Yet, I need to watch what I spend on this one...

So, are there any comparisons/opinions out there?

Hitzer is made in Indiana. Have you reviewed their furnace products?

http://www.hitzer.com/furnaceunit.html

That is part of the problem. I am not even up on the multitude of unit manufacturers. The ones I have found are through Google searches. Do you use a Hitzer? How do you like it?

I have the model 50-93 and this upcoming winter will be my first time using it.

Hitzer has a dealer locater section. Try that and go from there. You mentioned price as being important and I know Hitzer has attractive prices for their great products.

Okay, thanks.

Price is simply a consideration because I need/want to get my money out of the unit. If it is going to end up costing a lot to run through heavy consumption/poor heat transfer, then it is less desirable than a more expensive unit. If I can cut my winter heating bills to say $400 or less, then I will have at least $500 or more per year in savings to justify a more expensive unit. A less efficient stove may take longer to recoup my investment.

I am trying to look at all sides of the equation.

I have the us stove clayton 1600m. It is a forced air furnace that can burn wood, anthracite, and bituminous coal. I have burned all three and it does them all well. Anthracite is the easiest and most even heat of the three but also the most expensive. At the current price for anthracite and natural gas in my area it would cost the same to burn either. So I burned wood and some bituminous. That is the nice thing about this stove you have options. the current cost for this stove at tractor supply is $1800. When burning anthracite I only had to fill it twice a day and leave it alone. Also when burning anthracite the stove pipe would be cool enough to touch with a bare hand. so I would say that it burns rather efficient.

Thanks,

This is the kind of stuff I am looking for... From the manual on that unit, it appears that there is a manual draft regulator and a direct connection to the firebox. In other words, I do not see any kind of extra heat exchanging chamber.

Your unit is about 1/3 more expensive on the MSRP. If you are only feeding it twice per day, we might be doing okay with most of the units.

Does anyone have one of the Norsemen 2500s? I would hate to make a mistake by buying a "cheaper" unit...

Hello Kirkifer, welcome to the forum. The main reason you don't see a multi-chamber heat exchanger incorporated in these multifuel furnaces, boilers and stoves is the creosote problem with burning wood, and soot accumulation with burning Bituminous coal.

The heat exchanger design for an Anthracite burning appliance can have much more sophistification because the only product created by an Anthracite fire is heat and a light powdery fly-ash. This fly ash will fall off vertical surfaces and be vacuumed or blown off horizontal surfaces it might accumulate on.

With an appliance burning wood, the wood smoke will condense on any surface that is cooler than 250* or so. The condensed smoke makes a gooey tar-like substance that will dry to a hard crust. This crust is very flamable, and also tough to remove from the surface. And this crust insulated the surface from the heat of the fire.

So with the simple firebox and heat exchanger designs you see in the multi-fuel furnaces, they are designed to allow easy access to the surfaces that will have an accumulation of creosote. If the design has secondary heat chambers they must have a way to access them to clean out the dangerous accumulation of creosote.

I have designed and built both wood burning stoves as well as boilers, and designing a good heat exchanger that is cleanable takes a lot of creativity. And a lot of time to make a practical access door or built-in scraping tool to keep the areas clean.

From personal experience the creosote buildup IS dangerous, even with frequent cleaning, I still had more than one creosote fire in my stove which I buildt and used in the late '70's and through the '80's. Corrosion from the acidic creostote finally destroyed that stove.

With your fairly low heat bills you will have a long payoff time to pay for a built-in furnace or boiler. These are the most expensive units to purchase and install. Do you have a central family room or living space that either has a chimney or could have a chimney, and you could install a small er wood/coal burning stove or insert?? This type of unit is often available for less than $500, and if designed right can burn wood and coal well. A Harman Mark I or II comes to mind as well as several of the Hitzer models.

With a smaller stove, you don't have as much money commited to burning solid fuels, and if the weather is cold you can fire it up and save on gas on the really cold days/weeks/months, but not waste solid fuel on the warmer weather where a furnace may not be very efficient.

Lots of things to consider. I do know of a good, high quality used wood furnace here in Michigan, PM me and I'll pass along the info.

Hope this helps, Greg L.

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Yes,

That sure does help. The creosote buildup was in the back of my mind, but I never thought about the issue with the cleanout. Will a Class A pipe be much safer in a chimney fire? Can the fire still get hot enough to melt through it?

I have thought about retrofitting the fireplace. I just discounted it because of the work involved and the amount of heat I would still lose up the stack. I guess that is just a side effect of any solid fuel furnace/fireplace unless I burn better coal and I really want to keep my options open.

When I build my custom "dream" home, it is going to have a coal/wood option plus gas or oil. This way, it can run when I am not at home to protect things like pipes, pets, etc.

By far the safest chimney in a chimney fire is a clay-tile lined masonry chimney. A SS chimney may accumulate less creosote than a masonry chiney because the SS liner can get hotter and will threfore have less smoke condensation on the hotter surface.

If I were installing a chimney, I'd put in masonry, it is less expensive than Stainless Steel, and will last just about forever.

As for the heat from a creosote fire, I perminantly warped a 24"x28"x 0.25" plate of steel in a runaway fire in my wood stove. It turned a bright cherry-red, and warped like a phonograph record. the 1/4" steel was no match for the heat. So I would guess that yes a chimney fire could cause perminant damage to a class A Stainless Steel chimney. This experience is why I believe in masonry chimneys. The top of the stove and the vertical pipe were perminantly deformed from the red-heat of the fire.

This is also why I prefer to burn coal instead of wood, and have my boiler in an outside building.

Is your fireplace a brick and mortar one, or a metal prefab type?? If the metal prefab type, is the chimney accessable from outside so you could upgrade it to a masonry or very high-grade SS chimney?

Greg L.

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Well, the chimney is a whole other problem... The fireplace vents with the usual tract house piece of junk. It has four 2x4s with some Z-brace all the way up. It is covered with a cork type sheathing and vinyl exterior, but nothing in the way of safety... It uses the really thin galvanized double wall metal with the air space. Yes, it is pretty much built to code and nothing more.

I have thought about doing a nice clay flue with brick exterior simply for safety. Would you happen to know a ballpark estimate for a project like that?

The plans for the add on furnace were just to run Class A up and out with all of the proper spacing. That is why I was wondering about a chimney fire.

Hi Kirkifer, no I can't give you an idea for the price of an installed masonry chimney. I did my own masonry chimney. It is really pretty simple to do, with the precast chimney block that are available today.

I'd call around and get some quotes, and my favorite way is to go to some building sites and find a couple of different masons on the job and ask them to give you a quote for your chimney. Often you can find someone with a crew who can come in and set up, get the job done in a day or a weekend.

If you are handy at all with home carpentry, you can save yourself a lot of money on a job like this. Even the masonry work is not rocket-science.

Greg L

Yeah, I am pretty handy, but I have never attempted a Chimney. I would not even know where to start.

When I move out of the city, I am planning on building a custom home. It will have several clay flue chimneys. All of them will be used to vent efficient fireplaces that have ducted heat.

Let me know if you want to come to Indiana sometime. I could use the help...

Hi Kirkifer, Indiana is a big state.... where are you located??

Greg L

I am in Avon, a western suburb of Indy.