New Member - Many questions

Hello

I live in Virginia. I own a 3,000 sq ft home and a 1600 sq ft shop.

My house has a crawl space and I had a wood burning stove in the basement of my previous house and swore I would never do that again...too much dust and dirt even in the basement. However, the heat is just great.

I am considering an outdoor type furnace but I have no clue where to start. I have an out building (old smokehouse) about 50 feet from my house. I could use it for a wood/coal furnace. After reading this forum it appears I can place a boiler(?) in my old smokehouse, add a chimney and I will be good to go. Is that correct? If so what would be the best units to check into for this application.

We currently have a heatpump with electric furnace. This may sound very stupid, however, how do I get the heat from my boiler to my house and workshop?

Thank you and sorry for all the questions.

David

My situation (area wise)is very similary to yours. I have a 2800 sq.ft. house with a 1200 sq. ft. work shop. However my existing heating system is hydro-air so I bought a Tarm soloplus-40 gasification boiler,plumbed it in parallel with my existing boiler which now became the back-up for my wood boiler. Being that the hot water heat exchange is already built in to my system the installation was fairly simple. I believe I could have had the same results with an outside wood boiler but the houses are too close in my neighbor hood, so I have to lug wood inside to keep feeding the boiler instead of having the convenience of having it all outside.
In your situation with a heat pump you have to get the heat exchange to your warm air system. Retro fitting the system will become a little more complicated then my installation was.
My work shop was easy though. I needed a dump zone so I just pumped that into my shop , ran it through an old cast iron radiator I had , and used excess heat off the boiler to heat the work shop.

The Re-introduction of the efm WCB-24

You might like a boiler like that.