Need Information on Options Available.

Hey guys, I have a question I hope people here can answer.

After much trouble with my propane furnace the past few years, I want to look at other options. For a while we started looking at wood gasifiers but the problem is that it's hard to find good seasoned wood in central Pennsylvania... you know, in the woods (I can't figure that one out either). After spending some time talking to my father about the options, one of the ones we're seriously looking at now is to get an outdoor coal furnace. The issue we have is that we'd like to know what options are available to run heat and hot water to 3 different houses on our property so we can all get away from oil and propane since it's costing a small fortune.

The first house is about 3000 square feet
Second house is about 1300 square feet
Third house is about 2000 square feet
We'd be sticking the furnace by my house in the center and the houses on either side of me are at best guess about 50-80 feet away.
All houses have existing baseboard hydronic radiators

I've tried talking to a few dealers but every time I do, I kind of feel like I'm getting a run around on what we actually need vs what they are trying to sell us so I figured this is as good a place as any to see about getting an unbiased opinion by people who actually enjoy this as a hobby vs trying to make money. I've looked around a bit and most of the information I've been able to find has been all smaller units for a single house. I'm not even sure if it's viable to run 3 houses off a single furnace but it would certainly be nice to be able to do that while keeping the houses warm during these blizzards we get.

Thanks heaps.

Mystic , Welcome to the forum. I will start by admitting that I am biased.After 8 yrs of a hard labor sentence with a OWB ,i would never recommend one to anyone. In researching them yrs ago & even currently I still do not see any that are designed very well for burning coal. You could check with Leisure Line ,they were working on an Outdoor Coal Boiler with coal fed by auger & ashes removed by auger. Check the thread : From OWB to EFM520 installed in truck box.I would highly recommend this way over a stand alone outdoor unit,tending is all done inside ,out of the elements. BUT,if you could find room to put it in 1 of the basements you would then have all the "lost" radiant heat from the boiler warming the basement of a house instead of warming a truck box or shed. I would highly recommend a basement install & would have done that myself,but no basement dictated an alternative plan. If you would enter your town & state into your profile on the right side of the screen we can all just glance there thruout your ongoing thread to see where you are located rather than going back to your original post to look for that or asking multiple times.Thanks, good luck with your plans.

Welcome. What you want to do is certainly possible, it is just a matter of selecting a boiler (furnaces blow hot air) that can handle the load, and figuring out how you can run the piping to each home. One of my neighbors heats two houses with a Keystoker boiler located in his shop, another heats three separate buildings with a boiler in an addition.

Is there any reason the boiler can't be installed in the basement of the center home? If you could do a basement install and use an existing chimney, you would save a lot of money on the installation...plus the radiant heat from the boiler would help heat the house rather than be wasted in an outbuilding. The downside of a basement install is that you would have to haul ashes out of the basement...it is a trade off of convenience vs. economy.

You will probably get a WIDE range of recommendations for how big the boiler needs to be. So before that gets started, you need to do some homework.

1. Does the existing baseboard system in each house do a good job of heating the home? If yes, move on to step 2. If not, tell us more about the shortcoming.
2. Measure how many feet of radiator is in each home.
3. Try and find out how many gallons of propane/oil each home normally burns in the heating season.

You can also do a heat loss calculation on each home, but that will require detailed dimensions of the home and knowledge about how it was constructed, insulated, etc. In theory, someone should have already done that to size the existing baseboards.

One more question - do you want to heat the domestic hot water in any of the houses?

Something else to consider. Does your area have power outages in cold weather? A single unit would always need power to pump hot water to all three houses. If there is any problem with that single unit, then three houses have a problem.

If one unit is the way to go, then as Dave (windyhill) said, better to put the unit in the basement of one of the houses. You not only get the benefit of the heat loss of it's jacket and plumbing, ask him what it's like feeding and working on an outdoor unit when it's middle of the night, deep snow, and bitter cold.

Paul

Thanks for the replies. I'll get some more information on how many feet of radiator we're looking at. I don't think that indoor would be an option. The only one of us that has a proper basement is my parents and they use it all for storage where the old boiler use to be many years ago. I don't mind being out in the snow, personally. I am one of those crazy people that actually love snow.

Our existing baseboard heat works really well in all 3 houses.
Will get that measurement this week when I get a chance to talk to my father.
Will also get the number on gallons used from them. I personally use on average about 100 gallons of propane a month depending on how cold of a winter we have.

All the baseboard work was done by family over the years so I'm pretty certain no heat loss calculation was ever done on them.

Yes, we'd like to heat the domestic hot water during winter then switch to electric during summer months. My parents already do this with their oil but we're on electric all year round at the moment.

I think you should forget tending an outdoor coal boiler because I doubt there is one worth more than its value in scrap.

If a basement installation is out, then a standard boiler in its own enclosure along with coal supply. A stoker with auger feed from the coal supply would be best. Present systems should be kept as backup.

Another and cheapest option would be to supplement the present heating systems with a hand fired coal stove in the living quarters of each house.

Mystic wrote:Thanks for the replies. I'll get some more information on how many feet of radiator we're looking at. I don't think that indoor would be an option. The only one of us that has a proper basement is my parents and they use it all for storage where the old boiler use to be many years ago. I don't mind being out in the snow, personally. I am one of those crazy people that actually love snow.

Our existing baseboard heat works really well in all 3 houses.
Will get that measurement this week when I get a chance to talk to my father.
Will also get the number on gallons used from them. I personally use on average about 100 gallons of propane a month depending on how cold of a winter we have.

All the baseboard work was done by family over the years so I'm pretty certain no heat loss calculation was ever done on them.

Yes, we'd like to heat the domestic hot water during winter then switch to electric during summer months. My parents already do this with their oil but we're on electric all year round at the moment.

Working on(as in repairing) an outdoor unit at 3 a/m @ -5*,35 mph wind blowing snow gets old quicker than I can get dressed to go out in those conditions & I've been there,done that. That is why with no basement available,we chose to install inside a truck box.We can now tend the boiler inside,out of the weather ,coal is inside too,next to the boiler.I am no expert ,but I would strongly recommend using the boiler year-around,to prevent corrosion to the boiler & it would likely pay to burn coal for doing the 3 houses worth of DHW. It would also allow you to have heat for those surprise chilly days we can get here even in June & Sept.The key to efficient running will be insulating the underground pex to the extreme.

Think that you will be looking seriously at the Keystoker Line of products.

They do BIG really well.

Sometimes, if you are patient enough a nice BIG used EFM will surface.

I agree with Rob on starting by measuring the attached radiation. If the boiler can't supply BTU's at least as fast as the radiators can give them off, parts of the system will be cold when they are supposed to be hot. It is generally best to avoid being the person responsible for installing such a system.

The linear feet of radiation will need to be multiplied by an appropriate btu/hr per lf factor to obtain the radiation load in btu/hr. To this will need to be added factors for BTU losses in the boiler water distribution systems within each house and between the houses. Additional factors for DHW loads will also need to be included. While I agree with Rob that a range of possible boiler sizes might reasonably be considered, it is safe to assume that all of them will be "big".

Mike

I would just like to point out that member "scrapper_23jr" has a reconditioned EFM 700 listed in the classified section of this site. They are very nice units and not that easy to find these days.

That is one of the many possibilities!

And this all depends if you want to go with a new unit or an old one. As far as coal stoker boilers go, New and Big, you don't have many options, as McGiever said Keystoker is the only one I can think of. Is far as older used ones, well that leads to endless possibilities, EFM, Van Wert, Losch, Yellow Flame, Gentelman Janitor, Axeman Anderson, ect... These units were all designed to last more than a lifetime. A used older well taken care of unit, or a refurb-ed older unit are the best chioces, in my opinion.

-Don

over in manufactures corner under ahs section in ash augers is some pics of my ahs 130 in a outdoor shed [well insulated] feeding house and pole barn, stays about 70 in there so you are warm and toasty when loading/farting around. all the mess is out side possible fumes from down drafts, no cellar room is wasted. I like the double pipe foamed inside of 4"sleeve, spend the money once and do it right, you skimp you pay. it may be wasted heat but my thoughts are well wasted, just hung some grow lights out there so the wife can start her seedlings for next year's gardens. good luck and have fun doing it

plumberman wrote:over in manufactures corner under ahs section in ash augers is some pics of my ahs 130 in a outdoor shed [well insulated] feeding house and pole barn, stays about 70 in there so you are warm and toasty when loading/farting around. all the mess is out side possible fumes from down drafts, no cellar room is wasted. I like the double pipe foamed inside of 4"sleeve, spend the money once and do it right, you skimp you pay. it may be wasted heat but my thoughts are well wasted, just hung some grow lights out there so the wife can start her seedlings for next year's gardens. good luck and have fun doing it

this is the way to do it.