We burn wood to heat our house and our hot water.  That’s not atypical, lots of people do that, complete with passionate and compelling reasons why their way is the best way.  In the circle of wood heat aficionados there are so many opinions and um, heated arguments (sorry) surrounding how and what to use, we gave up trying to find factual information when we were shopping around, and went with our gut.   Controversial or not, we went with an outdoor wood boiler that eats wood and in return, heats the hot water that is circulated into our house.  It sits about seventy feet from the house, and thankfully, we must have situated it right because we rarely get blasted by smoke.  We’re still playing with the firewood supply, maybe this year we’ve got it right.  Or at least on the better side or wrong, meaning we won’t run out like last year.

Last year, our first full season burning wood, was a test.  Oh, and how we failed!  We were late getting started on our firewood supply, being busy building the house.  And, a pile of logs from our driveway excavation just waiting to be bucked up and split gave us a false sense of security.  The pile sure looked big, anyway.  That was gone in no time and January found us plowing through snow in the UTV to get at the standing dead on the property.  Taking it out in such small amounts meant we were always just keeping up to the amount we were burning.  One particular day found us hauling logs out of the bush by snowmobile.  The poor snowmobile suffered a broken tail light and a ripped seat and we ended the day silently avoiding each other.  And still we didn’t have enough firewood.

Around some time the beginning of March, we were reduced to buying a cord of wood, the snow being so deep in the bush by now that we simply could not access it any more.  That cord of split pine was gone in a flash.  Our wood boiler ate the cute little chunks of wood, meant for a wood stove or suburban fireplace, like they were Smarties.  Our wood boiler, we’ve found out, is best fed big ugly hunks of whatever species is fairly dry.  Although a bit of on-going kiln drying isn’t so bad either, if you get my drift.

We ended last winter promising ourselves we wouldn’t find ourselves in the same pickle again this year.  Nope, this year we started early.  Like in June.  To our advantage, we live bordering crown land, so armed with a firewood permit and a map showing us where we could cut standing dead (or couldn’t, like the wood lot) we cut and hauled home some 10+ cord of pine, spruce and birch.  It’s January and we’re not quite a third through our supply.  Unless it stays cold until June, which it won’t, we’re looking good.  Maybe even have some left over for next year’s burning season.  Let you know.

Some details:

• Our wood boiler is a Central Boiler model 5036.
• The boiler operates as an “open system”, unlike the “closed system” of our in-floor heat.
• The water circulates with the help of one very energy efficient Grundfos Alpha pump installed inside the house.  The piping carries the heated water from the boiler through a special solar hot water tank which heats our domestic hot water supply.  The water continues onto a heat exchanger that heats the water circulating through our floors.
• If the wood boiler can’t supply the hot water for any reason, we have a backup, high efficiency propane boiler that can kick in as needed.  In the summer, we don’t use the wood boiler and rely solely on the propane boiler to heat our domestic hot water.  It’s reasonably cheap for the season and we don’t have to worry about the fire hazard of a spark coming from the wood boiler chimney.