Anyone use "alternative" fuels to heat their homes?

[ImcLoud]

Hey guys, I have been getting TONS of customers asking about alt fuel heating systems lately. I just had a customer come out to my home since I use my house like a model home {don't ask how my wife likes that}, and check out my central coal fired system. They signed a proposal for 3 coal systems to be installed.

This is getting more and more popular, my house has Propane primary {prestige solo 399 boiler}, Oil backup {Buderus G125be}, Electric supplemental {3-armstrong 18seer heat pumps} works down to 38 degrees, and coal alternative auxilliary {twin burner coal furnace}. My system works pretty simple for being so complicated, Prestige t-stats control almost everything, when its 45-65 degrees out I use the heat pumps, then below 45 the heatpumps stop and the propane kicks in, if the propane ever runs out the oil kicks in, all of which operate as slaves to the coal system, so if the coal system is running all other systems are stalled until the heat exchanger temp drops below 80 degrees, then it will revert to which ever system applies... None of the above system runs my DHW {domestic hot water}, that system consists of a Rinnai ru98i for the winter months and an AO smith heatpump for the summer... Geothermal is the next project, its 70% done since I started revising it, someday I will be done with it....


Anyway my system is way out of the norm, if I had to install all of that for a customer it would easily be $150,000, and it still costs me $1200 or so a year to heat my home{more savings when I use more coal and less propane}, but we keep it warm...

So anyway, does anyone else use coal or wood of any sort?

 

[jinjuku]

I will be putting in a wood insert from Century. Wood for free off of Craigslist. There is also a lumber mill near me that sells 3-4' radius bundles of 10 foot long remnant cuts for $35 and they load your trailer. Pretty cheap.

The chimney is not on an exterior wall so I don't have to insulate the 6" liner (yipee!). The insert has a 120CFM variable speed blower and good to about 1800 sq foot. This will be for supplemental heat.

The insert is less than $1K and ~75% efficient. Has reburn and airwash for the front glass. Some high end stoves are hitting 90% efficiency which is actually better than a lot of traditional furnaces.

 

[fuzz092888]

My parents have been heating their home with an outdoor wood stove for the past 8 or so years and so has my uncle. What do ya wanna know?

 

[j_garcia]

My G/F's father uses geothermal in their house in Iowa.

 

[ImcLoud]

I will be putting in a wood insert from Century. Wood for free off of Craigslist. There is also a lumber mill near me that sells 3-4' radius bundles of 10 foot long remnant cuts for $35 and they load your trailer. Pretty cheap.

The chimney is not on an exterior wall so I don't have to insulate the 6" liner (yipee!). The insert has a 120CFM variable speed blower and good to about 1800 sq foot. This will be for supplemental heat.

The insert is less than $1K and ~75% efficient. Has reburn and airwash for the front glass. Some high end stoves are hitting 90% efficiency which is actually better than a lot of traditional furnaces.

I have installed a few high efficiency wood units, and they are impressive, the amount of heat they throw is massive... Northern tool sells them Century stoves really cheap, may be worth looking into...

 

[jinjuku]

I have installed a few high efficiency wood units, and they are impressive, the amount of heat they throw is massive... Northern tool sells them Century stoves really cheap, may be worth looking into...

Northern Tool can get me the smaller Century CB0005 for $850 to my door. I will have to have another person to help me unload as it is quite clear in their delivery quote that the drivers only responsibility is to get the truck to driveway.

 

[ImcLoud]

I have a couple Jotul Kennebec {almost positive they are 450's} brand new in their boxes at the shop, I was going to use them here when we built this house, and the mason {a friend f our family} passed away 3 weeks before he was scheduled to build the chimneys so I switched to s/s double wall and Lenox gas 42" ss elites, and by the time my wife picked the brick inserts and fire style they cost me more than the wood/mason setups would have cost me, then I found out they were special order and not returnable {I tryed to cancel before they were delivered and they were already at the so I had almost 10K$ of fireplaces sitting in my garage....... I still have 2 of them left, I had 3 but sold one last year. and I have a customer that wants the 1 installed after we switch her house over to gas next year, it will free up her chimney and she wants a fireplace...

 

[Adam]

I heat my home with the sun.

Whether I want to or not...

 

[ImcLoud]

Quiet down "Arizona"...

 

[jinjuku]

I have a couple Jotul Kennebec {almost positive they are 450's} brand new in their boxes at the shop, I was going to use them here when we built this house, and the mason {a friend f our family} passed away 3 weeks before he was scheduled to build the chimneys so I switched to s/s double wall and Lenox gas 42" ss elites, and by the time my wife picked the brick inserts and fire style they cost me more than the wood/mason setups would have cost me, then I found out they were special order and not returnable {I tryed to cancel before they were delivered and they were already at the so I had almost 10K$ of fireplaces sitting in my garage....... I still have 2 of them left, I had 3 but sold one last year. and I have a customer that wants the 1 installed after we switch her house over to gas next year, it will free up her chimney and she wants a fireplace...

I looked up the C 450. Nice looking insert.

 

[its phillip]

We just have gas heat at the house. I don't know anything about that stuff though :/

 

[ImcLoud]

When I bought the land to build my house on it was acres upon acres of woods, after clearing almost 4 acres to make my house lot, you can imagine the amount of wood, which was a lot of oak and hardwoods {luckily not much pine}, so I figured I would stack the wood up and burn it for heat until it was gone... and since the inserts are efficient, give off heat vs a fireplace that does not, and looks much better than a wood stove without taking up the room and still having the aesthetics of a fireplace that is what I decided on... THEN with the mason passing away and seeing the HUGE piles of wood that I would have to deal with for years to come, most likely rotting before I could use it, I decided to sell it all off and get gas inserts, the wood fetched a lot more than I thought it would and the gas inserts have the aesthetics and zero maintenance but do use quite a bit of propane, and you would never want to use them to heat your home, that is for sure...

I think if more people seen how the coal systems work they would be impressed, and if you compare what coal costs its like buying propane for under $1 a gallon, so its a good way to cut your heating bill in half, supplimental heat is nice, because when you are there to run it or when you feel like running it you are saving money, and when you don't you can run your primary system... Plus having two heating systems is very nice vs a single system with that system is down you have no heat, back up is nice peace of mind..

 

[jinjuku]

It's also nice to have a heat source in the case of prolonged power outage.

 

[ImcLoud]

It's also nice to have a heat source in the case of prolonged power outage.

the inserts are going to need power for the fan, BUT I designed a system where you can use Amazon.com: Clore ES2500 'Booster PAC' 900 Peak Amp 12V Jump Starter: Automotive and Amazon.com: Power Bright PW1100-12 Power Inverter 1100 Watt 12 Volt DC To 110 Volt AC: Patio, Lawn & Garden and you can have power to your insert for quite a while, one of them will run my gas inserts for 8 hours before it needs to be charged, then to charge it just go for a ride in your car with it plugged in...

but nothing beats a generator...

 

[jinjuku]

Have you done anything with Rocket Mass heaters?

 

[ImcLoud]

No, lol, I think I would be out of business pretty fast if I tried to market and install them... Thats more of a DIY thing I think? If we are thinking about the same thing, that is what a lot of people call the "hippy heater" rite, its where you build a wood box and fill it with rocks and or cement it all up then it has a vornado type chamber that cools the gases and disperses heat, kind of a mayan civilization type heater... If I am thinking of the same thing as you are talking about, a friend of mine made something similar for his log cabin except he did it with an electric fan vent and some other tricks here and there and it seemed to work, you just feed it small sticks and twigs because it won't burn much larger than that, works as a fast light fire, nothing smoldering or burning slow, needs a lot of air and you get air from space, 1 solid piece of wood would not be enough space, not for the one I seen, he uses all kinds of tree trimings for his, and doesnt use it often, I don't think so anyway... havent seen it in a while...

 

[Irvrobinson]

Years ago, my pair of Class A Krell KMA-100MKIIs used to do a fine job of warming the family room. Do they count as an alternative heat source?

 

[ImcLoud]

thats electric heat Irv...

 

[jinjuku]

No, lol, I think I would be out of business pretty fast if I tried to market and install them... Thats more of a DIY thing I think?

It's a play on Masonry heaters which are in wide use in Europe and Russia. Commercial units cost about $15-$20K U.S. You are just applying a high amount of heat for a relatively short time (90-120 minutes) twice a day and getting the mass thermally charged and let it dissipate over the next 12 hours.

Supposed to blow traditional gas and oil fired furnaces out of the water efficiency wise. From my reading, on the efficiency, they can't be touched.

 

[Adam]

thats electric heat Irv...

I had resistive heating in an apartment in college. Sometime around when I moved in (August time frame, so still hot outside in Illinois), I was testing it out and clicked it on to make sure that it worked. I then forgot that I turned it on and left for the day.

Upon opening the door that night, and about the same time that I felt my skin begin to melt, I swear that I saw some free floating plasma just before the fusion reaction. Holy ish, it was hot in there.