Outdoor Wood Furnaces Help Homeowners Cut Heating Costs
In rural areas many homeowners consider outdoor wood furnaces a requirement for saving money in heating their home, especially if they live in or near heavily wooded locations. Birch wood is also the cleanest and hottest burning wood for running a wood furnace.
Outdoor wood furnaces are clean forms of energy that are highly sought after by individuals seeking a “Green” heating solution that doesn’t use fossil fuels. In Canada many homes in remote locations are heated with wood burning furnaces because of the abundance of hard wood available to them. The most common use of heating are forced air systems. These systems pump heated water into a heat exchanger which drives an air handler that in turn delivers heated air via ducts within the home. Outdoor hydronic heaters can be combined with outdoor furnaces to give a very efficient heating system.
With the increasing popularity of outdoor wood furnaces, there are many new manufactures that have entered the market helping reduce the cost and installation of wood burning furnaces. These new designs offer increased performance creating more heat energy using less wood than ever before. The most important factor homeowners consider is the price versus the return of investment. Outdoor furnaces are by no means cheap, but the affordability lies in the ability to burn wood that is by far cheaper and cleaner burning than gas, or electricity. The average annual cost of operating a boiler on natural gas is only about $1900.00, compared to $900.00 for a wood burning furnace, and if your property were on a wooded location, this cost would only be labor based.
There are many other benefits to using outdoor furnaces, one being that maintenance and disposal of ash is far easier outdoors, and with the right boiler setup, you can even provide electricity with a steam generator that can totally remove your dependence on power grid electricity.
If you are planning to remodel your home, this will be the perfect time to consider the energy potential outdoor wood furnaces offer. Even if you are on a tight budget, you can easily install a complete hydronic baseboard heater system that will provide comforting radiant heat to the rooms within your home at fraction of the cost of forced air systems, of course if your home already has an air duct system then porting a wood burning boiler to your existing heating system will also be very affordable.
The power and overall efficiency of outdoor wood furnaces offer substantial flexibility and cost savings over gas or electrical furnaces that provide the same heating energy.
