Home Improvement → Heating with a hydronic wood stove add on

I have a 2,000 sq ft home built in the year 2000. I have baseboard hydronic heat and an oil fired furnace.

I'm no stranger to heating with wood, yet know very little about the possibilities of adding wood heat to this hydronic system. The existing oil system is alive and well, and I do not wish to replace it.

I am interested in learning about indoor wood stove add ons that would work in harmony with my existing oil furnace. The current oil heat system has three heat zones for the living space and a fourth for an indirect hot water heater.

I do not want an outdoor wood furnace, but I am interested in learning more about indoor wood fired add on units that will work in harmony with what I already have installed.

I have been all over google with this, but it would be nice to hear from those who aren't attached to the retail end of add ons. Labor of wood issues aside, I wonder if they are worth pursuing, who makes a good safe unit, and like that. I'm thinking if the ROI is longer than 5 years or so, well - maybe it's not worth the trouble. It all depends upon how sturdy the unit is. Just a ball park of maybe $4,000 tops maximum budget comes to mind.

Thanks

I had no idea you could do it with a wood stove although it shouldn't be impossible. I don't think it's just a simple add on for an existing stove though. You'll likely need a water jacket and the stove will have to be designed for it.

I have a friend who has a wood boiler in his basement. It's not an outdoor wood boiler. He can burn both cord wood and coal in his. It works very well. I see them at tractor supply. There are also gasification boilers which supposedly turn the wood into woodgas and heat more efficiently that way. But from what I hear they are expensive.

My parents bought a Wood Furnace in the late 70s/early 80s to heat our house and our hot water. I loved it when they fired it up, because our house was much warmer than with the oil furnace and we had lots more hot water.

Ours was built by a local guy and his sons who also did auto repairs so they had a big shop to do the builds in. It was basically a big box with a pipe coiled around the firebox for the water to run through to heat up. It heated the water to 180 degrees to keep the hot water tank at about 120-140.

Ours sat right next to the oil burner, and was tied in to the different zones. There was some valves to turn to switch from oil to wood. It had a thermostat that controlled the damper. My dad would put wood in before he went to bed, and have to put a couple more pieces in overnight some nights.

We burned about 13 cords of wood a winter. I spent a lot of time helping him cut/split/stack and then haul the wood from the woodshed to the garage.

This was in the Adirondacks in upstate NY.

TD