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Home-Built Woodburning Furnaces
"Our entire house is warm as toast and we save $800 to $1,000 a year," says Darwin Reyne, Rushmore, Minn., about his home-built hot water wood-burning furnace.
Reyne's heater is 30 in. long, 30 in. wide and 36 in. high. A water jacket wrapped around the 24-in. sq. firebox holds about 30 gal. of water and is cover
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Home-Built Woodburning Furnaces ENERGY Wood Burners (65) 8-1-9 "Our entire house is warm as toast and we save $800 to $1,000 a year," says Darwin Reyne, Rushmore, Minn., about his home-built hot water wood-burning furnace.
Reyne's heater is 30 in. long, 30 in. wide and 36 in. high. A water jacket wrapped around the 24-in. sq. firebox holds about 30 gal. of water and is covered with about 3 1/2 in. of protective insulation.
"With good wood it'll hold a fire for 10 to 12 hours," says Reyne. "We built it to supplement our existing hot water oil-fired furnace but now the only time I turn on the oil burner is if we'll be gone for an extended period of time, and during the early spring or fall when only small amounts of heat are needed."
Reynes has used his furnace to heat the family's large 4-bedroom home for the past 3 years and says every floor ù including the basement ù is heated evenly. "Our regular furnace doesn't heat nearly as well as the one we built. Total cost of materials was just $275 but I wouldn't trade it for a factory job."
Reyne tied his home-built furnace to his existing furnace using the original pump on the furnace and located it right next to it in the basement. The stove is built out of 3/16th-in. steel place. He lined the lower half with fire brick and used old castiron radiators for the grates. It has an ash pan about 3 1/2 in. deep that needs emptying once a week. There is a 210? pop-off valve on top, along with a temperature gauge.
When the wood heater is in use, the water pump must run continuously to keep water in the stove from overheating so Reyne overrides the existing furnace's automatic controls.
"Water goes in the lower left corner of the stove, pumped to the rear and back out the right front corner. The pump runs continuously at 5 psi or less," says Reyne.
Reyne and his son also built a hot air add-on furnace for his son's home, using the existing fan. That furnace has also been a success.
Contact: FARM SHOW Followup, Darwin Reyne, Rt. 1, Rushmore, Minn. 56168 (ph 507 478-4213).
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