TJ:
I am no expert by anymeans, but I have learned a few things over the last 5 decades. Wood furnaces are the best form of appliance to heat a home - period. I grew up with Natural Gas forced air in town, wood at my grandparents and the choice is obvious. Celluloid fibre over fossil fuels any day of the week.
Any smoke from a wood furnace that is properly set up and cleaned regularly should not cause any environmental concerns. Remember the main by-product of burning wood aside from steam is CO2 which is what trees need to breathe. Trees breathe CO2 and expell O2 which humans need to breathe to live. It is a symbiotic relationship. Anyone who says a wood stove is environmentally dangerous needs to go back to school.
However, as much as I am an avid proponent of wood heat, I agree with Nik and the others on these outdoor stove thingys. The mill next door actually uses one to heat their debarker shed. It is useless.. does not burn wood efficiently, does produce an awful lot of smoke, does not burn hot enough so there is ash that also floats around.. Provides very little effective heat compared to the negatives.
On the whole that is still not a problem as any forest fire which is a natural occurrance and a desireable one for mother nature has varying temps as well. Particulate matter is great for the soil, but bad for lungs... oh well always a flip side.
Anyways.. to the point. Since you are going to new construction, you may want to consider a traditional forced air wood furnace. If you build to accomodate wood storage.. (I incorporated a 14x12 foot wood room where I can store over 10 cords - ceilings are 10 foot - so if I fill to the max I have almost 12 cords into my building plan as well as my cold room) plan for ash removal via an outside door at grade it can be a pretty impressive system.
Kerr produces a number of Wood Funaces that can be stand alones or used in combination with other sources of heat. I used to have my
Scotty II / Scotty SSpaired up with a Propane fired forced air furnace. Now that has been replaced and the Scotty is paired up with an electric forced air furnace. These side mounted units primarily provide the air distribution and filtration for the Scotty. Oh, my house is basically a tri-level with about 3200 square feet of living space. The Scotty II heats it pretty well even in our extreme cold and I usually burn between 4-6 cords of mixed soft/hard wood over the course of our 6-7 month heating cycle.
My father-in-law has for years used a Kerr
Scotsman. This is a 140,000 BTU wood forced air furnace and has had a hot water plumbing system installed in it way back when he got it. So, he has both forced air and essentially hot water radiators. It used to provide all the hot water for the house as well. He now uses an electric backup water heater for the summer months which replaced the old oil fired water heater he used for the summer.
You may want to investigate a forced air or even a water radiator system fueld by a wood furnace as a viable alternative. It will provide good moist heat, make use of you dead wood on your wood lot, provide soil ammendments (ash), give back to the environment in a friendly hug a tree manner and will certainly save you money in the pocket book. I heat my house for about $200.00Cdn maximum a year.
Yes, in case y'all missed that... how many of you can heat your home for $200.00/year or less. Some years it only costs me about $50.00 -- fuel for the saw table and Ellie :!: and provides me with an immense amount of fun, excercise which my heart appreciates and I get seat time to boot :wink: 8) :lol:
Oh I also use a Sentinel or a GSW 2000 equivalent double wall insulated stainless steel chimney, housed inside a surround to regulate the flue temperature.. Normally I no longer have chimney fires, like we used to before we put up the surround. The cause was temperature fluctuations over the 35 feet of chimney. Now with the surround, the temps remain almost equal all the way up to the top of the chimney as the cold air does not play havoc with the stainless.
