looking for expert opinions

[NNYorker]

I would call the company and ask to see the test reports the following claims are based on.

• Can produce up to 500,000 BTU's per house on a continual basis.
• This furnace burning dry split cured oak and using 50,000 BTU's per hour will need to be loaded every 26.6. hours.
• This furnace burning dry split cured oak and using 100,000 BTU's per hour will require loading every 13.3 hours.

They seem a bit spurious to me.

And this statement alone would have set my threat radar pinging at DefCon level 1

Dry wood weighs 12 times less than green wood or 1# of dry wood will weigh 12#'s when cut green the 11# difference is water so for each 1 of dry wood you throw in an outdoor boiler it is 1# of wood and about 1 and 1/2 gallons of water--this is where the corrosion issue comes to play

It gets better with the " New 3' unit" -- (broken link removed to http://www.ebay.com/itm/OUTDOOR-WOOD-FURNACE-BOILER-HEATER-STOVE-FREE-HEAT-/320835289840?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item4ab34602f0) --- 50,000 BTU's for 38.9 hrs..........................

 

[wardog]

I would call the company and ask to see the test reports the following claims are based on.

• Can produce up to 500,000 BTU's per house on a continual basis.
• This furnace burning dry split cured oak and using 50,000 BTU's per hour will need to be loaded every 26.6. hours.
• This furnace burning dry split cured oak and using 100,000 BTU's per hour will require loading every 13.3 hours.

They seem a bit spurious to me.

And this statement alone would have set my threat radar pinging at DefCon level 1

Dry wood weighs 12 times less than green wood or 1# of dry wood will weigh 12#'s when cut green the 11# difference is water so for each 1 of dry wood you throw in an outdoor boiler it is 1# of wood and about 1 and 1/2 gallons of water--this is where the corrosion issue comes to play

All that to a totally, freshly cut, green consumer looking for a reasonably inexpensive way to lower electric consumption during the winter are things totally unknown especially if they have never burned wood in anything other than a camp fire..
I guarantee you calling the company will get you exactly more of the same of what the 6 page thread going back to 2009 cited above showed about communicating with the company owner. I've wasted even more money in my 1 to 3 hour phone calls to him in which all this stuff claimed spews from his lips. Just take a look at the questioning of HIS claim of "the finest in updraft GASIFICATION!" I knew so little, as a consumer of an OWB at the time of my purchase, I didn't realize that I had total knowledge of gasification merely from the campfires when I burned wood at times the wind was blowing. I did notice the harder it blew the faster the fire turned that solid wood into a gas. I also noticed that the smoke (gas) from that conversion went up into the tree limbs above and scorched them. Looking back on all that. I guess merely goes to show that I understood gasification but didn't realize that the concept of burning wood in an enclosed vessel with wind blowing onto it make I burn hotter/faster and allowing the vast majority of that heat to be lost as gas or smoke out the chimney.
I wished that I could have captured the heat from that 24" smoke stack glowing red hot and the 12 to 18" of flames above it or from the smoke bellowing above all that!
I'm guessing that a 16 gauge firebox submitted to that FORGE type temperatures wouldn't last vey long but hey mine never made it past a month before it started leaking which I suspect is the result of faulty weld(s) that look good until they are exposed to the tie and temperature. Funny how this leak is right in the corner where the wood is burning right above the forced in air blast.

 

[heaterman]

I feel bad for you Wardog, and hundreds of others like you who get sucked in by the claims of this company and many others like it. They are not the only company "blowing smoke" in your face by a long way.
As long as this guy and many others can post garbage like this and get away with it, wood burning will always be a bastard step child of the heating industry.
What's the answer?
I don't know.......
I hate to say more regulation because that inevitably gets "doctored" in favor of the big players in any given industry. Just look at the EPA Phase 1 and 2 emission/efficiency standard.
What a joke. Manufacturers claiming 95%+ efficiency? How does a consumer with little to no prior knowledge sort out the good from the bad when all you have to go on is bogus ratings generated from a severely flawed test protocol?

Places like this help a lot but there are dozens of other wood burning sites out there where people seem to be perfectly content to chug along at 40% efficiency and cover a section of land with smoke.
Sad to say it but the wood burning market is still very much buyer beware.