Wood Stove Selection!

Here's my opinion, take what you will out of it. I would look into an inside stand alone wood stove with two blowers. I would make a plentum to run the two discharges off the top of the stove into. To get the heat into the other rooms use round furnace pipe coming from the plentum. It would give it a rustic but modern look with the exposed heat runs. At the end of the runs a person just puts a register cover on to clean the look up.

 

I still think the less than open floor plan may make things difficult to circulate and move warm to all areas of the house.

 

I am going to chime in on this one too. I would like to see more insulation in the attic of the home he is building. R13 in the walls in Missouri would probably be ok. But, an R- 38 in the attic is almost standard in new construction nationwide. For heating and cooling purposes. That R-38 is achieved with a 12" fiberglass batt. Pretty cheap at any home center .... Depot, Lowe's or Menard's. Once insulated properly the choice of wood burner is less complicated.
I would plug the Kuuma Wood Furnace and if he is still in the design phase a placement in a room off the attached garage would make it easy to handle wood at any time.
Insulation is lifetime of the home investment the furnace, wood burner, wood stove or wood boiler is going at some time to be replaced. Insulation makes that heating unit work less.... last longer.
Its the builder in me coming..

 

I think a indoor wood furnace is going to be his best best, as it will be cheaper then a OWB, and he will still get even heat distribution through the house!

 

We are heating 2200 SF ranch and 2200 SF basement (unfinished) with a stove located in the basement. This is our third year and we try to make insulation, window and door upgrades every year. We have used minimal oil in three years now. The biggest improvement was replacing the old garage service door. We just did not realize how much cool air the stove was drawing thru the service door. Has made a 2-3 degree change for the first floor. Holds heat all night now on just a bed of coals. So far this year temps on the first floor are definitely held in the 67-72 degree range with letting the stove burn down the coal bed over night. Rather than load the stove for an overnight burn, we open the air controls and burn the coal bed down to ashes. So my advise is a large wood stove and then keep making adjustments and improvements for the air flow and making design changes while you are in the pre-construction mode. How many cord do you have CSS at this time?

 

I think many of us are missing the third option here...a forced air outdoor wood furnace. There are factory made options like this one http://www.menards.com/main/heating...furnace-2000-3000-sq-ft/p-1800853-c-12809.htm . For your setup I'd advocate putting a wood furnace in it's own little building right alongside the house and pipe in the warm air with a well insulated duct between the two. The only downside is that any time there is enough heat in the plenum of the furnace the blowers will need to run and you'll have (could be excess) heat. Some of the furnaces have forced draft blowers that rekindle the fire when a thermostat calls for heat so it can regulate the temperature somewhat. For those that do not have that feature one way to handle the excess heat would be what I call a "dump zone", essentially a duct that dumps all or most of the heat elsewhere until the thermostat calls for it. The thermostat would then operate a damper in the main duct to direct the air to the house or to the dump zone. Pretty simple HVAC stuff really, even though it sounds a little intimidating.

The two 550's will be plenty but you'll have to size the duct work accordingly. It doesn't have to be perfect just reasonably so. I'd place the furnace in the middle (outside of course) of one of your long walls so the warm air will have equi-distance to travel to each end of the house. For your setup I'd advocate putting the furnace in it's own little building right alongside the house and pipe in the warm air with a well insulated duct between the two.

 

I haven't read the entire thread, but just a quick suggestion:

Since you haven't built the house yet, why not design the house so it best fits a Wood stove as it's main heat source? That is pretty easy to do, I have some great design idea's on how I would like to do it. Your house design from a quick glance is about the worst design to have when it comes to wood heat.

I would design a house which has a "great room" in the middle of the house, with the stove in that room. Have that room have a cathedral ceiling, the kitchen and family room would be part of this great room (separated by 1/2 walls if you like...). Then all the bedrooms and/or office would be on the 2nd floor, surrounding the great room. So the door to each room is facing the open stove room. So you basically have an open hallway on the 2nd floor going around the outside of the stove room, with rooms off of that hallway. The 1st floor which is basically 1 big great room gets it's heat from the stove heat being close by and in same room, the rooms upstairs all get the heat into the door way (and vents into each room) from all the heat which is rising and filling up the rooms. You can think of the rooms upstairs like lofts.

Would be easy and cheap to build, bathroom on 1st floor would be up against the kitchen wall, and the 2nd floor bathroom would be just above that. So only 1 wall would require water pipes for 2 bathrooms and 1 kitchen.

With this design, you can make this as BIG, or as small as you want based on your needs and budget. In addition, you could also adjust materials per you budget of course, using high end stones, tiles and granites or lower end cheaper building materials you can afford....

Just a thought....

 

I have redesigned the house layout already here check it out, see what you think!
<iframe width="560" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/fUX7x3UNdqo" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

 

Got it, looks MUCH better for wood heating!

What software did you use to do the 3d rendering/design?

 

Machria, with your theoretical design, what is UNDER the bedrooms???

 

The sides of the great room. All the rooms on the 2nd floor are basically just "lofts" around the outside (3 sides) of the great room. So the center of the great room goes floor all the way up to the roof (2 stories up). But on the sides of the great room, there are regular 8 or 10' ceilings suspended. A couple large beams would go across the entire great room to help support the "lofts".

I have this all drawn up to scale in visio...

 

Have you stayed in a house or cabin with open front lofts? I'd suggest a couple of test-runs before you commit to that design. It looks really good on paper, especially for heating and I love the actual look of it but in reality the open area is like a funnel for all the noise going on down below. We stayed in one with my wife's entire family over the xmas holiday and even with a 3/4 wall (horizontally not vertically) in the loft it was really noisy and I'm hard of hearing!

 

My design has full walls for the "loft" rooms. But they have vents up high on the wall a few feet long x 12" tall that can be opened or closed tight. That is how you control the heat in each room. Close or open the door, and/or vent to make it as warm or cool as you like in each room separately. I also have glass on that wall in each room, so you have a cool view down into the great room, that can also be opened if you like, and/or shut and privacy with blinds or drapes...