Replies

1. 
   CanadianGrizzly | Nov 07, 2007 05:47pm | #1

   Perhaps I'm biased but I prefer a woodstove. I have a forced air wood furnace that I took out of our basement. Eventually I want to place it outside adjacent to the shop and duct the hot air into the shop. I can take the shop from well below freezing to 70F in under an hour. Prior to you purchase price out pellets... depending on how cold it is and how well insulatred you could be going through a number of bags a day. 

   
   

   ---

   Edited 11/7/2007 9:48 am ET by CanadianGrizzly

1. 
   loucarabasi | Nov 08, 2007 11:48am | #7

   Mr grizzly, My temps range from sometimes 15 to 38 degrees in the winter. I'm affraid I'll be feeding logs every 15 minutes. One thing I left out is that my brother is a tree surgeon and I have access to all the free split wood I need. A friend of mine wants to give me a wood burner its about 22 years old. I stopped my his house to write down the info on the back so that I could research it and find out if its big enough to heat the shop. I'm not ready to pull the trigger on my forced air unit becouse of the added expense on oil fired forced air. Am I just overthinking this?

   Thanks for the help, Lou

1. 
   dkellernc | Nov 08, 2007 05:31pm | #8

   FWIW, I heat my basement shop with a woodstove.  Assuming you're physically able to handle cutting and splitting wood, I think you'll find that excess firewood will fall into your lap on a regular basis, so long as you're willing to cut it and haul it away.  I live in downtown Raleigh, NC, and for 11 years, I've never had to buy firewood - there's that much trimming and felling going on in a 5 block radius.

   However, you should realize that you'll need an auxillary source of heat in addition to the wood stove, because you will not want your shop to go below freezing if you keep any finishes, you have water stones, etc...  Also, be sure to get a down-draft or side-draft woodstove (such as made by Vermont Castings).  An inexpensive, up-draft woodstove will burn wood extremely fast.  A side or down draft stove will take at least 3-5 times as long to burn the same load of wood.

   DK in North Carolina

2. 
   CanadianGrizzly | Nov 10, 2007 12:41am | #14

   With access to free wood I wouldn’t even think twice about a woodstove. A good airtight unit will heat your space for free. Once the stove is started and you get a good bed of coals you will need to reload possibly every 3-5 hours depending on the type of wood you are burning. Factors will be how well insultated and the quality of the stove. But with the money that you would spend on pellets in one year you could purchase a top notch woodstove that will work for decades after you purchase the stove. Do not scrimp on the original purchase of the stove because you do get what you paid for like anything else. Just for information I have a Scotsman Kerr Freestanding Woodfurnace http://www.kerrheating.com/products/Wood.PDF and love it. It was built in 1980 as works like new...I’m sceptical a pellet stove would last half that long because they have moving parts in them. My stove can take 32” logs  and the door is 15X15. My shop ceiling and floor are currently uninsultated and I can easily keep the shop (similiar size 940 sq feet 10 foot ceiling) comfortable in Northern Canada. You don’t need a furnace however so do some research for other options... the only downfall with the furnace currently is the noise from the squirrel cage fan that runs constantly while its heating, as such I’m considering putting it outside and pumping in the hot air. You circumstances with the free wood however to me make this a no brainer. My 2 cents.  

2. 
   battlinjack | Nov 07, 2007 09:43pm | #2

   Personally, I like a wood stove better. It's what I have. But my shop is small. With a shop as large as yours, I think the pellet would be a better choice simply because they are more efficient.
   Yes, you have to buy pellets and no, you can't burn scrap wood, but in the long run, I think you'll heat better and save more with a pellet stove.

   About the only way a wood stove would be cheaper to use is if you were to cut ALL your own wood. Then it's just your time and labor.

3. 
   colebearanimals | Nov 08, 2007 12:00am | #3

    

       Hi Lou,

               I have a wood burning stove that heats my 2000 sq ft shop that has 11' to the bottom of open trusses. In the winter I can get the shop comfortable in about an hour from the overnight cold. But it seldom gets below freezing here on the Southern Oregon coast. I'm sure it gets colder than that in NJ.

               Being able to burn scraps is a big plus for me because I generate quite a bit of it. But, if you're not going to have much scrap and want to be able to run and control the temp when you're not there then the pellet stove sounds like it might fit the bill .           

              A while back I was thinking about a pellet stove for the house but was a little reluctant because I didn't want to be locked in to burning someone else's product, although there has never been an availability issue that I know of.

              But if I were you ( plus the fact that you will have forced air to at least keep things from freezing ) I would get a wood burning stove.

                                                    Paul

4. 
   tinkerer2 | Nov 08, 2007 06:23am | #4

   Would you consider an outside wood boiler.  Probably quite a bit more expensive but you do have a thermostat capability and with no fire in the building it is completely free of danger of starting a fire.  I have one but I have radiant heat in the concrete floor.  Very nice heat and will stay warm long after the fire is out.  Disadvantage is that it takes a long time to get it to a comfortable temperature.  Because of the nature of the beast it seems that you can keep comfortable at about ten degrees less temp F that with convection heat.

5. 
   TheTrimWright | Nov 08, 2007 06:41am | #5

   You will want to check with your insurance agent before you make your final decision. I have found if you put a wood stove in your shop they will not cover any losses resulting from a fire caused by the stove, also some companys will cancle your coverage if you keep the wood stove. Good luck.

1. 
   loucarabasi | Nov 08, 2007 11:39am | #6

   TrimWright, Good point on the insurance issue.

   I'll Have to check into it

   Thanks, Lou

6. 
   PADDYDAHAT | Nov 08, 2007 05:55pm | #9

   Lou. I have heated with pellet, coal and wood and now use a Sentry coal stove -burning wood 90% of the time- and hard coal is the best BTU/$$ value and the best heat.

   BUT--- It all comes down to where you live  and the cost/ availability of each fuel. I set up a pellet for a well to do relative who loves it as it's simple, effective, expensive and he thinks he's roughing it on the north shore of long island when his buddies hang out. I used a parlour coal stove getting hard coal delivered to my  5(stored one ton) poly olive barrels in Suffolk county LI for $95/ ton in 2001. A face cord of green wood was $150 dumped in the driveway, ps. there is no cheap wood on long island.

   Now in east Tenn. I get an 8' bed pickup load piled as high as the cab for $45, delivered and stacked. These are ash,maple and oak splits from mainly crotches left after they chunk out the logs for boards and are hard, dense, heavy and cut 20 to 24" long and at least a year old -read dry - that burn great.

   A wood stove burns only  wood effectively while a coal stove -usually built heavier for a hotter fire- burns anything and usually with better draft controls. A coal stove must have a bottom-under the fuel bed- draft and many also have a side draft-at the same level as the fuel bed- like a wood stove. Coal ash goes in the trash and wood ash goes to the garden.

   If I didn't have the wood burner I would have no place to "store" my errant cuts.

   Al the best, Paddy

7. 
   frenchy | Nov 08, 2007 09:55pm | #10

   loucarabasi,

     I've heated much bigger shops than yours with wood stoves.  To me the crittical issue is how big is the door. Large door and you can use major chunks of hardwood and retain heat overnight.. small door and all you feed it are fast burning little scraps which means when you're in the midsts of something you have to stop and restoke the fire.

     I once kept my house warm all winter with nothing more than junk pallets I got free from a local factory.  Time to go to bed and I'd toss in every single big  chunk I had and close things up.. I'd wake up in the morning and toss some small stuff in and it would catch and quickly warm the house to over 70 degrees..   That was my method of regulating the heat output, lot of small scraps of softwoods and the house would sometimes get to near 80 degrees. I'd need to feed it every 1/2 hour or less though..  (nice when the outside temp is 30 below)   big large chunks and the temp would drop to mid to low 60's but burn for 8 hours or more..

8. 
   BilljustBill | Nov 09, 2007 07:46am | #11

   Lou,

   The pellet stove is cleaner, but.........Here in North Texas, two years ago there was a real and big shortage of pellets. 

   Secondly, the pellets are fed into the stove with an "Electric" motor... if you lose power, you pellet stove is dead.

   I heat using a Propane Central HVAC unit recycled from a new change-out for the house.  At $2.27 a gallon, it isn't cheap heat, but with good insulation and no worries about "sparks", I sleep a lot better!!

   Besides, when a morning comes and there's nothing ahead but pure shop time, and it's cold, windy, wet, or icy, there's nothing like being spoiled when you have a low cost automatic theromostat raise the temp in the shop about 30 minutes before you go out there....

     Bill

1. 
   loucarabasi | Nov 09, 2007 01:27pm | #12

   Did anyone here of a KENT TILE FIRE stove. The one my buddy wants to give me is a kent tile fire made in 1985. do you guys have any info

   Thanks, Lou

9. 
   potomac | Nov 09, 2007 11:51pm | #13

   I had a friend with a pellet stove when I lived in Driggs Idaho. (cold)
   If he would leave for the weekend, I would be over there shoveling them non-stop. His house was log, so the r-vlue was not that great, but I swore them off anyway, the pellets were expensive and far away to boot.
   I have a wood stove in my house now and a gas wall unit in my shop and in my house for backup. Being a trim carpenter who mills trim all day, I will never go without a wood stove again. Burning your raw scrap just makes sense. As for when you leave, if you have a pellet stove make sure you have a good friend close by and dependable.
   John

10. 
    woodtwister | Nov 11, 2007 04:24am | #15

    I have an airtight woodstove in my 24 x 24 insulated, stand-alone shop and it works very well. Does't take long to heat the shop and I can quickly dispose of my scrap for at least half the year.

    The stove is installed to code and I'm very careful with it. (I'm a volunteer fireman and it would be pretty embarrasing to burn down my own shop) However, my insurance man doesn't know about the stove. I burn wood in the house as well so I always have wood available.