This Is How I Heat My House For FREE!!!!

free Heat free Heat I don't care what anyone has to say about this to me this is free Heat the last time I did a video showing off my outdoor wood furnace I think I gave it the title this is how I heat my house for free and I got a thousand and one comments pointing out that it's not free and okay so maybe I'll call it free heat and then put an asterisk after it the way I Define free heat is at the end of the month I don't go to my mailbox and I pull out an envelope that has the gas bill on it there I get no bill to heat my house with this outdoor wood furnace and on top of that we live with complete disregard for the thermostat we keep our house as hot as we want it because of this this is what I call free heat now in order for it to be free there's a lot of paying that you have to do and the paying that you do is labor like all this firewood that you see here and the firewood that you see in my woodshed uh that isn't free also where are you getting your wood from and all of my wood before I started Ohio wood burner all my wood came from local farmers who I have learned hate trees and man they bulldozed down trees and they light them all on fire had found out though that if you ask them hey you mind if I go out into that field and cut up all that wood they say take everything that you want so I would get all my wood for free to heat with my outdoor wood furnace and I think if you're really serious about getting one of these you got to realize where you know where are you getting your wood from because I don't know if buying your firewood I don't know if that makes sense when I think about calculating my return on investment and my pursuit of free Heat buying firewood I don't know even if you are getting it cheap which we all know boiler wood is the cheapest wood that you can buy you still got to pay for it if you're going to buy your firewood to heat your house with an outdoor wood furnace I don't know guys I think you'd be better off just to forget all of this and pay the gas man or the propane or the the electric company this is a Hardy uh outdoor wood furnace or a boiler whatever you want to call it Hardy calls in an outside wood burning furnace this is not a pressurized boiler and it works just like your heater does in your car or your truck it heats up water it pumps it through a heat exchanger a fan blows through it this furnace also Heats our domestic hot water and we have the hottest shower in Northeast Ohio [Laughter] that's how it works so this is a this has a firebox and it is a forced air fire box so it doesn't burn all the time and it is not burning right now the furnace is set up on an aquastat which measures the temperature of the water and it keeps it between 150 and 170 degrees Fahrenheit when the house asks for heat there's a pump on the back of this furnace which circulates the hot water through the ground into the heat exchanger and then back into the furnace to be reheated that you know brings the temperature of the Furnace down which then kicks on the forced air to stoke up the Firebox all of that can be seen back here here is the control panel these hearties guys they don't make them anymore which is another problem because now I'm wondering you know about Parts availability now my furnace lady Mrs Shadle she lives up in Cherry Valley shadel's furnace excellent dealer she's got to be one of the most knowledgeable furnace people I've ever met she's an amazing lady and some of you uh know her and that is from the area so you know she is a very great reputation here is the controls this is all analog stuff there is nothing digital and in theory all of these parts you could find at a hardware store so it brings in Grid power from the house and it goes into a ground fault and that runs the the forced air fan and the water pump which in the world of outdoor wood boilers is called a taco pump I don't know why they call it a taco pump but man wouldn't that be cool if one really existed huh the taco pump pumps hot water under the ground into the house and then it comes back into the tank goes into the bottom of the tank to be reheated when the temperature here's the temperature so my water is now sitting at 160 degrees when the temperature drops to 150 this solenoid pops open the flapper and the electric motor starts blowing into the the Firebox the blower you know re-stokes the fire and that brings the water temperature back up and when it hits 170 the fan shuts off and it just does that all day long and the bottom line is we have the warmest uh house and we got the hottest shower man it's got a couple safety features this is a low temperature gauge some nights it's possible for your fire to go out which is a bad condition and if your water temperature drops to a hundred degrees it shuts everything off so that because if you're asleep the uh the pump keeps running and the house furnace keeps running and it will suck every bit of heat out of your furnace and bring it you know way way way down so this way it's like a fail safe it'll shut it off at 100 degrees and it gives you a chance to get out here and to figure out what went wrong guys have been following the progress of my wood pile and some of you have expressed um respect for the hard work that I've been and showing uh and saying how impressed that you've been on how big this pile is getting but guys I am telling you this is this is not enough wood to get us through the winter in fact I would suspect that this is probably going to get us through December that is how hungry these things are they eat firewood they do they go through a lot for me though the benefit being you know a firewood producer I generate a lot of waste and since I only sell value added firewood so oh the sticks have to be pretty exactly 16 inches long no rot no nothing I throw the Uglies in here the off Cuts weird shapes and ones that show rot these just get thrown into the pile and they become my firewood I left the doors open so that's rekindled the fire but that's what it looks like when it's burning inside you know the door would be closed so all that heat is uh going right into the water jacket so this is a 100 gallon I think tank of water and the water jacket surrounds the the Firebox and I think the water level comes up to to about here so I'm going to shut this up that's the ash bin you shut it and then the Firebox we shut it like this and that's how you do it I just heard the water pump kick on so this is running so this is hot man this is as hot as the water is hot to the touch I can't really keep my hand on it so that means my forced air furnace in the house is running and it's blowing through the heat exchanger inside of my house there is no indication that there is anything different in there except instead of having one thermostat I have two and it's those square honeywells that are in pretty much every house in the United States I have two of them and that is the only thing different inside the house if you were to walk in you would never know that we heat with wood so the uh the blower motor just kicked on so the blower motor just kicked on it kicked on a little bit above 150 but the flapper is now pulled up by the solenoid and it is blowing into the Firebox this is a clean out just so you can see the ash bin so let's go around to the other side I'll open up the ash door and I'll show you what it looks like inside ah 50 year old knees and that's the that's the ash bin the door that we were just looking at is back here the wood is sitting up on top there's the grates and the forest area just rekindles the Embers and then the wood starts burning again oh I'm stuck down here guys oh 50 year old knees don't get old guys that cycle just keeps going on and on and on and that's how this thing works I'm not an expert here I've just had one of these you know for 16 17 winners what I would say is that these are probably some of the most inefficient machines ever made they are they are inefficient man they waste so much heat especially the Hardy because you see the Smoke Stack this if you were to go up and stand on top and peek down into the smokestack you would look directly into the Firebox uh some of these have like a separate chamber but the heat can get trapped in it but then the smoke comes up around and then out through it this just I mean at night time you can see a flame shooting out of this thing just tremendous amount of heat that's lost through the Smoke Stack the other loss is on the ground because these are you know I have four PEX lines so like three quarter inch PEX lines that take water um in and out of the house and in the winter time you know when we have a foot of snow on the ground you'll see green grass where the um where the PEX lines go so that is another inefficiency and if you're getting your firewood for free you probably don't lose any sleep over the fact that it's inefficient but you know if you're sensitive to all of that extra work or polluting the air with particulate matter because we you know let's be realistic here wood smoke is not healthy for you and while this is outdoors if you're not responsible with this if you have neighbors that are downwind you know boy that looks nice doesn't it I'll come out here in the middle of the winter to load it and I just like to stand here and watch it and just watch it work but if you're not sensitive to neighbors you you can really make some enemies with one of these things because if you put garbage wood in these things I mean they just belch black smoke there are reports that's very irresponsible owners you know that burn tires and shingles and Asphalt in these things oh gosh so these aren't for everyone if you got neighbors especially neighbors that are downwind um this probably isn't the way to go but you know even in the middle of winter time you know the prevailing winds in the winter time is this way but man it doesn't matter different weather systems come in the wind's going you know that way the Smoke's going this way it's getting pushed down to the ground or it's going you know so it doesn't matter if it is the prevailing winds this smoke will still um you know it'll blow on your own house so when you set one of these up you do want to find where the prevailing winds go but do recognize that you know there will be days where the Smoke's blowing right on your house there are times when we're in there and we're like you know house on fire you know and you're looking around and you realize that the the furnace is blowing right onto your house I think the other thing too guys these are getting pretty expensive at least I where I am with my age right now and how long we want to stay living in this house if this machine were to break I don't know if I would replace it because these things are getting expensive and if the cheap end is like fifteen thousand dollars for one of these things that buys a lot of propane you know how many years of propane could you heat your your house with at the cost of this before you get your return on investment now when I bought this these Hardies were cheap they were the most inexpensive ones out there I think I paid five thousand dollars for it and that was with all of the you know all of the PEX lines the the orange tubes that you see here uh dad and I put this in ourselves I paid a buddy a hundred bucks to dig the trench to the house and we were we were in business from there it's just fine the firewood I of course had some uh peripheral benefits to this outdoor wood furnace because firewood will become your hobby these things must they they have a big appetite you will be making firewood with these and that is what developed my hobby into a side hustle and then developed into a business for Ohio wood burner part of the calculus I had in making this leap from leaving corporate life to becoming self-employed was I felt that I was in a no lose situation because had I not sold a single stick of firewood it wouldn't have gone the weights because I'd have just burn it in my furnace that was my mentality you know that was starting off when you know you just got a few chords to your name and you're just trying to figure out if this is actually going to work but that was part of the that was part of my mental calculus of becoming self-employed and certainly developing my interest and my passion for firewood started with this thing right here I will never forget this when Mr Shadle he's um he passed away a few years back but when he came and delivered this furnace I had a stack of firewood it was the biggest pile of wood that I had ever made in my life and I had it sitting over there and I remember I asked him I go here's my wood for the year you know you think this is going to be enough and he just looked at me with kind of a grin on his face and um you know that was that was his way of telling me I needed to get busy because and he was right that it like got me through November my one of my favorite TV shows was Survivorman if you remember watching him on the Discovery Channel he had a motto uh whenever you feel your your firewood pile is big enough make it five times bigger and that's the case for an outdoor wood furnace I don't know if I've ever gone through a winter uh with enough firewood and when I told you that this is not enough firewood uh I I still will be building up on this you know through the winter because my production still goes on for Ohio wood burner I still have logs coming in and um you know the off cuts the Uglies they don't get sold they come into here I don't do a very good job accounting for that on paper to me uh that is time better spent splitting and stacking and selling versus you know calculating my return on investment and how much of a write-off I can have on the wood that I'm buying to me I'm heating my house for free and um especially this year when you see the price of oil and propane I don't know what natural gas is but oh wow I am so glad that we are heating with wood but now you know the emphasis is on will this party continue uh continue to crank out the Heat so let's take a look at this again all right so it's just cooking away I will be adding some new wood to it just to keep it keep it fed I probably come out here to minimum two times a day one in the morning one in the evening but uh when you have one of these especially when you work at home I'd come out here all the time I just like to look at it and you know it helps just to punch the the logs down and you know to keep the wood going down to the grates and uh that makes it uh it makes it burn nice it's just fun to watch and man there's some good heat coming off of here too I'm feeling it feels great doesn't it look nice I think it looks great part of my routine I wear a like a knit cap because these things will burn the hair right off your head and your eyebrows and your eyelashes and I'm speaking from experience I wear a heavy wool coat with long sleeves because you know you you get it up to here it'll burn the hairs off your arms and then I wear a long pair of welder's gloves and uh that that seems to work nice I try to avoid the smoke um you know breathing wood smoke isn't healthy and I consider this like a prolonged exposure opportunity so whenever I open the door I try to stay away from the door and let the smoke blow out the other way but is an outdoor wood furnace in your guys's future well if um I think if you have a long-term commitment to your current house uh if you have the physicality or you have family members that can help you if you have the ability or the desire to go find free firewood and I'm telling you it is out there you just gotta find it it's amazing how easy it is to find free firewood once you learn how it works if you can do that and I think the last thing too if you are the type of people that don't go on vacation in the wintertime outdoor wood furnace could work for you these things you just can't walk away from them on the weekend and shut them down it's bad for them to you know heat up and then cool off you know it's bad on the joints and everything you can start getting leaks or stress fractures but remember these are filled with water okay so this just cut off so the the Firebox got to 170 degrees and the Firebox just shut off it's closed the flapper so now all the air going into the Firebox is now choked off and that's going to allow the fire to go out except you know obviously I have the door open so let's close this door okay but if you are the kind of people that go on vacation in the winter time you go on skiing weekends or like your getaways this probably is not for you unless you have neighbors who you can trust but even then oh I don't know if that would work because how would they know if your fire had gone out at three o'clock in the morning you know uh you walk away from one of these they will freeze up it's filled with water and you know pipes can burst and that's bad so we are the kind of family you know where kids were younger in school you know you don't travel during the school year and we just were always home so it worked out for us we had never left to go on vacation when the kids were younger during the school year plus my wife worked at the school so you know the uh that's some of the realities of these uh when I say free Heat you know what are you giving up for that free heat so you're there's a lot of labor involved you got to find your wood you are committed to this machine for as long as you're operating it and for us we fire it up after Halloween and it shuts we shut it down after Easter and we just use space heaters in the house after that it's kind of like in the spring you're getting tired of it you know I used to call it hearty knee my knee because I have to like bend down a little bit to throw the log in man my knee would start hurting in February it's a serious Affliction Hardy knee consider all those if you're looking at an outdoor wood furnace ours has been a home run we had ours paid for our return on investment at uh going into our third winter that's how fast it was because we got a bigger house propane as expensive it was then and it's expensive again now but I would say beyond the dollars and cents there's a quality of life guys having one of these having a warm house to come home to not worrying about that stupid um thermostat dial and you know having that hot shower gosh our showers are awesome so that is the Hardy H2 outdoor wood furnace free heat I don't care what anyone says this is free free to me it's free because I don't have to write a check at the end of the month to pay to heat the house free all right guys I hope everyone has a great day

Channel: Ohio Wood Burner Ltd

Views: 876,852

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Id: B-BWPzmLf5E

Length: 23min 34sec (1414 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 16 2022