No hot water or heating - Heating & Cooling

You're getting a new wood stove and you have many decisions to make. Other than brand, you need to decide whether you will use hot air or hot water to get the heat from the wood stove to the living space.

If you have a hot water heating system already installed then you obviously need to have a water stove. If you are thinking about what to install in a new home or already have hot air then you need to consider what will be the best option for you.

Now if you are installing a new system then you want to go hot water. That is by far the best way of heating and will be the best way to heat using an outdoor wood stove. Hot water heating is one of the best ways to get great heat transfer from the fire to the water to the air.

If you have hot air heat and want to heat with wood then you can install a wood hot air furnace, and set it beside your existing furnace. The ductwork will have to be reworked to get the heat from the wood furnace to the existing ductwork. Or you can install a coil into the ductwork on the supply side of the furnace, for the water to run through from a hot water wood burner. This is probably the best way to heat if you have a hot air furnace. Installing the hot water coil is a very simple process and the piping is fairly easy to hookup.

Hot air wood furnaces are almost always a inside the structure appliance, which means that you have the mess of the wood and the ashes inside. This dust and dirt mess is something that is much better kept outside where it can be cleaned up much easier.

Bottom line here is that you want to use a hot water wood burning stove if you can. You will be much happier with the heat that you get from burning wood.