Heatmaster Wood Furnaces
How It Works
1.) Your HeatMaster outdoor furnace is sited 30-100 ft from the house, preferably down wind. A concrete pad is convenient, but is not required, concrete blocks, railway ties or crushed rock work well also for a foundation.
2.) RhinoFlex insulated water lines are run underground from the outdoor furnace to your basement or crawl space.
3.) Hot water from your outdoor furnace is piped first to the water heater. A plate heat exchanger is used to preheat the water entering the water heater, providing unlimited hot water. The supply from the outdoor furnace then continues on to the forced air furnace or existing infloor heating. A coil is placed in the furnace plenum or another plate heat exchanger is used to heat an infloor system. Your existing water heater and heating system (heat pump, gas furnace, electric forced air furnace, boiler, etc.) will still work as they always did but are now used only as a backup. If you (or a neighbour or helpful relative) is available to feed your HeatMaster wood boiler then your backup system (electric, gas etc.) never comes on.
3.) Infloor heat in a garage or shop is great for buildings that need a steady even heat source 24/7.
4.) Unit heaters (combination radiator and blower) are better for buildings where the desired air temp is adjusted up and down (day and night, weekends etc.) or you have a large overhead door that opens / closes in the Winter.
5.) Your wood boiler can be installed in your shop or garage. Imagine loading your HeatMaster indoors as well as any heat that escapes goes to heating the building the boiler is in.
6.) Pools are usually heated in the spring and fall allowing the pool to be used in cooler weather. Normally the furnace is tied into the pool filter system using a tube and shell heat exchanger.
Use the furnace for heating buildings in the Winter and your pool or hot tub the rest of the year. The more you use your HeatMaster wood boiler the lower your heating bill will be…whatever time of year.
Load the furnace, prop your feet up, and don’t worry about it til tomorrow. This is wood burning the easy way.
We guarantee unlimited HOT water and WARM heat without the bill! Houses, mobile homes, pools, barns, shops, greenhouses, snow melt on a driveway – a HeatMaster wood boiler can heat almost anything!
More About Heamaster Wood Furnaces
HeatMaster indoor (yes, some models can be installed indoors) and outdoor wood furnaces are made in Manitoba (Winkler, MB to be exact), utilizing Manitoba workers, expertise and innovation.
I recommend the HeatMaster Wood Furnaces because they satisfied my own OWF (outdoor wood furnace) requirements:
1.) Environmentally friendly As a firewood supplier we pride ourselves on providing sustainable, carbon neutral heating alternative (firewood) to fossil fuels such as natural gas, heating oil or coal. Our OWF needed to do its part to keep smoke emissions low and heat output high to reduce our environmental footprint.
2.) Heat multiple buildings / components Quality outdoor wood furnaces aren’t cheap and if I was going to pay good money I wanted our furnace to heat our home, garage, shop and hot water efficiently and economically. I view the purchase cost of our OWF as prepaying a hydro or natural gas bill in advance.
3.) Look good Our yard is where we live, work and play and the OWF would be a part of that. We wanted something that worked hard and looked good while doing it and looked like it belonged in our yard, not an industrial afterthought. Little to no smoke was a must have to keep us and our neighbours healthy.
4.) Easy to use / efficient Even though we supply firewood for a living and have firewood handy, I didn’t want to have to be always filling our furnace when I could be spending time doing other things (like soaking in out wood fired hot tub). I also wanted a unit that made the most of the firewood it burnt.
5.) Local support As a rule I like to buy Canadian and even better buy from a Manitoba supplier. This supports our economy as well as having a local contact for any technical questions, parts, best practices etc. It also saves on shipping.
6.) User references It’s pretty easy nowadays to have a professional looking website and impressive marketing materials. Whether it’s a truck, a furnace, a dog or whatever I always like to talk to people that actually own / use one before I buy.
7.) They last. Heatmaster’s 20 year warranty is the longest in the industry. The #1 enemy of wood boilers is rust which causes water leaks. By using titanium enhanced grade 409 stainless steel for their water jacket and firebox Heatmaster boilers fight back against that rust. More information can be found at https://www.heatmasterss.com/stainless-steel/