Wood boilers are more popular than ever as homeowners search for alternative heating solutions. Wood boilers for home heating are a modern concept that cuts down fossil fuel use and heating costs. Replace your entire heating system with a wood burner and experience the benefits after a quick installation.
Tarm Biomass is a leading supplier of high-efficiency wood-burning boilers. We walk you through the sales process from beginning to end and help you find the ideal indoor wood boiler. If you are looking to replace an outdoor wood boiler or switch to wood-sourced heat for your home, Tarm Biomass will provide suitable materials.
Fire has been a constant source of heat and light across cultures for thousands of years. With modern technology, we can use wood as an eco-friendly substitute for fossil fuels to heat our homes efficiently. The basic questions many people ask about wood-fired boilers include:
How Does a Wood Boiler Work?
A basic wood boiler consists of a primary and secondary chamber, an ash box, water supply, and return connections, and a control system. The operator loads firewood into the primary chamber, where they then ignite the wood and allow it to start burning. As the wood begins to burn, the gases released from combustion pull into the secondary chamber, where they continue to burn to maximize heat output. Heat transfer tubes exchange heat to the water pipes to create hot water.
Since almost all gases and tars burn in the chamber, harmful smoke is significantly diminished. Wood boilers can combine with your existing furnace as a backup system or serve as your primary heat source year-round.
Wood boilers can connect to or replace existing heating furnaces and boilers with automatic controls.
Wood heating with an indoor wood boiler can be a practical, enjoyable way to heat your home. Heating a home with the Fröling S3 Turbo indoor wood boiler is the most efficient way to capture heat energy from firewood. The S3 Turbo offers features like the easy-start ignition door and external heat exchange cleaning. The Fröling S3 Turbo has Lambda-controlled combustion, which ensures a clean, efficient burn.
All boilers are safety-tested and -listed. If you are replacing an outdoor wood boiler, some states like New York pay cash bounties when outdoor cordwood boilers are replaced with indoor wood gasification boilers. For more information about these programs, explore our page on renewable energy incentives.
Firewood
Wood is the most widely available and least expensive biomass fuel available. Burning firewood produced on one’s own land has the lowest carbon impact of all forms of wood-burning and therefore can be considered the most sustainable form of wood burning. Boiler owners who produce their own firewood as a byproduct of managing their woodlots will also realize the greatest savings and cost benefits.
Firewood is normally sold in units called cords. A cord of wood is a neat stack measuring 4 feet wide by 4 feet high and 8 feet long. The heat content of a cord will vary depending on the species of wood. A cord of mixed softwood will have a heat value of 17 or 18 million BTU, and a cord of mixed hardwood will have a heat value of 20 to 29 million BTU.
By way of comparison, a gallon of No. 2 fuel oil has a heat value of 140,000 BTU per gallon, and propane has 93,000 BTU per gallon. Please use our fuel cost comparison tool to calculate the relative fuel costs in your area.
You should thoroughly dry firewood before using it in wood boilers. Firewood moisture content impacts the efficiency of your wood boiler, meaning the lower the water content, the better. At a minimum, we recommend drying firewood every six months to a year to ensure the moisture is low enough to burn efficiently.
