Infrared Heating: A green, lower cost space heater alternative. REVIEW of Redcore Concept R1

[YJ02]

The wood burning units use wood and wood pellets and the boiler is placed 15 to 20 ft from the house because of the smoke from the boiler chimney

here, most localities require a larger distance and a decent size stack.

some places still allow ppl to burn anything in the thing. like rr ties and telephone poles!!

good choices for duration but very bad for health and enviro issues--and they smell really bad when they burn as well

we have a small, ventless gas stove and two large 'boxwood' stoves (cast iron) with no moving parts, in the basement

no forced air and the entire basement is heated which then heats the floors of the upstairs with great effect


and even with the fracking NG craze, buying a load of wood for the winter is STILL cheaper then what it would be to run even a new ng furnace for one month

 

[YJ02]

Yes . It's all the rage in rural areas especially in Quebec were I see them at every other house on country roads . There is lot's of wood to burn locally . It is dam expensive to install infloor heating . Most homes I worked in the cost started at $20,000 just for the in floor heating tubes to be installed. Next add another 10 to 20 for the boiler system and then of course another $10,000 to $15,000 for a snow melt for the driveway . So your looking at well over a $100,000 for the infloor system alone. Add an air handler and Air Conditioning and the price can be $300,000 to $500,000. Now saying all that and the cost of course being out reach for many , it is a very efficient way to heat your house minus the stupid driveway lazy melt system . Most boiler systems are all High Efficient Wall hung boilers if NG or PG ( Natural Gas or Propane Gas ) is your main fuel . The wood burning units use wood and wood pellets and the boiler is placed 15 to 20 ft from the house because of the smoke from the boiler chimney . Tubes are run under ground into the the house into an air handler or to an infloor heating system which can look like a very complicated manifold of relays and servo's all wired into a main control panel and zoned off into different rooms for complete control of your system . Pretty cool stuff and actually kinda fun to install .
Of course those are pricing for large 10,000 square foot luxury homes . For us average Joe's it would be closer to $10,000 to $15,000 or even $20,000 for a radiant floor wood burning system in a 2000 square foot home . Also in Canada all new home builds have 6 inch walls with Tyvec wrapping around the building which lets the house breath yet save energy and reduce draft's from the heat and the cold .
Personally I have not installed a wood burning system as I live in a large Canadian city but I have seen them multiple times and even did some trouble shooting for a friends system in Quebec years ago so they have been around for the last 10 to 15 years or so .

' i know in southern Canada, hardwood is available (maples, oaks, etc) but further north you have fewer hardwoods

i guess they use birch, pine and probably aspen? sure it burns, but with less BTU output and a lot more creosote

does this deter many ppl who just do it anyhow (btw- i would be one of those do it any how ppl )

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sidenote--i read that a few yrs back the EPA attempted to ban wood burning in Alaska!!

a crazy example of how disconnected DC bureaucrats are

worse, NG pipelines really don't exist in alaska, leaving oil or electric as options for heat

one might think that somebody was using this to depopulate alaska or something

the schemes of govt hey?

 

[PussyGalore]

I only know one person that has a wood burning furnace hook up. The actual burner is outside and then gets piped into the house where there is a conversion unit inside the actual house furnace. Then the heat is distributed normally throughout the house. From what I understand the energy company actually pays these people now instead of the other way around. So that's a good thing I guess, especially if you don't mind going outside everyday in the snow to stoke the wood furnace. I would give it a try if I lived in a more rural area.

 

[Overmind One]

I am still totally in love with my IR heater! It has been getting a lot of use lately, like every night. And my place feels toasty warm all night without burning any natural gas. My cat Siete LOVES the radiant heat. Like mentioned before, the heat is different in nature from a wall heater or a non-IR electric space heater. It "gets in your bones". Hard to describe but it feels great.

 

[Tripler]

' i know in southern Canada, hardwood is available (maples, oaks, etc) but further north you have fewer hardwoods

i guess they use birch, pine and probably aspen? sure it burns, but with less BTU output and a lot more creosote

does this deter many ppl who just do it anyhow (btw- i would be one of those do it any how ppl )

-----------------
sidenote--i read that a few yrs back the EPA attempted to ban wood burning in Alaska!!

a crazy example of how disconnected DC bureaucrats are

worse, NG pipelines really don't exist in alaska, leaving oil or electric as options for heat

one might think that somebody was using this to depopulate alaska or something

the schemes of govt hey?

Wood pellets are the cure for the soot buildup I believe tho I could be wrong on that assumption since I never installed a wood burning boiler or pellet stove or furnace . They probably have to service the stove a few times a year I would think just like you would a regular fireplace or standard wood stove chimney .
There is a huge sawmill near my brothers place in Quebec that has been reworked to make pellets .
Places up in the far north would use Oil , Propane and probably gasoline/deisel generators as they do not have wood .

 

[YJ02]

Wood pellets are the cure for the soot buildup

IF they are hardwood and not pine shavings and glue

one big drawback to pellets is the cost. here hardwood pellets are about $250/ton ( 40 50 lb bags)

got to have the means to transpo them and a place to keep them dry

a lot of ppl use cherry pits or hard corn in multi fuel pellet stoves (very expensive) to get a hottter burn

 

[YJ02]

especially if you don't mind going outside everyday in the snow to stoke the wood furnace.

the biggest drawback for me

they say you only need fill them once or twice a day

also, for maximum efficiency, you need to use longer logs-about 28 - 30" if i remember right

thats a bit of lifting

 

[Tripler]

They have a timer bin and you just fill it every other day or something like that if your using the pellets .

 

[YJ02]

the biggest drawback to pellet stoves-or wood stoves that rely on forced air to distribute and do not radiate-is

WTF? when the power goes out?

they have these now, again, not cheap---gravity fed pellet stove. $1605 a Lowes

 

[Overmind One]

Maybe these alternative combustion heating methods need their own thread?

 

[YJ02]

Maybe these alternative combustion heating methods need their own thread?

or, you could just rename this one.....
from the "all about OM1 and my favorite heater" thread to a heating tech one



<< kidding! i do that sometimes..but seriously....>>

 

[Overmind One]

or, you could just rename this one.....
from the "all about OM1 and my favorite heater" thread to a heating tech one



<< kidding! i do that sometimes..but seriously....>>

Well, it's the IR tech I wanted to highlight, since all of the other conventional methods are about 100 years old already. The wood pellets thing is interesting...but why would they charge so much for wood? Seems to me that there would always be enough wood to burn in most American locales.

 

[YJ02]

but why would they charge so much for wood?

wood pellets are the expensive thing, for the price of a ton of pellets, which would last about half the winter give or take, I can buy a full load of cut and split hardwood that will last me the whole winter and into early spring

many people get bamboozled into buying pellets at places like walmart where the stuff is usually made from softwood scrap like pine and fir.

during my time at TRACTOR SUPPLY (between the army and starting school) I sold a few pellet stoves and a lot of wood pellets

there will be ppl who will but a flatbed full-like 15 ton, then mark it up and resell it

it is well known that many who buy pellet stoves believe it is their savior from high gas or oil costs, so they make the pellet stove there only source of heat and always fail to secure a big enough supply, hence the demand and high cost

we would run out of pellets--start the season with a basic load of like 120 ton- and before we got more in, many of them would be pre-sold to people who ran out. in the meantime, they had to resort to buying stuff like pine pellet bedding for horses.
some people even bought pellet rabbit food!!! same size and it burned...

i have seen places selling hardwood pellets for $330 ton this year
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but yeah, actual firewood is fairly cheap and can be as cheap as paying $20 a year to the national forest (Allegheny national here) and then be able to go into the ANF and cut all the dead trees you want.

they make it affordable because they want people to go in a clean up all the tree tops from logging sites

just got to put in the effort and the time and you can pretty much heat your house for nearly free

we used to go out several times a summer to cut and stock up back when i had a pick up

 

[YJ02]

Well, it's the IR tech I wanted to highlight

oh how classist!

all "belief systems' should be welcomed!!

 

[Tripler]

I agree on the pellets 100% yongjin02 . It's really expensive but it takes away the chore of chopping or gathering regular wood logs to burn . Pellets make it convenient but you pay threw the nose for that convenience. It is also very expensive to manufacture I believe .

 

[YJ02]

It is also very expensive to manufacture I believe .

defi one of those 'got to have money to make money' scenarios

a company was set to start up about an hour down theroad

it was already a sawmill and had plenty of raw materials

they just needed the gear to make pellets

word is, no bank could be convinced that they would sell enough to cover their loans

but we know how short sided bankers can be right?

so it never got going