Before Hideaway Tiny Acres was created, it was just our home on eight acres with a garage and an addition on it where my husband Don lived before he built the house and a few outbuildings. This was many years before we met. Living in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and being that he was a logger along with his brothers they heated with wood because it was economical and abundant. In order to heat with wood they had indoor wood stoves and furnaces that really weren’t that energy efficient as we know about heating today. Some parts of the house were so warm it would drive you out where other parts of the house were cold. But that’s all that was available back in the day. There are also dangers with heating with wood indoors, such as smoke back up, the fire getting out of control, not to mention the mess bringing the wood in the house creates. The home we live in has an indoor wood furnace and we heated with it for many years. I was never a fan, but like Don I do love the quality of heat that wood provides. It’s different from heating with gas or electric. There’s nothing that warms you up on a cold winter day quite like wood heat.
Safety is always a major issue. We would have several instances during the winter where smoke would back up, usually in the middle of the night with the smoke alarms going off in tandem. Then we would have to air out the house opening the windows to the freezing winter air. Luckily that didn’t happen too much. Another drawback is that the fire would have to be tended constantly. The wood box on our furnace would hold a fire for about 4 hours or so which means around the clock tending of the fire. It was hard for both of us to leave the house at the same time because someone would have to be home not only for safety reasons but simply to tend the fire. Of course we had a propane forced air furnace backup, but with prices of fuel we got away with only filling that tank once every few years. That was one benefit of heating with wood. The other benefit is that we got wood for free with Don being a logger. Such is life in the rural Upper Peninsula Of Michigan.
Fast forward to 2020 and we all know what happened then, right? That year I spent alot of time back home working remotely and it also was a year where people we knew or knew of lost their homes because of fire due to their wood furnaces or stoves getting out of control. It really hit home for me hearing of these losses and I felt it was time for us to start looking at outdoor wood stoves or boilers. These are units that are operated from outdoors and can run much more efficiently than their indoor counterparts. With the proper unit they can also heat multiple buildings which was an issue for us. The fact that our garage was run on a separate indoor unit was a deciding factor for me because the unit wasn’t very safe and Don spends a lot of time in the garage working on projects. It would take half the day just to get the garage warm enough for him to work in it, and when he was done working in the garage he had to make sure the fire burned down safely.
So another long story short, we settled on the purchase of an outdoor wood boiler big enough to heat not only the house, but the garage AND the little guest cabin that is now the Hideaway Tiny Cabin available for vacation rental on Airbnb. We chose a Central Boiler Classic Edge 760 Titanium HDX Outdoor Wood Furnace. And believe me, this thing is a behemoth. But there was not denying the efficiency of these bad boys. We went through approximately 18 cords of wood each season to heat just our home and this unit was predicted to burn that much wood heating all 3 buildings! Why? Because the unit is actually a wood BOILER and has a technology called gasification built into it. Technologically this is WAY over our heads and has been a giant learning curve, especially for Don who is a guy that doesn’t adapt well to change.
I knew I was biting off more than I could chew with being the main motivator in the purchase of this system, but these units were only getting more expensive as time went on and we weren’t getting any younger. Safety and efficiency was also a factor as well as heating all of the buildings. There was the purchase of the actual unit and then there were the components to connect the buildings with the unit. OMG. Also, because it’s boiler, water had to be introduced to the running of the system which provides a cleaner burn, less soot, and more efficiency. It’s even wired so that you can simply download an app on your phone and monitor the efficiency of the burn! It also reduced the number of times the fire needed to be tended from several times a day to 1 or even every other day in warmer weather.
We had it delivered and installed in 2021. Don did all the work along with a bit of help when he had to wrestle the tubing in the ground. He even did all the inside work which I couldn’t believe how much money he saved us. It took him until 2022 to start using it. Like I said, the guy does not adapt well to change and the learning curve for him was steep. I’m not saying the learning curve is steep for everyone. He was used to operating conventional wood stoves and furnaces in a certain way and this system operates differently from how dry the wood needs to be to the size of the wood chunks that go in to the unit and the way it needs to be stacked, etc. Stuff like that and we did have some hiccups in the first year of operation but here it is now 2024 and in 2023 we experienced our first winter season with the unit. It was a record season because it was so warm up here so this year I’m sure will be a doozie of a winter so it will really be put to the test.
When you book your stay at Hideaway Tiny Cabin this winter just know that you’ll be experiencing the bone warming heat of that wood boiler so be prepared to get spoiled by the coziness and warmth of your stay in the cabin that only heating with wood will bring. The best part about it is that you don’t have to lift a finger. Don does all the work of keeping the cabin warm.
There’s a lot I left out here because this blog would be 3 times as long but I’ll write about the experiences within the experience in future posts.
Got questions or comments? Please feel free to comment below.
Much more later
Nancy and Don
One response to “UPDATE AT HIDEAWAY TINY ACRES | HOW AN OUTDOOR WOOD BOILER BECAME A GAME CHANGER FOR THE HOMESTEAD”
I LOVE THIS! I love wood heat and had it as a kid when we lived in Connecticut for a few years. I got to tend the fire which I loved doing. I’m thinking this would work for having a small community of cabins to heat them all. I’d heard about these things but never looked much into them. You even added video! Great job!