We have a 1800 sq ft, one level house built over a crawl space in Central Minnesota. Currently it is heated by a propane fueled boiler system that heats water in copper pipes that run through the crawlspace and pop up in the rooms. We bought the house about 8 months ago after moving from Florida to MN, and having never lived in a cold climate we were shocked at the price of heating in the winter. We originally thought of a wood stove, but then came across the idea of the mass heater. The efficiency is what we are after.
So we were thinking . . . since the boiler basically heats the water in the copper pipes and uses that heated water to heat the house, could we use the mass heater to heat the water instead of the propane? Then we could bypass messing with the current infrastructure.
We have no clue how to go about doing this, but we need to do something on the cheap, and preferably before winter. In a perfect world we'd love to keep it in the place where the boiler is stowed away now -- the utility room.
Has anybody done this . . . or know if it would work?
My husband is a carpenter by trade with some electrical and plumbing experience, but we've never attempted anything like this. Any ideas?
