well spoken...McGiever wrote:Best see the boys over at "the Hearth"...your thinking is more inline w/ theirs.
Think Wood Gasifier.
We believe there is NO such thing as Free Wood!
either way, your home sounds like it will be fairly easy to heat (even the garage). A unit such as the one's Larry mentions sounds like the ticket (lots of company's make these square box designs for both wood and coal burning, are built like tanks and can burn both wood and coal well (neither perfect... but acceptable), I will say this though... no matter what you believe your going to burn now, after you have started using good anthracite coal it is 99% likely that your NOT going to be burning a lot of wood anymore (coal just beats it so badly in all aspects and that will become painfully clear to you after you have tried both). But at least with these big square type coal boxes you can stuff them with enough wood in many cases to achieve at least "similar" results for burn times as a 100% wood stove. you should be able to tone down any good quality air tight stove to the degree you need, so my advise is to get a larger box size (even if you don't require its full BTU ability) because for wood you WILL want to be able to pack in as much wood as possible.
Best Wishes!