Anyone have experience with a water stove?

[JohnG]

We are moving in the summer (NC, near Winston-Salem) and one house we like a lot has a water stove. I don’t know anyone personally that has had one so I don’t know much about what it’s like living with one. 

The house is on 20 acres, mostly wooded, so we should have a decent supply of wood available. I’ll also need to clear some space to build a shop, which will provide fuel or lumber, depending on the tree.

The house also has an electric water heater and electric heat pump. Current owners say they only use the water stove during the coldest months of the winter. 
 

[RichardA]

PM  Spanky, he has one and he heats his house and his kiln with the same stove. He's a sawyer, so he always has wood available.  

[Tom King]

Do you mean a separate boiler away from the house?   If so, a lot of people around here have them.    We were considering one, but the one thing that kept us from it was the required low stack, so there would sometimes be a lot of smoke down at house level.  I thought about ways to get around that, but the to-do list is just too long, as it is.

[JohnG]

Yeah, wood fired furnace away from the house that heats water. Hot water is pumped to the house for domestic hot water and through heating coils for the HVAC. 

Sounds like they are mostly/only used in more rural areas, partly because of the low stack like you mentioned. 

[Tom King]

If it's a fair distance towards the NE, away from the house, it shouldn't be too bad.  When we do get a wind from the NE, it's usually fairly strong, but most of the time, it's from the SW.  Also, it would be important that there are no taller things upwind from it, to make the smoke swirl when it comes back on the house.