I'm sure many of you heat or at least supplement with wood. Other than a fire place in my old house, I never really ran a wood stove 

at any rate, our house is tight. when we built we did spray foam and wrapped the house with 1/2. As an example, we were doing 1 tank of oil/year (2700 sqft 330 tank) for heat and hot water till we had kids. Now it's more like a tank and 1/2 or so per year

Anyway, my ass is starting to pucker at oil costs much like everybody else's. Seems ROI would be pretty quick on a small indoor unit. When we built, out chimney had room for 3 flues, 1 for the boiler (has a slight jog in it) and one for the fire place (straight) and the 3rd, unused (also straight) in the basement for a 'future wood stove'. 

Reality is, we don't use the basement for living quarters, although it's set up to be used as such so a wood stove would be a bit of a waste. 

I was considering one of these:

https://www.royallboiler.com/wood-boiler/6100-NS-indoor-wood-boiler.htm" rel="nofollow - Royall 6100 Indoor Wood Boiler - 90,000 btu (royallboiler.com)

Granted, I don't know if this is undersized but that is what I would have to figure out. I guess the real question is has anyone run an indoor boiler? Drawbacks? Issues? Brands to watch out for? 

Basically, I have to wonder how much of a slave I'd be to this. Getting wood is no problem and seeing how tight the house is, I'd bet I may be able to squeak by on 2 cords or wood.

Thoughts?   

Wood heat is great heat, but you get heat out of it several times. You will sweat cutting the wood, stacking it, bringing it in, cleaning the pipes and cleaning up the mess it makes in the house.

I don't know what you do for work, but if overtime pay is possible, I would recommend working enough OT to pay for your increased heating costs.

'thanks but no thanks'......

old,unused flue will need SS liner..$$

you'll have to get wood into basement(any health issues like AGE !!)

tripping on the stairs going up with a bucket of ashes makes a   'melluva hess'

is wood totally free,all precut into 'boiler sized' pieces ?

can it work when power is off ? if not 'boom, BOOM !'

are you getting younger ? A LOT of work in heating with wood...

After the second fire, the wood burning furnace QUICKLY left my house, NG went in. Have NG fireplace(workd when powers off...).Sure now that I COULD get all the 'free' firewood and have TIME to run it, I'm not physically able to .Also any indoor 'wood burning appliance' jacks up the house insurance and that's a CERTIFIED unit to boot.

In a near perfect world, I'd go geothermal in my forever home. ZERO 'fuel' to buy,ever.

The reason why he's asking about wood, is likely 1) because he can get quantities for free and 2) Rhode Island, and many other New England states, are predominantly fuel-oil-only areas for residential heat...  what wasn't fuel-oil, was coal... not natural gas, LP, or electric.  One would NOT want to leave themselves with electric-only heat in RI, as they're totally at the mercy of both power demand costs, and 'load shedding' brownouts from the Megalopolis demand.

Walker wrote: Read up on steam boiler explosions before you buy. I believe some are still out there orbiting earth somewhere,

That's a categorical fallicy.  High pressure steam boilers can explode, but a residential heating boiler is not actually a 'boiler'.   They are are the operational equivalent of a residential hot water heater, with temperature not-to-exceed 180f.   Look at a vapor pressure chart, you'll see that 200F equates to VP of 12psi, you can restrain that in a 1/2" pipe with your thumb.

These boilers require electricity to circulate water, AND to supply draught air.  If you lose power, the blower stops, which quenches the fire.  They are also fitted with pressure relief valves, as well as crown-plate fuses.  If the layers of pressure limitations all simultaniously fail, AND the crown-plate overheats, the fuse will melt and spray coolant over the fire.  Your residential hot water heater rarely has this level of protection, yet they present no statstically significant risk.

The challenge of fitting such a unit to your home has several challenge layers, the first being, is your home already set up for hydronic heat?  If not, the infrastructure materials and labor cost to make use of heated water will vastly exceed the cost of other solutions.

IF you have large concrete slabs with PEX tubing, the situation is different, not only in cost, but operational performance.  Heated air (i.e. a heating coil in an existing forced-air handler) is a high-loss medium, but a heated floor is much lower, and the latter provides substantial home comfort.

As noted, your 'tightly sealed' house will pose a complex issue, as you'll need combustion air to make it work.  Since the Royal diesn't draw outdoor air, you'll be withdrawing air from your house, which means you'll need to reduce that 'tightly sealed'.  The good part, is that you can put an intentional supply air damper into whatever 'combustion room' you'd install this unit, and in doing so, withdraw 'bad' air that is trapped in the home, and draw it out through the combustion chamber.

[People rant about 'radon' and other bad things in homes, and fail to realize that these things have been around forever, it just became a serious problem when we started building houses tight-as-tupperware.  Old-school 'gravity' furnaces constantly sucked bad stuff out of old homes and basements by virtue of the firebox draught, which we seem to not believe-in anymore]

Hauling wood into the basement, and stoking the fire sucks. 

Outdoor boilers freeze, but only if you don't fire them, and don't use a glycol-water mix.

The best alternative for wood-boiler setup, is an outdoor-type unit, enclosed by some sort of a shed into which one can drive/load in firewood with a machine.

As an 'additional heat' option, I would personally go for an enclosed outdoor, with pipe into the house... and I would also recommend getting controlled ventilation into the lowest part of your basement, so the house's sealing doesn't lead to accumulated high concentrations of bad stuff.

I get the heebie jeebies smelling the rancid smoke coming from outdoor boilers when in "idle/smoldering" mode  .

You should smell 'em when you burn old railroad ties!

 I grew-up with that type splitter, until 1965, stopped burning wood.

I still use mine, but less often and not for very long. Mine seems to be down on a power a bit....

Ok, so I let this run away a bit haha. Let me clear up a few things and...I appreciate all of the feedback

First, we have a 330 tank, usually filled to about 300 gallons. Using ez math, lets say I do a gallon a day of HHO

Adding a circuit (zone) to our current setup is something we can easily do. Our system is hydronic, and a air handler for each floor (central air/heat)

The chimney/flue is brand new (never used) ok, it's 9 years old, but still never used. 

I had in the back of my mind to call for an insurance quote, so that is something that was on my radar. Indeed, it is a consideration

I was thinking indoor just due to the fact all of the 'sub systems' are there and I just don't want 1 more thing to mow/weed whack around. 

I guess I'm just greedy. I tell people how much oil we use and they are like "naa, you lie" to the point I actually showed a friend my checkbook. 

I suppose I should rethink the whole deal. Wood is not an issue, nor is cutting/stacking and the reality is IF I did this, I bet I wouldn't use a whole lot seeing how the house is built (2x6, spray foam insulation etc) so it was just going to be a 'proof of concept' kind of deal

I do appreciate all of the insight. Really gives me things to consider that I honestly hadn't 

Rusty, if your house heat is already all hydronic, all you're doing, is adding in another heat SOURCE to your hydronic system.  Hydronic systems don't care WHERE the hot liquid comes from, or how it became hot, they just distribute that heat as your circulatory pumps and zones move it around.

Like yours, my house has two hydronic air-handlers- one in the attic, one in basement... both have A coils for AC, and each has a circuit for a TACO circulator, thermostat upstairs so she can set her sleeping-temp comfort one way, and house-comfort another... (I don't ask, I just giver her what she wants).

I also have a hydronic circuit in my south porch, which can ACCEPT heat, but more often, I'm using coolant to COOL it, as this porch is a passive solar collector- black concrete (looks like slate) floor, with complete exposure during winter heating months.  I have 2 layers of 2" foam under that 8" slab, and 230 tons of limestone powder poured over four lifts, each separated by 150ft of PEX... it's thermal storage... once it's warm, I can circulate cold water in, and get warm water out.  

The other hydronic circuit is in my basement addition... it encircles the original house by 12ft, has 2" of foam under a 6" slab, and the basement walls are insulated from footing to siding with 2" foam.  Once that floor is warm, the whole main floor of the house stays warm.

My generator shed is a 10" slab, sitting on 2" foam, and has PEX in it.  Two of my four generators are currently 'tapped' into that pex, so when the engines are running, the shed floor... and the OTHER generator engine... is heated by the one that's running.  I haven't piped the generators' waste heat into the house YET, but will eventually.  The rest of my new workshop's floor will all be poured with PEX, and the solid-fuel boiler will heat the shop floor, and the thermal storage mass under the south porch, and also feed the hydronic in the house.  It'll require some babysitting, but once the shop floor is toasty warm, and the thermal mass is warm, I'll be able to let the boiler's fuel load burn out, and not have to go feed it for at least a week.  If there's no hot water from that system, the propane-fired units in the basement of the house will do it all automatically.