We got a new wood-burning exterior boiler, or furnace. It cost around $15,000. However, we’ll earn that back in less than five years.
That’s not the only reason to heat with wood. The new furnaces are cleaner, more efficient, and use a renewable resource. Burning wood is soooo much better for our natural environment than fuel oil or coal, about on a par with natural gas. Especially with the furnace that emits fewer particles and far less carbon than the old ones.
And it's way cheaper than natural gas. We get ours from a service that removes dead trees and fallen wood from storms, and also from harvesting wood from our own property.
Our township government, in all their ignorant glory, tried to regulate woodburning boilers – because what is government for, rather than writing a lot of useless regulations, then charging money for permits and inspections? One of their stipulations was using a wooden pole to hold up the wood furnace chimney. Read that again. WOODen pole to hold up a hot metal chimney with sparks and flames – what could possibly go wrong?
The person who authored the ordinance had NO idea how woodburning boilers actually function. He’s a lawyer from Chicago. He wants to turn little rural, self-sufficient Arlington Twp, Michigan, USA, into another urban overpopulated liberal city hellhole. So he read books about woodburning furnaces, but he has never used one.
That’s government for you. Me, Dave, and other residents set this straight pretty quickly.
Anyway. Our new woodburning furnace will have to be loaded less often, will pollute much less, will warm our home, outbuildings, and fill our hot water heater with gallons of precious HOT water for showers. It’s worth the payments we’ll have to make on it. No more getting up at 3 AM in January, dressing in layers of coats, stumbling out to a dark woodshed, and hoisting wheelbarrows full of logs. No more flames shooting out of the chimney top. Only loading it twice a day. Ah, blissful comfort!
Thanks to Hettinger's of Galesburg, MI. 

The old unit -- it served us well for 18 years

The new unit in all its glory