Anyone replace their oil or gas fired home furnace with a dual fuel (wood/oil or gas/oil) unit?

My dad is planning to replace his oil-fired furnace. Someone had mentioned to him the existence of a dual fueled unit, one that can use wood or oil. He has a good amount of firewood available, so, the only cost associated with it would be harvesting the dead wood and splitting it.





Does anyone have any experience with such a unit? How well does it heat when using wood vs. using oil? Can you run it for extended periods on oil (say, if you are on vacation for a few weeks)? Compared to replacing with an oil-only unit, would a dual-fuel unit have a positive,negative or no effect on the value of the home (ie. is having a dual fueled unit viewed negatively by potential buyers, since he is also considering putting his house on the market in another year or two)?





Thanks!Anyone replace their oil or gas fired home furnace with a dual fuel (wood/oil or gas/oil) unit?
Dual fuel furnaces are very inefficient when using the oil or gas burners and can be a maintenance problem for these components.Some where poorly designed and when throwing wood in you could do damage to the burner chamber for the oil and gas side and one I worked on the oil burner was below the wood door so it was often damaged when wood fell on it.If you are going to burn mostly wood and only oil once in a while and the oil burner is up high and out of the way of the wood it might be a good choice.If not you are going to burn a lot of oil compared to a single fuel furnace.I would say to install a wood furnace next to an oil furnace but that would require a second chimney because a duel fuel furnace is the only way to burn wood and oil in one chimney by code.Anyone replace their oil or gas fired home furnace with a dual fuel (wood/oil or gas/oil) unit?
My parents actually did just the opposite. when they bought the house it had a gas fired furnace that burned wood OR coal. you would load the wood or coal, and then the gas would light the wood. it was very efficient, especially with the coal, but very messy shoveling coal. when the wood burned out, the gas would continue to run as needed to keep the house warm. you could use just gas, but it was less efficient that way. as far as wood, it was actually pretty nice, it would start the fire, so you didn't even have to use anything to start the fire, just load the box full of wood and walk away...


They stopped using it b/c he was spending too much time on the road to have time to cut/split/haul wood