With Most Expensive Home Heating Season Approaching, Already Strapped Americans Looking for New Ways to Save

GREENBUSH, Minn., Oct. 2 /PRNewswire/ -- Bracing for the most expensive home-heating season on record, homeowners are turning in increasing numbers to a money-saving and green way to warm their houses this winter.

Coupled with the threat of recession and an insecure mortgage market, Americans are desperate to find ways to save money. More and more are finding that heating with wood in an outdoor wood furnace can save them thousands of dollars a year.

The nation's premier manufacturer of outdoor furnaces, Central Boiler, is showing users exactly how cost effective the devices are with a new Energy Savings Calculator located on its web site (http://www.centralboiler.com). The easy-to-use calculator takes into account how much gas, oil and electricity a home uses and shows how families can save tens of thousands of dollars and more over the lifetime of an outdoor furnace.

For example, a family of five can drop its heating bills to zero, allowing the furnace to pay for itself within just a few years. If those added savings were applied to a home mortgage they could knock years off, or if reinvested, could yield literally hundreds of thousands of dollars in nest-egg savings.

An outdoor wood furnace is located outside and eliminates dust, smoke, ash, or potential fire hazards from inside the home that typical indoor wood stove or fireplaces create. The water in the furnace is heated with wood and circulated to the home through underground tubes. The furnace, which looks like a small shed, is typically located 50 to 100 feet from the home and works with the existing system, whether it's a forced-air furnace, radiant baseboard or radiant floor heating. This gives the homeowner normal thermostatic control.

Wood burning is a renewable energy and carbon-neutral way to heat a home, which at the same time lessens the United States' reliance on fossils fuels and foreign oil.

Last week, the National Energy Assistance Directors' Association issued a report in which it predicted that home-heating costs would rise 28 percent this winter, on top of last year's record rates.