Many discussion board on the Internet talk about the idea of a home made boiler. Most people are talking about making something like a wood fueled unit that will provide hot water to the home and hot water to pump round a water heat system.
But is it an idea that is worth pursuing? It is easy to see why the idea comes up so often - the prices for home wood fired boilers are quite high to begin with. Plenty of people think that the fact that most wood boilers can be installed outside makes the do it yourself option reasonably safe.
Given that there are plenty of very skilled home improvement enthusiasts around, there is no doubt that some people could give it a go. But there are plenty of things to worry about. Just because the unit is outside, for instance, doesn't make it safe. Wood boilers, to be effective need to be quite close to the home or the water will be cold by the time it reaches your home. And water can cause very serious explosions if it becomes blocked and under immense pressure as it is heated. So perhaps not so safe.
Then there is the law. You will probably find that a sufficiently large unit will fall into the category of industrial boiler. This means codes that insist the welding is done in a certified boiler shop, for example.
Finally modern wood burning hot water heating systems are quite cleverly built to be more efficient than ever before. This technology is quite hard to replicate in a home workshop, so any boiler you build is not likely to compare well with a shop bought unit when it comes to efficiency.