Most are extremely inefficient - which often doesn't matter since most people who buy them have access to lots of firewood.
I've got a dozen farmer-neigbors with outdoor boilers near me - and most of them burn wet and scrap wood that works fine for them. Especially with no close neighbors and smoke is not an issue.
I've got an EPA rated outdoor hot-air furnace that was designed to be attached to a house on the outside. With mine, I built a large insulated room around it and it works great since I can store four full cords inside - where the wood gets warm and dry before burning. But, hot air has it's advantages and disadvantages - like anything else. Hot-air does not travel well without thermal loss, like hot-water does.
I don't know what your sitution is. I heat a large farm-house and a large workshop and barn 100% with wood. Also all our hot-water. I have hundreds of acres of hardwoods - but even with that - the wood I use certainly isn't free. I spend a lot of time, year-round, cutting, dragging, loading, unloading, splitting, etc. Also time keeping chainsaws running, chains sharp, maintaining two log-splitters, etc. I'm by myself - so all-in-all, I don't regard the wood as cheap.
The EPA is just getting ready to intervene and force outside furnace makers to produce something more efficient. There are two on the market now - so you might want to check around a bit. There are also areas in the US looking to ban the standard outside wood-burners.
I'm not a fan of government controls - but to be fair - anything labeled as "woodstove" has to meet EPA efficiency requirements and that has resulted in much more efficient stoves. Furnaces will be next.
The reality is - a fire needs to be hot to be efficient. It's close to impossible to have a low-fire adjacent to a water tank and not have it get cooled off too much. One answer is a hot-water storage system that is used in many places in Europe. Whenever the fire is going, it is run to the max - and the hot water is stored in large insulated tanks. Then the fire is shut down - and not fired up again until the tanks cool down. Some of these systems can go for days between firing. Tarm sells them in the US but they are expensive.
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Today's Featured Article - Harvestin Hay: The Early Years (Part 2) - by Pat Browning. The summer of 1950 was the start of a new era in farming for our family. I was thirteen, and Kathy (my oldest sister) was seven. At this age, I believed tractor farming was the only way, hot stuff -- and given a chance I probably would have used the tractor, Dad's first, a 1936 Model "A" John Deere, to go bring in the cows! And I think Dad was ready for some automation too. And so it was that we acquired a good, used J. I. Case, wire tie hay baler. In addition to a person to drive th
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