"The first thing that needs to be said is that a wood stove is not the right device for heating water for in-floor radiant. You would never get enough heat off a wood stove to make a dent in radiant heating needs."

I guess I better tell my wood stove that it just "thinks" it heats my radiant in- floor heat.

All kidding aside, the statement above is baloney.  I have heated 2000 square feet of house in upstate NY with a stainless steel hot water coil in my wood stove for the past 14 years.

It works well down to zero degrees outside, then you need to really stoke the fire to keep up with negative temps.  

http://www.thermocontrolheating.com/model400.htm
http://www.nationalstoveworks.com/hotwater.htm

I have the 400 model, and wish I had the 500.  The links are to the same company, and if you look close....the parts list has the same coils as Nick's linked website.  It must be all related some how...even the area code on the phone numbers are the same.

I am trying to put together a similar project this summer.  A brief description follows - please give me any input you feel would help.

The plan in a nut-shell:

Currently we have a new construction ranch style house (6" walls) with a oil fired, forced hot water boiler.  My wife would like to have a woodstove in our livingroom for not only the appearence (she wants the glass in the door) but also to help with the ever rising cost of oil (pre-buy is already at $2.99/gal for next year).  My concern is that the livingroom will be 100 degrees and the bedrooms will still be 50.  I'm trying to think of a solution to transfer the heat in a single story, long house - so far I've come up with the following:

Obtain a large woodstove with built-in outer sheet metal shrouds that are now common on the newer style woodstoves (we've got a Napolean at our camp that might be a good candidate - here's a link to see the stove I'm referring to http://www.napoleonfireplaces.com/Webshare/wood/wood%20stoves/1900.html).

Remove the shrouds on the stove and construct two "coils" of sorts out of 1/2" copper on both sides of the stove and then reinstall the shrouds (hopefully you will not even tell the modification was done without a close inspection).  Connect both coils back into the existing boiler resembling just another zone on the boiler - with the understanding that this zone really works backwards - it brings heat into the boiler instead of carrying heat away from it to the baseboards.

Use an air conditioning thermostat near the woodstove to activate the circulator on the woodstove zone so that when the T-stat senses the heat from the stove it will automatically start circulating the water (heat) in the woodstove zone from the stove back into the bolier and, in turn, out to existing baseboards on whatever zone is calling for heat.  When we don't use the woodstove - the boiler senses that the temperature is getting too low inside the block and heats up the regular way using the oil burner.

Benefits:

Nice looking woodstove that can be appreciated visually.  Any heat that is not absorbed by the coils will be directly dispersed into the livingroom.  It uses the existing forced hot water system to distribute heat to the other end of the house.  Saves oil. Relatively simple to install.  Relatively safe since the boiler already has several expansion valves for safety.  The coils would be on the outside of the stove which would not tend to overheat and would not draw down the internal temp of the stove causing condensation and creosote issues.  Automatic back-up with the oil burner.

Problems (all guesses on my part):

Disimmilar metals (copper and steel) touching between the stove shrouds and possibly corroding?  Not enough heat transfer to the coils to even make a dent at heating the boiler?  Other issues I'm not seeing?

Thanks, in advance, for any help you guys have to offer,