Wood Heat Thread ~ post pics

Ok, so that means that you'd be spending $600-$750 a year to heat your house (I know, my math skills are astonishing ). What will it cost you to heat with oil, propane, etc?

 

uhh no. i supplement propane heat with the wood stove. i'm around $1000/yr for propane. propane hit $4/gal last winter topped off with an ice storm, only reason i'm still bothering with wood.

 

At $4 a gallon for propane, you'd definitely still be saving $ burning wood even if you're buying it for $250/cord. Just not as much money as you're saving doing all the work yourself, haha!

If I remember my maths correctly, a cord of oak burned in an efficient woodstove is somewhere in the range of the heat equivalent of 150 gallons of propane, and a cord of maple is in the neighborhood of 135 gallons of propane.

 

Insulate the hell out of your place so it doesn't take so much fuel to heat and then burn wood on special occasions when you want the ambiance.

 

Buy it and have some one dump it in your yard! Have to admit I'm getting to that point I have been putting up wood for over 40 years!

 

Cord wood is still the cheapest form of heat followed by pellets.

 

I'm in the process of finishing the woodstove alcove in my basement . I originally had plans to put a stone or brick veneer in this alcove which is why I left it unfinished when we moved in , but it's been 5 years , I don't have time to do it and I don't want to pay what It would cost to have my mason buddy put stone in there so I finally said fuck it , it's getting drywall , so I'm finishing the framing and I had to install an insulated thimble because the stove pipe will now be going through a combustible wall space , hope to get the board on tomorrow if it's still raining otherwise it's back onto trimwork for me and I'll board this on the next rainy day

 

Did someone say wood pellets?





I just had the inspector sign off on it yesterday. I've got 3 tons of pellets stacked in my basement ready for winter. I'm hoping to at least 1/2 my oil usage and I figured the stove and pellets would be paid for in 2 years. I will only be using oil for hot water.

 

Pellet stove all the way! Fill it, set it, forget it! Clean it once per ton. Three tons per year average. This year looks like $225 per ton. I don't have to supplement, and the house is in the lower 70's That's no illusion. $675/yr heating bill! Just filled my LP $1.65/gal

 

+1

I splurged @ $280/ton for super premium 100% hardwood pellets. Looking forward to setting the thermostat and forgetting about it. 40lb bags of pellets are also much easier to deal with than carrying and stacking wood.

My Harman P43 was ~$2000 which included 1 ton of pellets.

 

I'm thinking of revisiting whether pellet stoves qualify for this thread

 

Don't be sore just because pellet burners are better than wood burners
J/K to each their own. I like pellets, less work... more time for the Taco!

 

Gasification boiler that is the way to burn wood if you want efficiency! Pellets have their place but to do it right you need a boiler and a storage bin that will hold at least 4 tons or you might as well burn wood in a stove.

 

The problem with the wood boilers is that half the people who use them can't seem to figure them out, so instead of super efficient heating units they're just big smoke dragons.

 

Going up to the cabin tonight... probbaly gonna need to get the stove going for the first time since spring.. its only 3C there right now. Brrrrr

 

Same temp at my place this morning, but it was measured correctly....
at 38 degrees Fahrenheit.


Edit: We considered lighting the stove this morning, but the amount of southern exposure the house gets would have meant that by the time we got home the house would have been 85 degrees.

 

That is why they are being completely redesigned no smoky out door boilers. It has all ways been beyond me why one would think an outdoor boiler made sense you lose a tremendous amount of heat trying to make Maine warmer! Put the thing inside no matter what you still have to carry wood. A gasification boiler makes little or no smoke it burns the wood smoke to make the heat the top part where the wood is burning is a very slow smoky fire the more smoke the better a nasty creosote mess the smoke is forced to the bottom mixed with air and ignited the flame is blue hot and virtually all the smoke is burned off.

 

Yeah, they had one on display at the Skowvegas fair this year, a wood chip burning model. Said that the ash from 25 tons of green wood chips would only fill a 25 gallon trash can. Not a bad ratio, really. They weren't burning it, since it was August, but the sales guy also said that it produced almost zero smoke.

Of course, being a sales guy he's supposed to say things like that, haha!

 

Earlier this week, I finally got to my back acreage to start cutting up fallen trees back there. Cut 2 trees from back to about 4 feet in from the property line (fell over the barbed wire fence) into logs I could carry to my trailer, mostly 48" or so but nice and green pine. Still have more down trees to get, but it was about 2/3 of a cord I brought up front Monday. Cut it into rounds and started splitting Tuesday until I had to get cleaned up and leave. Finished splitting Wednesday. Got 1.5 ton of hay yesterday. My back is a bit sore today. I am also beginning to doubt my firewood supply for this winter. My neighbor said he usually goes through 2-3 cords each year, wood heat as primary, and once I bring some little trees from the back that have been cut down all summer, I will have about 1.5 cords seasoned. Might be running electricity toward the end of this winter.


In my basement, I have an old wood stove. I haven't tried if yet, but I assume it works without issue. I am thinking to replace it one of these years with a freestanding propane stove. There is only 1 set of stairs to get to it, and none of the windows are big enough to reasonably feed wood through to stock down there. A pellet stove could be another viable option. I have a chimney already that will work just fine. Any thoughts from this peanut gallery as to what would be a better option?

 

Just one manchild's opinion, but...
Pellet > Propane.