Do you burn firewood as your main heat source?

B

Bufford

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Do you burn firewood as your main heat source? If so how many cords do you use in a year? 1 cord is 4X4X8 feet.

I use a forced air wood furnace as my main heating system. For back up I have a high efficiency oil furnace. On average I burn about 7 cords of birch and less than a quarter tank of furnace oil. The oil furnace comes on when I am away from home during the winter.

I like the forced air wood furnace as I can heat up the house in minutes as it can really horse out the heat when needed. I need to clean the chimney monthly even with very dry wood as the furnace is very efficient resulting in low chimney stack temperature that promote build-up together with over 30 ft of chimney, yes its a tall house. However, cleaning is easy and is done in the basement instead of the icy hazardous roof. The other thing about forced air is that I can filter the air, as there is always dust seeping out of the knife shop. Knife shops are dust generators.

T
 
Very efficient ---build up ?? If it was efficient you wouldn't get build up. The build up ,creosote,should be burned as it has a good bit of heat capacity. Wood contains two things .Solids such as cellulose and volatiles which if not burned create creosote.A fire should be run hot with a good bit of draft initially to burn the volatiles .When they have been burned the draft is reduced.
 
I burn about 3 cords in a winter, There is also a forced air gas furnace heating my home , but we only turn it up If I'm to lazy to go out and get wood, I clean my chimney every two years, The stove is in the rec.rm so their is about 25 ' of stainless chimney.
 
We have oil fired heat but run the fireplace 100% of the time, still if I'm cold I turn up the thermostat.

Burned 3 cords last year and a tank and a half of oil.

I grew up with wood/coal stoves so it never was hard to get in the habit of usin' the fireplace.

My wife could start a fire from scratch with the best of early 19th century women.
 
After spending a great deal of my teenage years going up in the mountains to retrieve firewood each year, AND having to split and stack, as well as haul it up to the house, I swore I'd never do it again as an adult.

So far, so good!

:D

Seriously, I don't have a fireplace in my current house, and heat with electricity as of now. I did have a gas line ran to the house recently, and when finances allow, I'll be switching over to gas heat, hot water, stove, and dryer. Even though gas is expensive, it is still cheaper and more efficient than electricity.
 
We heat about 70% with a boiler furnace and 30% with the wood stove. That wood stove can crank out the warmth! The most plentiful wood around here is Ponderosa pine which burns decently warm, but quickly and dirtily. I got several dead Aspen logs last weekend, and I'm looking forward to seeing what they can do :)
 
We burn wood as a primary source and use about 2 1/2 cords a year but i have a small house with an small airtight woodstove. It's a lot of work but there is no heat that compares to wood.
Bob
 
Heat with a woodstove and electric heat, primarily woodstove. 2-3 cords last year. Working on cutting and stacking one cord this month. One of my favorite winter past times is to sit next to the roaring woodstove with a cup of tea, and listen to the blizzard outside, with the dogs at my feet, occassionally getting up to pull them off of the stove :D.
 
In my late teens early twentys, and when my wife and I first got together, we lived in a 157 year old farm house in South Jersey, no indoor plumbing(outhouse, well outside) and the only heat came from the old enameled Parlour Stoves, in the winter the stove was the place to congragate, it was like an orb we would hang around.

That old coal stove would burn for weeks on end, we would bank the stove at night and could keep it burning for up to ten hours without any attention.

When we left I scrapped the stove,(I was young and stoopid) wish I had that sucker now.
 
CODE 3 said:
Seriously, I don't have a fireplace in my current house, and heat with electricity as of now. I did have a gas line ran to the house recently, and when finances allow, I'll be switching over to gas heat, hot water, stove, and dryer. Even though gas is expensive, it is still cheaper and more efficient than electricity.
Click to expand...

Electric heat? If there is any kind of gas line available, and if finances are an issue don't even wait to convert to gas. After you log off BF call a reputable heating contractor and get an estimate. Get your financing and have the gas furnace installed. Now before winter. The longer you wait the more you will pay. The savings in one winter will go a long way to pay down the loan. After the 2nd or 3rd year your new heating investment will be paying you instead of the electric utility.

Electric heat is nearly double in cost over gas or oil in some cases its even more. Gas furnaces have efficiency ratings well over 90%. Even with the cost of borrowing you will still be saving money by converting right now. Do you have duct work? If so the conversion will be very easy. If you do not, then hot water heating using radiators in place of electric baseboards is a good option so that you don't have to rip the house appart to install duct work.

Some homes with electric heat were poorly built in the first place and owners have opted instead to tear down and rebuild. In Ontario electric heat was a passing fad back in the 1960's and early 70's when the government pushed for the nuclear reactors and needed a way to market electricity. The result was a building rush of cheap often inferior contruction. Electric heat is much cheaper to install than a good gas furnace, but then the owner pays through the nose later.
 
A friend of mine that lives in the mountains of western MD uses electric heat. I don't understand how he survives winter!
 
99% Wood Heat with electric backup in case we decided to go off for a couple of days. Up until last year I never had to go out a buy wood, I always seemed to find enough. Back in 03 I picked up a couple of truckloads from some people that just bought an old farm house and decided to change over to oil heat. The house and barn were attached to each other by a short "wood Shed", and they wanted all the wood out so she could have some sort of studio or something in there. THe wood shed had walls about 18 inches thick and packed tight with sawdust....an old ice house. Cool as hell.
They probably had five cord in there....I took about half and let a friend get the rest. Laughed real hard when people were complaining about the heating bill that winter.
 
mete said:
Very efficient ---build up ?? If it was efficient you wouldn't get build up. The build up ,creosote,should be burned as it has a good bit of heat capacity. Wood contains two things .Solids such as cellulose and volatiles which if not burned create creosote.A fire should be run hot with a good bit of draft initially to burn the volatiles .When they have been burned the draft is reduced.
Click to expand...
What you say seems to make sense, but a good efficient wood stove with the secondary catalyst smoke burn does tend to create seasonal creosote buildup due to the relatively cooler temps that go up the chimney (when compared to an open fire).

Wood stoves with the secondary burn like I describe above are super efficient and can burn for hours on very little wood with most of the heat going into the house instead of up the chimney ... HOWEVER .. :D This is when the cresote buildup happens due to relatively cooler temps in the chimney and the stove ..

When I had mine, I used to throttle the air intakes way back and the house would stay toasty. The stove would burn for hours on a single wood load once I really had it going. Like anything else, It's a tradeoff.... Clean more often, or burn more wood / hotter fires where more of your heat goes up the chimney instead of into the house ... I was only doing 1 - 2 cords per season when I had mine and the chimney needed a really good cleaning each year.

There was nothing like the way that stove used to warm the house though. The house was about 2700 sq feet and the stove was in the basement. After a couple of hours, we could shut off the oil furnace for the rest of the day. It was great, but I just finally just got tired of messing with the wood. Cutting ... hauling ... stacking ... bringing it in the house ... sometimes splitting ... :rolleyes:

Razz
 
Here's a little tid bit of information I learned from a chimney sweep. The sound of a chimney fire is similar to that of a jet flying over your house except that it does not go away.

This saved my family and house. Fortunately we caught it right away and the only damage was to the chimney. So it you hear that noise, stick your head outside ahd take a look at you chimney.

Ric Lee
 
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