Who Heats Their House With Wood?

M

munk

Joined
Mar 22, 2002
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Just curious.
We own a 3300 sq foot White Elephant built for a local mining superintendent when Gold was King in these hills. The guy who built it had no or little experience outside of erecting metal buildings... The wasps come in every summer by invitation through the large cracks.

One of the former big bosses moved 45 miles away into town because; "He was tired of trying to heat that house."

It started out with a lot of electrical heat in wall panels. The mining company got a great rate for cheap power. That ended and boiler system was put in at great expense. I even have my own basement water tank.

But it was the wood burning, catalytic converter stove that did the job. And every year I get to try out a lot of khuks and chop down a lot of trees because of it.
With propane a 1.50 a gallon...well, even when it was 80 cents we still needed to burn wood.


Right now with it dropping into the 40s at night and in the upper 50's by day I burn a stove load and most the house is warm. Neat.

Now, if I could only convince the spiders not to seek home here because the outside is so....cold.



munk
 
I don't heat my home with wood. We have gas/electric, but we're talking about a brand new dinky little 1250 sq' ranch here. Being in a summertime industry, we get a lot of salesfolks coming in here with ideas of side business we could do in the off months to generate sales. One such thing, is stoves and fireplaces. With the rising gas costs, wood burners are starting to become more and more in vouge.
Have you ever considered a pellet stove? While I don't think it would be the end all to your heating needs, it might help out in a often used room. Basically, these little stoves use cedar pellets that look like rabbit food or pet bedding and use a small electrical current to ignite them. Then they drop down and burn hot for several hours. The only venting you need is something like a 2" line to outside your house.
Honestly, that's all the more I know about them. We didn't pick them up because we really use the winter as a down time and planning time for the next spring. I would like to have one for my next house though. You get that nice dry warmth for the winter time, the pellets are economical, and the mess is next to nothing when you compare it to scooping ashes and having the vent professionally scrubbed.

Jake
 
My parents home was built in 1980, it has always been heated with a wood stove, probably always will. (Hell, air conditioning wasn't put in until five years ago!) So I've grown up with it:)
 
Propane a buck fifty! I am paying 2.15 right now down from 2.29 in November 2005. I will probably put a wood stove in my ranch cabin at some point.
Terry
 
We have a heater which runs off of propane, but in the winter we often use a wood burning stove.
 
Munk,

Your house sounds like mine! The floors go up and down and there are places you can see outside thru the cracks. Luckily I have free gas! The wasps are a fact of life. We never even bother to kill them anymore.

According to Ms Davis the lady we bought our place from her husbands father pulled a sawmill in and cut it and built it in 1915.
 
Hollow, I'm at the base of a mountain, and all around are 8 inch thick retaining walls. It really is a compound. We have metal siding, some wood siding. The garage under the house was finished into a room and enclosed. They then built a two car seperate garage.

We have one balconey, the second being made into a enclosed sun room because it leaked. STill paying for that.

I don't want to leave here, but my wife is tired of the solitude.


munk
 
We have forced gas heat. My grandfather, when he built his cabin, put in an old woodburning stove. I love that thing.
 
I've got a wood stove but don't use it much. The heat doesn't really seem to spread out well in this long, low ranch. Plus, I don't have infinite free wood. I can get some free wood from some friends and relatives, but it's a bit of a drive and only a car load at a time.

I'm not sure how well wood competes in $/btu when you buy it by the rick.
 
I grew up in a house (in Vermont) in which the only heat was a woodstove. I HATE wood heat. You are either broiling if you are close enough to the stove or you are freezing. My water glass would freeze beside my bed at night. I had so many blankets on me I'd be tired from fighting them all night. My Mom now has a furnace to go along with the woodstove, but she still prefers the wood. Go figure.
 
munk said:
Hollow, I'm at the base of a mountain, and all around are 8 inch thick retaining walls. It really is a compound. We have metal siding, some wood siding. The garage under the house was finished into a room and enclosed. They then built a two car seperate garage.

We have one balconey, the second being made into a enclosed sun room because it leaked. STill paying for that.

I don't want to leave here, but my wife is tired of the solitude.


munk
Click to expand...

That sounds much more ritzy than my place now that you elaborate.
 
Last year's hurricane tore the chimney off our house, so we didn't rebuild it, instead putting in an electric fireplace. Used to love getting a wood fire so hot it'd melt your fingernails.

No more wood. Grr. :( Make that Brrr. Hope it isn't a cold winter.


Mike
 
Our old house has 2 original fireplaces (designed for coal) which actually do a grand job of heating the two front rooms. We installed an airtight woodburning fireplace in the dining room after the first winter, when we could see our breath in there and the kitchen.

The house is allegedly mostly heated by natural gas - but I use the term "heated" fairly loosely. Hard to heat a rambling 150 year old house, no matter how much you've tried to tighten up the cracks and insulate.

t.
 
We have a wood furnace- basically your regular wood stove, but with a blower attached to a thermostat. When the house gets cold, it draws air across the fire, when it's warm enough, the fan goes off and the fire simmers. Works well enough.

I heard that running a wood pellet stove costs about the same as buying firewood by the cord. Can anybody confirm or disconfirm?
 
I heated solely with wood for years, but then I moved to town and got a house with an oil furnace. Just last year Red Flower and I had a fireplace insert installed in the fireplace, so we can supplement the oil heat with wood. It gives us something to do with the scrap wood we generate from pruning, etc., and also provides us some heat and cooking ability if the power goes out.
 
I can't say we heat our home entirely with wood but I did put in a Regency wood stove 15 years ago or more I'd have to look. Last winter we burned a cord and a half of wood. I expect to do the same this year. Ever since we retired we are home all day and pretty much burn all day long everyday of the week all winter long and because one of us is up later than the other on weird hours not really caring what time or what day it is we tend to burn more hours of each day too.

I like the wood stove. Best money we spent remodeling our house IMO.

STR
 
that is noisy and inefficient. I prefer using the woodstove. A pal of my dad's has access to acres of non native acacia in Scott's Valley that we harvest in the summer. Burns surprisingly well and is easy to cut and split.
 
Shann said:
I grew up in a house (in Vermont) in which the only heat was a woodstove. I HATE wood heat. You are either broiling if you are close enough to the stove or you are freezing. My water glass would freeze beside my bed at night. I had so many blankets on me I'd be tired from fighting them all night. My Mom now has a furnace to go along with the woodstove, but she still prefers the wood. Go figure.
Click to expand...

I'm with you man. I've heated with wood most of my life too, and I'm tired of it. I could work three days o.t. and buy all the oil I need for the year, or spend 14 or more days cutting, skidding, cutting, splitting, stacking, hauling, etc, etc. Not to mention the mess and danger. I clean my chimney every two weeks because I'm scared to death of chimney fires.

Like you said its either too hot or freezing cold. Maybe I'm just getting lazy, but after this wood is gone (two years ahead) I'm out...

Thinking about pelllets instead. They're really big around here.
 
Sometimes. Orly Wood burning hearth stove. Really kept the place warm.
Wood smell , which I enjoyed, raised heck with Moms asthma. Will only use it now , in Emergency.
 
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