Who Heats Their House With Wood?

Our house was designed by us to be heated with a fireplace. It is essentially almost a right triangle in profile ("saltbox"), with the fireplace at the narrow angle. The heat rises naturally to the bedrooms on the second floor. The coldest part of the first floor is at the end of the house opposite the fireplace, but it still stayed at 55F on a night when the low was 17F.

The house is quit tight and well-insulated.

This is all to the good since we average three power outages a year. Recent severe tree-trimming by the power company may help reduce the problem.
 
I don't heat exclusively with wood -- the fireplace is far too inefficient and the house too drafty for that -- but it's a useful supplement. The house is heated with oil from an underground tank; refilling such a thing is expensive. They won't even send a truck unless you're buying at least 150 gallons. Ouch. Not that it gets all that cold out here in the first place; I don't personally bother turning the heat on, letting guests or the room mate do it. I'm quite comfortable in jeans and a sweatshirt into the high 40's and it never seems to get any colder than that inside.

I'm currently shopping for a house in Mason County. Most of them seem to have wood stoves already in place. If mine doesn't, one will be added. I don't see myself getting away from burning wood any time soon. I can't always afford fuel oil but I can always find some wood.
 
It is pretty hard to find a recently built house these days with either a fireplace or wood stove - the insurance companies won't go for it. Apparently it is o.k. to have one of those furnaces located outside the house though. I don't know how those things work, but they look like a little out-building with a chimney on top. Supposedly you can stoke them up once or twice a day and they just feed hot air into the existing ductwork.

An associate recently install one of those things and burns corn in it. According to him, a dump truck full of corn costs a whole lot less than either wood, oil, gas or electric. Stoking an outside stove with dried corn does not sound all that entertaining however, and it would be tough to involve khuks in the process.
 
There may be better things to burn, but consider wood's efficiency. As my father used to say, it warms you twice: once while chopping it and again while burning it. (If you ask me, it warms you a third time while humping all that damned wood into the house to set next to the stove.) What other fuel can provide this?

I was a blessed with a warm (if splintery) childhood. ;)
 
The outside wood stoves around here are found on big spreads or rich Actor's homes in the mountains. They take some pretty big logs and would be inefficient in a normal home. Maybe there are smaller ones, but then the thing has to work againt sub zero weather, and I don't know why anyone would want it outside. The large outside stove takes enormous chunks of wood and can beat the cold. They blow the heat into the house, often through a vent system going room to room or at least area to area.

I know pellets are the top of the line, but the only people I know owning one lived in Northern Ca and the pellets weren't a 3 hour drive away from home.
That may be changing here- they might be one hour away.
Wood is plentiful. Just seems the best way to go. I need the exercise, and my boys have a blast. I also get to work out with khuks more than I would if I lived in the city or had a pellet stove. And I get to get outside.


munk
 
A sig line seen on another forum:
Build a man a fire, and he'll be warm for the night. Set a man on fire, and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.
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Wish I'd said that. He likes to riff on this theme ... previous sig line was
Give a man a fish, and he'll be fed for a day. Teach a man to fish, and he won't show up for work tomorrow.
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