Heating your home
 

Does anyone here use a fireplace to heat your entire home during the winter? We are looking for ways to become less dependant on "outside" sources.

If you do not use natural gas or other commercial heating devices, (or very little) - I would like to hear your stories!

:)

We use a combination of Oil heat and a wood stove. A wood stove is much more efficient than a fireplace as the fireplace tends to suck air from the room up the chimney where it's not doing any good.

Do you have a fireplace now or are thinking of building one? There are woodstoves which do go into the fireplace hole if you already have one. If you don't, I would save the money of building a fireplace and put it into a wood stove.

Using a wood stove is messy, tracking in stuff when bringing in the wood, smoke from the stove at times( when lighting or rather trying to light), taking out the ashes..

One option that I'm thinking about for our house if we decide to stay in this place, is to replace our oil furnace in the basement with a multi-fuel furnace in it's place. This way we could keep the wood in the basement and use our existing heat distribution system throughout the house and reduce the chance of frozen pipes. If we are away and the wood fire dies down then the oil part of the furnace can kick in.


-Mark in NH

We've had a wood/coal burning furnace in the basement for 8 years. The plus is that we spend next to nothing on propane. The bad part is the inconsistancy of the heat, and the dust. Sometimes, especially when my pyromaniac husband makes the fire, it gets pretty hot in here. Other times, when it's dropped below zero at night, and the wind is howling, we'll wake up to an empty grate and the house will be 56 degrees. We have a woodlot, and people are always asking us to take their dead and fallen trees, so fuel is free. I'll take the extra work and discomfort over a $600 yearly propane bill any day! By the way, if you're considering one of the outdoor woodburners, think about the proximity of your neighbors. The family two houses down got one this year, and it chugs out smoke like a steam train. The smoke envelopes their next door neighbors house completely. They can't even open their windows, and because it heats the water, they have to burn 365 days a year. I know that some people love them, but living next to one stinks!

Well, honestly - I do not know very much about buring anything except natural gas. We did have a fireplace growing up... and, when I asked my question, I should have asked about a wood burner. ;)

Can you hook the wood burner up to your heating ducts, and also have natural gas as a back up? I will have to look into this "multi-heating" device. ;) :p

They should have a book "heating your home for dummies." ;) :D

I'll take all ideas here! :worship:

Patti, we have a propane furnace to back up our wood burning furnace. I'm not sure how either of them is hooked up, but if you really want to know, let me know and I'll ask my husband (that technical stuff is his department). All I know is that, if it's not possible to make a fire, we can just walk over to the thermostat and turn the propane furnace on. Natural gas probably works the same way, but we don't have it out here. The wood burner blows through the heating ducts with an electric blower (just like the one on your natural gas furnace). We did have to have a chimney put on the house. I forgot about that little expense! All in all, its been worth it to us. Even if we've only saved $500 a year, in 8 years, that has been $4000, so the furnace and chimney have paid for themselves!

My parents tried heating the house with the fireplace years ago and we about froze. Dad then made a stove that woud slide into the fireplace with a metal jacket around it and a fan to force the heated air into the room. He also put a cook stove in the kitchen.
With the two stoves going, the house gets too warm - about 78-80. We fire up the natural gas furnace about once every five years just to make sure it still works or to keep the house from freezing up if they leave for an extended time during the winter.
Dad also put a water jacket into the cook stove and has a storage tank standing beside the stove. The water goes through them before going to the gas water heater.
A pretty funny thing happened two winters ago. The gas company sent a man out to change the meter because they said it wasn't working (they have gas bills of about $4.00 in the winter). Dad told him to leave the meter alone because there was nothing wrong with it. It took him about an hour of discussion and showing his set up, and starting the furnace so the man could see the meter actually turning before he was convinced.

Bret

Patti
The first winter in our house we had propane heat only. Our house is approx 1900 sq ft ,native limestone with no insulation in the walls. The first winter we used over 1500 gal of propane and I knew I didnt like the bill for gas so we purchased a Lopi Freedom Bay insert for the fireplace.
It cost about 4500 for the stove,liner and installation.The propane man
was out last week and it took 300 gal to fill it .so we used 300 gal in the
last 18 months.We keep the furance set low so that if we are gone the
funace will keep the pipes from being froze.I have firewood here on the farm so costs are nothing for it..Yes some times the mess and dust are a
irration but the savings are worth it.
gregg

Patti,
We heat our house exclusively with wood burners. We have one in the living room and one in the kitchen area. We only use one at a time unless it gets very cold ( 0 or lower) The only disadvantages are that the air in the house can get very dry in the winter and you cannot go away for extended periods of time in the winter. When we adopted our babies we had to be out of state in Dec and Jan and had to have neighbors keep the fires going. For us it is ideal because we have 90acres of woodland and I really enjoy cutting firewood.

Then we can assume you have a forced air (not hot water) ng furnace.

Fireplaces tend to waste more heat than they generate, as air always leaks out of them, so when not using it you lose heat that your ng furnace produces. When using the fireplace, 80% of the heat goes up the chimney, and only 20% goes into the house. And generally only one room. In short, an open fireplace is a bad thing....

An insert can be pretty good, if you want the nice looks of a fireplace & want to get some heat out of it. If you already had a fireplace, install an insert for sure!

If you want real heat & not looks, get a wood central heating furnace for your basement for next to the current ng furnace. There are several different ways to go.

You can replace the furnace you have with a combination unit. This is the easiest to get past building inspectors & insurance agents, and a real good thing if you have to replace your furnace anyhow. These will run $4000 tho.

Or, you can get an add-on. There are 100's of models, and it is quite simple to tie into your exsisting duct work if you have room right next to your current stove for the wood burner. However, lots of inspectors & insurance folks frown at mixing ng fuels with other fuels in the same room, and you MUST at the least have a seperate chimney for the wood stove, cannot combine the exhaust of the 2. You can find some under $1000, probably pay $2000 for a good unit.

Both of the above come in different flavors, you may be required to get an EPA or cat stove to cut down on pollutants, etc.

Or, you can get an outdoor wood furnace & pipe the heat in. These are real easy to get approved, have no mess in the house, and can burn all sorts of junk wood or good wood. However they are terribly innefficient so you will need to double the amount of wood needed for any other indoor wood stove. They can esp in mild damp weather smoke terribly so location is important. There are a million being built, some are really poor, others are good for what they are. These things don't need much inspection as they are not in your house, and it's up to you to pick a good one.... They will run about $4000 as well.

Our 1926 house was heated by a hot water wood furnace in the basement until 1972 as the only furnace here in Minnesota. Then an add-on oil boiler was added, and you could use one or the other. In 1991 a different oil boiler was installed, and you could use both or either. Last October the wood boiler cracked, so I spent the past 6 months researching a very small nitche of a market (wood boiler furnaces that work plumbed with an oil burner) and just took delivery on a unit.

I can offer more, but my research was on water heat, you have many more & cheaper alternatives with forced air heat. Be sure to address the seperate chimney issue, and you need to have some room for the furnace & a bit of wood storage, and check your local codes & insurance on wood heat.

Check how big your current ng furnace is, it will be rated in 1,000 of btu & will say on a plate on the furnace, you probably would look for a wood stove with about the same output.

--->Paul

I have electric heat because there are no heat ducts in my house so I try to run the woodstove which sits in my living room all winter. I'm lucky as I have a small AFrame house. The second floor has an open loft to the first floor and the third floor has a big vent in the wall so the heat rises and keeps the whole house toasty. I have a blower on the woodstove that we can switch to solar and the ceiling fan in the living room also will run off of the solar. It's a pain to get home from work and start the woodstove but it sure pays off. If I don't cave in and turn on the electric heat, my electric bill only runs about $100.00/month. I'm very careful about turning off lights and using energy efficient light bulbs also. I just love wood heat because it always feel warmer for some reason!
Leay

if you have a fireplace and don't want an insert you can bolt 2 angle irons inside on each leg and bolt a piece of flat metal to that and cut a round hole in it for a stove pipe and use a wood stove. put stove black on the metal and it looks very nice. just remember to keep your fireplace damper open.

We heat the log cabin exclusively with a woodstove. It's a fairly small cabin (1600 sq ft) and the stove keeps it nice and toasty. We do have fuel oil backup but we only use it to make sure it starts for a couple of days a year.

We live in Upstate NY and the last two winters were harsh so we went through about 5-6 cords of wood each year.

Stacy in NY

Fireplaces are notoriously inefficient. It wouldn't surprise me if the efficiency hovered around 25%.

Wood heat is ONLY a viable alternative IF one has a free or very cheap supply of firewood.

I can't believe that nobody has mentioned how antagonistic insurance companies are towards homeowners that heat with wood.....especially those that use "inside" furnaces.
I suspect that insurance companies have taken this antagonistic approach because very very few wood burners do it right. By "doing it right", i mean having a wood stove properly hooked up, well away from combustible materials, burning only well seasoned wood, and cleaning ones chimney at least once a year.

We use an old ben franklin free standing fireplace to do some of our heating. It is very hard to control the heat and to get the heat around the house. We use a propane furnace as a back-up or for really really cold days. We used only 200 gal of propane this last year and if we burn no wood, we usually use 800 gal. With the price so hight, we feel like wood is the way to go. We dont have our own wood supply but wood is plentyful here and we can get it free at many different "wood" using factories and from friends that have very large lots. We are already getting ready to haul wood in for next year cause i don't want to be cold... :eek:

Belinda

I have a small house. Probably less than 1100 sf. This last winter we heated only with a wood stove. We do have a small wall heater in the hallway but this last fall we found out that it doesn't work anymore. So therefore we did not use it this winter. At the first of October I bought 8 ricks of seasoned wood which constisted of Oak, Cherry, and a little bit of Elm. Each rick cost me $30. for a total of $240. We started out with a rough fall. It got cold and we had a big snow fall before christmas. If stayed cold through January but when Febuary arrived it warmed up nicely. Many days I would only keep a fire going through the night and let it die down during the day. It ended up being a mild winter for us. So I ended up using about 6 ricks of wood total this last winter. If winter had stayed with us we might have used all of the 8 ricks. When I was burning totally propane I think it was costing me about $120 a month to stay warm. Quit a bit of savings if you ask me.

We had to buy a good portion of our wood last winter-4 cords of it. It was $125.00 per cord delivered (I got a deal because I bought all 4 cord at one time). That wood lasted about 3-3 1/2 months for a cost of heating the house at around $150.00 per month during a very cold winter. We never got over 26 degrees for well over a month, and the lows were below zero most nights. My mother in law pays over twice that amount, granted her house is bigger, but not twice as big, with natural gas.

We have to pay an additional $25.00 per year "auxiliary heating charge" because we heat with the woodstove. The insurance company did come out and check out the stove, stove pipe and chimney.

Stacy in NY

KincoraFarm, which woodstove/model do you have? Our home is 1700 sq. ft, and we are considering either the Vermont Casting Encore which is rated at 1500-1800 sq. ft, or the Jotul F500, same amount of sq. ft. coverage, and wondered if these would be adequate or if we should get the larger model.

Add on Woodstove
 

Tractor Supply Company sells add-on wood stoves. These units set next to your existing furnace and a couple of plenum connectors are hooked to your existing heat runs. TSC has three different sizes avialable based on the amount of heat needed/size of your house.
I have one of these wood burning "add-on" furnaces next to my primary furnace, which burns fuel oil. We used it extensively from about early March on this year because Janurary's fuel oil bill was $300. Burning wood made a huge difference in the fuel bill and I keep the house warmer when heating with wood than I do with oil, which makes the family happy.
One thing to do before springing for a wood burner is to check the insulation levels in your house. Little or no insulation in your house will be expensive (and time consuming in the case of wood heat) no matter what you heat with. Our house is an old two story farm house (between Flint and Lansing) surrounded by a mile of open fields in three directions, so it gets windy. Insulation was minimal when we moved here. Just improving the insulation level and sealing the cracks/openings made a big difference.
If you're on a budget consider the add-on wood furnace. If you can afford about $3500-4000 skip the add-on furnace and get a dual fuel furnace like the Yukon Eagle www.yukon-eagle.com The Yukon will be our next furnace when the time comes.

We use an antique Andes Parlour Stove, it works well especially for a stove that's over a 100 years old. We will be replacing it this year tho. From what I've read it's better to go with a smaller stove than keep damping down a larger stove because of creosote buildup.

We'll be buying a Vermont Castings stove. I believe the Resolute Acclaim model is what we decided on getting.

Stacy in NY

We bought a Jotul 600 this spring to replace our old soapstone stove, that we thought wouldn't hold enough wood.
It is extremely hard to get a fire going in it and unless you leave the door slightly open-it will go out. The air intake just won't let enough air in.
I wish I had my soapstone back!

I'd sure love to hear more feedback on both Vermont Casting and Jotul woodstoves. We kind of thought those two seemed the best from research, but I'd read a bit of negativity regarding the Vermont Casting since they'd been bought out by Majestic.

Is anyone using a masonry type stove where the mass absorbs the heat and then releases it over time (After the fire has died down)? I hear those work at high temps with better combustion and smaller fires. That's what I'm leaning towards when we build a place down at the farm.

Mike

That's what we thought, too. Just shows that you can't always believe the advertising. The soapstone was a much better stove even though it wasn't big enough to heat our whole house.

The house (2300 sq ft modern colonial) I am living in now has a very nice arrangement, put in by the original owner. If I have the money, I would replicate it in my next house.

The house is nominally heated by a oil fired hw boiler. Along side is a 100% sized wood fired boiler, which can be valved to operate independently (that is, alone) or in parallel with the oil fired system. Likewise the oil system can be valved to operate alone.

When operating in parallel, the cold water return enters a header which feeds both boilers. Then after heating (from either boiler), the common discharge header feeds the circulating pumps that provide heat to one of the three zones.

The operation of the wood boiler's fan kicks in based on water temperature to keep the water warm. Should it get somewhat below that set point (as in if the wood all was used up) the thermostat on the oil boiler will kick in and start up the oil boiler.

If all electrical power is lost AND I am home, the wood boiler can be operated manually, adjusting the inlet damper much wider, and of course attending to the wood more closely. This heates the basement well (easily to 60- 70 in very cold weather .. and open doors convect some to upstair .. but in very cold weather its still pretty chilly 50s? Meanwhile, the system can be valved to allow some slow themo-differential flow such that heating pipes get some limited warmth to the second floor upstairs....

If I had done this myself, the only change I would have made would have had the system designed to feed, as an alternate prefeed, to the electric domestic HW heater. It is now two separate systems.

I also have a big roomsize/one brick wall fireplace upstairs, but that is for pleasure, not heat.


good luck deciding

owhn

I've heated my house (brick veneer, 3/2, 2000 sqft) with a Hearthstone soapstone heater since 1986. I do have central heat for laziness, but I rarely ever use it.

Running a soapstone heater is _different_. You have to think an hour, or so, ahead, all of the time. If you think you can start a fire in a cold stove, and have instant heat, fugeddaboutit. Conversely, if things get too hot, no instant cool-downs.

My Mom, when she was alive, loved her fireplace. A monster, it took 30 inch firewood. Probelm is, you can keep a roaring fire going, and not heat well. Dad was getting older, so was I, and cutting 15-20 ricks a year was getting old. So in 93 I bought them an insert - best money I ever spent. Cut the wood consumption by more than 2/3s, and the wood is much shorter, and much easier to handle. And you get a lot more heat.

As for fuel....wod is where you find it. I've cut trees, scavenged tops at logging sites, burnt hardwood pallets, used cores from a veneer mill, and have a friend that uses scraps from construction sites.

During a power outae, we kept the fireplace roaring. It made a warm area just in fron tof the hearth, but that's about it. Modern fireplaces are not designed to give off heat.

Honestly, the most effective way to heat our house without power was to leave the warm bathwater in the tub. Over the next 2 hours the heat from the water was transfered to the air of the house. It actually made the temp go UP, while the fireplace just slowed the thermostat as the temps DROPPED!

I don't think that you can heat more than 1 or 2 rooms with a fireplace, & it is very inefficient & more than a little dangerous. Most of the heat goes right up the flue. Almost all of the fireplaces that I've seen are designed for looks, & not for heat. Wood stoves are more efficient, but the free-standing ones are hard to remove the ashes from. I have a beast of a stove that was home-built by someone. It is constructed from 1/2in.steel plate, & it will take 4ft logs. I bought it 20yrs ago for about $100. It is about 3x5 ft. & has a large flat top for cooking. I installed it in my cabin with a firebrick surround in a corner, with 5 ft of clearance from the walls & flagstone flooring around it for 5ft. I think that this stove could heat 2000 sq ft if it was centrally located in the house. My cabin is only about 950 sq ft, so I rarely build a big fire.The disadvantage of this stove is that it takes quite a while for the heat to build up because of the thickness of the steel plate, but once it gets hot it stays hot for a LONG time. I'm sure that there are much better stoves out there, but I like this ugly beast.

Well, we will have to replace our furnace one of these days. It is VERY old, and takes up a ton of space. We do not have a basement, our "utility room" is our furnace room also. Its quite a large room, with space for stacking wood and much room for taking care of a wood burning unit. I am checking into the multi-furnace type heating unit.

Does anyone have any suggestions on a multi heating unit?

Do you have a multi heating unit?

Our water heater is electric, and yes - our furnace right now is natural gas forced heat. Our heater at present is at about 5'6 feet long and goes all the way up to the ceiling just about. HUGE! I heard it came out of a store about 40 years ago or more. :eek:

In the winters it was not abnormal for us to spend $350-$425 a month for gas to heat the house. :no: Thats just as much as our house payment!

We have brand new windows and doors, the house is nice and tight, no air coming in from the outside, new roof and new insullation... so, its not that...

By the way, we have our own wood - 30 acres.

For the last five years I have heated my place, 1800 sq.ft, with a pellet stove. Much more efficient, clean and less mess than a wood stove. Pellets run less than $3.00 a bag and on average use one bag a day. May want to check into this option.

I was wondering if anyone would mention either a pellet or corn stove. We have access to a lot of corn so are leaning toward a corn stove. It seems that a long time ago Ken S. mentioned that he had a corn stove and liked it. The one we would like to buy is 2700.00. So we're hoping to have that saved by winter. It's not unusual for us to have $300-$400 electric bills in the winter too. We sure are looking forward reducing that!

Audrey

I have a 1100 sq ft home in MWC that I heat with NG. I have 1 wall heater in the living room, a small heater in the bathroom, a cookstove & a water heater. My gas bill is rarely over $100/mo. NG, if you have it, is the most dependable,economic,& convienient,& clean form of heat that you can get in this part of the country.

Two words: Geo-thermal :haha:
No mess no fuss and cheaper than some of these wood devices.

Ed

I'll have to do an internet check for pellet stoves also. :)

Self-reliant heating
 

Patti,
Sorry, but I don't know what kind of farming is done in your area. We have a friend that is a farmer that, among other things, grows corn, so we have a good source for corn for a corn stove if we should buy one. We had a corn stove in Colorado and it kept the house quite warm even on the coldest of nights. You can fill it up in the evening before going to bed and it will last the whole night. It takes a small amount of electricity to run the fan and auger so a UPS or battery is needed during a power failure when you have ice bringing down the power lines.

Wood stoves need tending, but I understand that there are soapstone stoves to even the heat a bit and catalitic (sp?) converters to burn the 'smoke' to make burning wood more efficient. Special flue pipe can bring in outside air for combustion to eliminate burning air from within the house. Of course, there are also the 'outdoor' wood stoves that supply heat to your forced air heating system. This will prevent overheating your house.

Fireplace inserts are also great for no electricity, but I would consider modification of a fireplace to draft outside air to eliminate pulling in cool air to replace combustion air. My F-I-L preheats his air on the intake for the propane fueled furnace by running it past the fireplace insert. I am planning on restoring our fireplace as backup when the power is out. I like the open fire and so I am thinking a glass door and an outside combustion air supply. Since it will be for backup when the power is out, we can huddle in the living room on those rare occasions to stay warm by the fire.

Another option I casually looked into was a stove that can burn wood chips and other combustables. We get a lot of downed limbs from numerous pecan trees and I thought it would be a good idea to run them through a chipper, drying them, and storing for fuel. I don't know a lot about this yet, but it is an option I will be looking into.

One more option is to consider a geothermal heat pump that draws heat from the ground (a pipe circulates liquid through a 'well'). However, it takes electricity to circulate the fluid and blow the air.

You could always go 'underground'. We had some friends that had virtually no heating bills and almost no work for heating. A small fire in the fireplace provided what little they needed.

Dale (DH of Mary, TX)

Yesterday I did recieve mail in my snail mail box talking about multi fuel stoves.. they are SO neat, but SO expensive!!

I cant wait to have all of the information - so we can make a wise decision before winter. We need to save $$

Patti,

Lots of good ideas contained within this thread, but I think your situation is a no-brainer.

You've got 30 acres of woodland, so you are surrounded by free fuel. You just have to decide what type of wood burning technology you want to use.

Well, now's the time to explore all of your options, and you are wise to do so.

I like the KISS mentality, and I like stuff that I don't have to work on. Therefore, I think a traditonal free-standing wood heater, along with a simple way to move the radiant heat a bit, is going to be your simplest, least costly, most goof-proof, way to go.

corn stoves are good, as are pellet stoves, when i first saw a corn stove , i was so surprised, in most parts of the corn belt, corn is CHEAP !, and plentifull, so its a great option, they are a bit more expensive than a pellet stove , to start with ,
down here, i would use wood / solar, but im down south now, in the northwoods of wis, i used an old cast iron box stove, a la ben franklin
and with 2x6 walls, with tyvek house wrap envelope, and blown isnullation to r 30 in the attic, underlayment insullation under the floor, , it was good for a 1800 sqft home, but, we had super insullated it, ( we were actually only about an hour from the countryside HQ in Withee wi.) so , yes wood heat can be done, with a regular fireplace, it cant be done practically

Corn Stove
 

In Plano, TX, a man made the news with his corn stove. He has a two story home of about 3,000 sq. ft.. He installed a corn stove because he was tired of the huge heating bills. He tied it into the air vents and quit using his electric heater completely. His bills dropped to less than $75/month while a neighbor down the block living in a house built from the same plans by the same builder was putting out close to $500 in the same winter month.

I'm looking to do the same when I buy my house.
TXlightningbug :yeeha:

Jolly, most likely we will go with the wood burner. It's very interesting however to hear how other people are heating their homes. :)

Thank you for all of your comments.

:)