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Those that heat with wood...
How much did you burn this year?
Long story short, we kept warm though December on scrap wood from my pallet reclamation. Upon that running out turned on the forced air only to find its crapped out. So I'm not one for frigid temps or heat, being January opted to pay for someone elses labor. All told we ended up buying a cord and 2/3 rds for 275 which to be honest is a fraction of the propane bill... Still have a third cord left. Had a small fire yesterday, but did not have need for two days prior. Gonna be high of fiftys all week and I do not forsee the need to burn anymore if the sun shines. House stays mid 60's with good sunlight, even on cold days. So if temps stay in the 50's should be around 70 in here. I'm considering not replacing the Furnace... it is nice to be able to turn up that thermostat... Decisions Decisions... |
As a lot of folks around here know, I have an older Hearthstone. I run my central heat only once or twice a winter, so pretty much all my heating is done with wood.
I burn a little over a cord in an average year. My wood costs nothing more than my labor (and as soon as it dries up enough, I've got a good-sized downed pin oak to cut up). |
Not too much this year.
For the late fall into December we just had a small fire in the AM and another at night. Only during the cold snap did we keep it going most of the day. We are back to just a small fire in the AM again. |
We go through about 10 cord, but we live in an extremely draft and poorly insulated building. Cannot wait til the house is finished! That sucker is going to be insulated to a fare-the-well! My mom has a nicely insulated little place on our property and only goes through 2-3 cords.
Oh, and all we burn is pine because that is all there is. That also makes a difference. |
I burned about 2 cords of wood in our woodstove. Have next years stack already done. Working on getting ahead three years.
I stopped burning 24/7 this week. May need to have a fire a few nights here and there. We burned all day and night from November 1st. |
You two have far milder winter then we. And we have some what mild fall/winter then others.
I member a few years back I was camped out hunting on thanksgiving in a foot of snow... had the tent collapse on me lol. We are mid way in the thumb of the Mit. The Lake effect helps some what with our winters but still can be brutal. I had feared we would have a worse winter then we had. Glad that fear was unfounded. |
I figure the scrap wood was around a half cord, so we fared (or is that fired lol) well considering the input here.
Let us all be thankful for spring, though not a big fan of the heat of summer. I keep mentioning to momma we need a Summer house in Alaska... lol |
We've still got a bit of last fall's snow on the ground but not too bad a winter. And it is sure looking like an early spring. We put up about 7 cords and probably have a bit over 2 left. We like to keep the house around 75-80, because we can, so we use more wood than we need to.
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I had a cord of oak, a cord of Douglas Fir and a cord of scrap lumber, I used a 1/3rd of the wood and 1/2 of the scrap. I make all the kindling from the scrap. We just have the little wood cook stove but it heats our water and cooks our meals too. It was a very mild winter here....James
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I possibly used more wood this winter than last.
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I have a nice LPG furnace in the basement that was only used two Winters.
It will never run again in this house. I only bought and installed it for the first two Winters when our daughter was born. I only burn used shipping pallets up here in NW Lower Michigan and I still have plenty of them but there has been no fire built for three days now. Depending more on the wind than how cold it is I cut 5 to 8 pallets every other day during the real cold. This heating season cost me more that any of the last ones since I turned off that furnace in 1997. I paid $50 or $60 for a box of ten Marathon Circular Saw blades because the sharpening shop where I have been getting defective used blades from isn't getting in enough blades now to find enough bad ones for me. I really do not remember if the blades were five or six bucks each in the case but it was a great savings buying them by the case so I went for it. If Michigan Farmer sees this post he will know how much I paid for the blades because I bought them from him. ETA What I really want to say here is there is just no comparing wood heat to some stupid furnace that blows almost as much cold air as warm air. That furnace downstairs is one of those high efficiency ones and to get all that heat out of it the blower just keeps blowing until there is no heat left in the stove after it shuts down. Furnace heat is cold heat. A wood stove is warm heat. |
I heat with wood exclusively with an outdoor boiler. I also heat my domestic hot water as well. I will probably go thru 12-14 cord for the entire heating season. I'm in Northern MN and our heating season is approx Oct to sometimes May or June. I realize this is an enormous amount of wood however I have not used one drop of heating oil in 3 years... This year was certainly warmer than last year so I will use a little less wood. This also takes care of keeping me in shape :)
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So far I have gone through about 4 cords of oak and about 1/2 cord of pine/popple. I burn pine/popple in the fall and spring when I only need to warm up the house in the morning and evenings, oak all winter long.
The cheapest is to cut the firewood off your land or where you have permission. You can get firewood from pallets as you have been. (do you use a magnet to remove the nails before you spread the ashes on the garden?) You can get a permit to cut firewood on state or federal forests. They are about $75 for 10 cords here. I have 8 foot oak logs delivered for $85 a cord and I block them up and split them. The neighbors that do this are a good source of the name of the person they buy from. Most expensive is to have blocked and split firewood delivered. Look on CL. Try to have at least 2 years worth of wood drying in the woodshed. Dry wood burns way better than wet. I have the propane furnace as backup to the wood stove. Also electric heaters as back up to the backup. A wood stove needs to be fed at least twice a day. What happens if you are too sick to tend it? How do you heat your home if you have to leave for a few days? I would get the furnace fixed. |
We went thru more this year than last.....probably in the neighborhood of 8 cords. The weather hit some record lows this year, one night was -16, and several others below zero. Many winters, we only see teens for lows. But I also have 5 stoves.
One is the 'main' heating source, an insert in the living room fireplace. It burns from late Oct until late March, almost constantly. #2 is a freestanding stove in the basement. When the weather gets below 20, we keep it going to help warm the far end of the house, plus it helps my chicken fodder rack stay warm enough that they keep sprouting good. If the basement falls below 50 degrees, fodder production slows way down. That stove ran maybe 30-40 nights this year. #3 is a wood cookstove I have in the auxiliary kitchen/meat cutting/canning room off the back of the garage. I'll build a fire in it when the weather is going into the single digits, so the water lines in the sink/etc out there don't freeze. That stove ran maybe a dozen nights this year. #4 is a large wood furnace in my shop, heating 2600sqft of open shop space with 13' ceilings. I only use it when I'm actually working in there, so maybe 30-40 days per winter. Bathroom in it has a small basebd electric heater that will keep the temp up just fine for the water piping. I also burn all my scrap lumber generated by woodworking, which is quite a bit. I only filled the portable wood rack (see below) once this year. #5 is a free standing stove in the hoop house. We added it this year, trying to grow things like tomatoes. It took a fair amount of wood, we burned it probably 50 days/nights. Decided that was nuts and we don't plan to do that again next year....just cut back to cool weather stuff, and maybe burn it if it gets close to zero. For the shop and hoop house, I built a couple of portable wood racks that hold 1/3cord each (they are 32" deep x 4' wide x 4' tall), and I use the tractor to set them in the shop/hoop house. http://im1.shutterfly.com/media/47a4...?tn=-999500449 |
You may need the furnace to work to get homeowners insurance.:shrug::shrug:
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We had the old Dial type thermostat.
In the attempt to repair purchased a digital one with heat cool option and fan only. My thought was to use the Furnace as a Air handler. Also been talking with momma about modifing defective furnace for use as a air handler, but rather then being in basement moved upstairs, with intake highest point in stair well, and vented on far side of bed room. with a thermostat set to cool when it hit 70. far side of bedroom is farthest place from stove. seems to me a logical conclusion as all the heat rises there any way and it takes a while for the heat to radiate from the stove. the main furnace would just be set at 50 for back up, should the fire be out any length of time. |
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I had two 4 cord wood sheds in the past few years, and built 2 more of them this winter. One I just finished filling, another about 1/2 full, and my goal is to have all of them full by summer. Also have about 2 cords left over in the basement, so next winter, should have 18 cords to start the winter, and hope to use about 1/3 of that. http://im1.shutterfly.com/media/47a1.../?tn=816180811 http://im1.shutterfly.com/media/47a1...?tn=1460595101 http://im1.shutterfly.com/media/47a1...?tn=1145275957 http://im1.shutterfly.com/media/47a4...tn=-1710195881 Quote:
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The only reasons I can think for needingva furnace is to keep the house pipes from freezing if you have to be out of the house for awhile or are too ill to tend the fire.
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I was being pretentious about the furnace, the dealer that carries this brand left a foul taste in my mouth.
I use to work for a heating and cooling company, Installing furnaces though I often did tech work then inspected by one of them or boss. This is a 90% furnace but we are on propane,very hard on them. lot of moisture. This brand carries a 20 year warranty on heat exchanger, parts and labor. So I was willing to have it repaired, though the dealer wanted to extort more money. Seem he would of been happy to keep a customer. So I brokered a deal. Bill it out and I'll do it. Had me run around like a fool to renig. I can understand full well. though he could of just told me that on the phone rather then waste my time. He was worried about risk,with me doing the labor but yet happy to sell me a Furnace and do labor. Long and short he wanted 900 bucks one way or the other. The shop I worked for I can get a better then equivalent furnace for 750. No hassle no fuss. Yes Nimrod, I have a magnetic sweep. dump ash on tarp then run it over. But how did you know I dump them on the Garden lol! |
12 face cord or 4 full cord, I'm about to run out in a couple of days so I'll bring in more from outside. I can fit the 12 face cord in the cellar. I have a stove in the kitchen which I use most and a furnace in the cellar which I use only when the temperature gets below 20 degrees f. I used the furnace in January and February, I stopped the 1st of March. The kitchen is usually around 70 the other rooms on the first floor are in the 60's and the second floor is in the 40's on cold nights. My daughter does have an electric heater for her room that she runs sparingly when it gets cold. Since the second floor is bedrooms not much heat is needed. The house has no duct work. The furnace puts it's heat directly into a register above the furnace.
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We're at about 7 cords through an outdoor furnace, only heat we have, but I only burn the junk wood I have to cut to get to the hardwood I sell.
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This was our first winter with the Soapstone - we don't have a furnace - and with the below zero temps more often than we like to see, we have run through almost 4 cords. To keep our basement pipes from freezing we occasionally ran a small electric heater, but only in the utility corner. Overall we were very pleased with the stove's performance!
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We burned 7. I cut and split that as cut and split is 300 a cord. Yes a real cord. 128 cu ft per cord.We have a small house. 24x24.
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A little over 2 cord this year, and we only had a 4 cord shed. So, I doubled the size of the shed and am in the process of filling it.
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We don't really keep track, though I would say 8-10 cord (from our own property). And our winter in Central PA is probably comparable to Michigan...
We burn exclusively in an 11 yr old mahoning outdoor furnace. The wood heats water, which heats air for forced hot air and also provides all of the hot water we use in the winter time. There are positives and negatives to our set up. We have a constant temp inside without hot or cold spots. We have around 220gal of hot water at any one time during the winter. We require electricity to run our water pumps. no power means no heat. we are working to put an additional wood stove in the basement to do away with this concern. We have no heat if we go away for the weekend. We have no backup. in an ideal world, we would like to have a heat pump back up for those times. There is no dirt in the house from wood being brought in. |
We burnt two cords this winter. However, we have a brand new wood stove, a newer house with six inches of foam insulation in the ceiling, and we also don't burn during the day because no one is home. We fill it when we get home from work, then before bed, then we don't get it going again until after work. So, I guess we only really run it about 12-14 hours per day. That saves money, and even when it isn't going and we are experiencing the coldest days of winter the house never gets below 50 degrees so the pipes are fine either way. We didn't use any backup heat this year at all, not even once, and the wood stove kept us comfortable.
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Since our electric bill was up close to $300, and that was with very conservative electric furnace use (mild Winter fortunately...)? DH installed his wood stove (the one he designed/built), and got us stocked up with firewood since he had dry logs to cut. We only started using the firewood two months ago, and it has been WONDERFUL. Now our bill is down to $90/month. That should go down further, too. We stopped using our clothes dryer, as we can now hang our clothes on the suspended steel drying racks. Since our Winter was so mild and we started heating with wood a bit late? It isn't probably relevant how much firewood we used. Typically, since Winters are milder here, firewood use is much lower.
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We burned 5 Cord but we keep the house 80 degrees +.
Get our wood on Government Land. big rockpile |
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Seriously, You are in Michigan. Michigan means pine trees. Pine trees mean acidic soil. The best way to neutralize the acid is wood ashes. Elementary my dear Watson. |
I'm north enough for mean winters but south enough for mostly hard woods though
The squirrels seem to have planted the place in pines. Most wood lots here though are oak,ash,hickory,maple to name a few. |
3 cord , heating isn't over but we are getting a reprieve this week some still 30 at night also used some oil to keep the house when we were gone and overnight.
we have 1 air tight free standing wood stove |
About 3 1/2 cord mixed mediocre wood so far, no backup other than passive solar. Pretty good considering the
extended cold spells we've had. |
Probably about 2 cords, that's from half way through december to now. heating will be on for another month probably. We only burn in the evenings, and most of the house is around 53F with the room we live in much warmer due to two big computers running.
We have an ancent say 25+ year old furnace in the barn, it does water and heating via radiators to the entire house. (1300sqft) no backup, (although we have a gas bottle cooker and a freestanding gas heater we could use if needed) and it requires electric for the pump, there is hot water with no electric but not heating. Shower is also run off that, so wood use will continue all year. I'm expecting yearly use to be about 6 cords. Oh furnace requires feeding every hour or so.. so if you are not in, it is not on simples! |
We go through around 3 to 3 1/2 cords per winter.
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I've burned 4 pickup truck loads of split oak. 430sf house with a small cylinder stove. No backup except a mr buddy portable, but we only used that a few days in Nov before the wood stove was installed. Got to -18 this winter but december was quite mild. I'm off grid on solar again and all the solar isn't hooked up yet so didn't run the fan. Probably will be more comfortable next yr with less heat if the fan is circulating the air and I have switched to cold air intake below the stove instead of a cracked open window. House is so tight the stove won't draw without the window open a little.
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We used 5 cords but at the start of the season we had no clue how to burn our new stove and I was a nervous wreck so I kept it full and burning all the time along with the windows open until X-Mas. haha. I think we could probably make it on 4 cords. It is our only heat source in our 2100 sq ft home and we also cook on it (I say we but I mean her)!
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I used 4 cords this year. I have an England add on wood furnace. Blows the hot air through the duct work. I also bought a new furnace and ac unit, got rid of propain just could not afford it.
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Ok running 50's at night. Got fire going because my wife likes it warm :rolleyes: I have not checked but I'm in my Man Cave which runs about 20 degrees cooler than the Front room and I'm sweating.
I could run my Heater in Man Cave have more even cooler Gas heat but my wife says wood is free why not use it? big rockpile |
our heat pump went out this year and furnaces aux heat went out.we have older system and dealer wants 6000 to install a new style electric system.i live in a mobile home with 14x24 addition.i have a daka wood burning furance in building outside of trailer and pipe heat in through walls.burnt 6 cords this year all free.i also ran 2 base board heaters on coldest nights.we are planning on trenching a few hundred ft of 4 inch pipe 5 ft down in ground and running into house for ac.fan pushes air through pipe.at that depth the ground is 52 degrees that will drop temp in house nicely and save lots of money.doubt ill mess with furnace as i think its a waste.to give an example i lved in a 10x30 travel trailer for a year.when i was using the built in electric furnace it was 125 a month bill.i unhooked it and hooked up 1 3ft baseboard heater and was way warmer and bill dropped to 60.
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We are on our 5th cord this winter starting in November up till now. We too have propane heat as a backup but it is insanely high cost so we prefer wood. This is our first full winter using it and with 2 little ones we strive to keep an upper 60's temp in the house if not higher. We have saved a BUNCH of money compared to the past few years at this house. The last couple weeks we have been using the woodstove a lot less since its starting to warm up but im sure ill get more efficient with my woodburning stove as the years go on. I too would like to take that big ol' propane furnace out of the storage room to make room and to stop from using it because its "easier" but I think in an emergency situation it would be nice to have. We get our wood for $150 a cord delivered which is a WHOLE LOT CHEAPER than that darn propane. So far with buying 5 cords of wood at $150 a cord I have still spent less than filling my propane tank 1 time, and I get a little more excersize with fetching wood ;)
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