How cold/warm is your house?

I have the heat pump set at 50...lowest it will go...to keep the pipes from freezing. We have a wood stove, usually around 65 in the kitchen, dining room, and hall. Colder in the living room, but we're only there to read, so we cover up in blankets.

I saw, once, a Japanese gadget like a table with a brazier in the middle and quilts attached at the sides, four seats....I want one!

When we moved here in '99 we paid .73 cents a gallon for 1000 gallons of fuel oil. There's still 3/4's of that left in the tank. We use the wood stove exclusively, except for the odd weekend that someone watches the farm so we can go out of town, to heat a 1600 sq ft log cabin. It's usually 75+ in the livingroom and around 70 in the rest of the house. We've been using an old Andes Wood Parlour stove (made in the 30's), but recently purchased a newer airtight Vermont Castings Resolute Aclaim. We going to have that hooked up in a week or so. We're hoping the airtight stove will use less wood than than the old stove.

Stacy

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Originally Posted by MaKettle How about the others in the cold areas? Are you living in Carharts and boots in the house, permanently hunkered by the stove?

I routinely keep the house at 60 when we're gone or asleep - during the week, that works out to about 20 hours a day. We put it up to 66-68 when we get home. Even then the bill's close to $300 a month. And this has been a mild winter!

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The colder it is outside, the warmer our house is. It was 38 outside this morning at 5am and 64 inside - so no point in wasting the wood with a fire in the stove - the sun will get the house warm (love passive solar). If it was below freezing and staying that way all day, I'd restart the fire and get the house over 70 before I left (for the wife and kids to wake up to). Usually the house is 75 downstairs, 80 in the kitchen area and around 70 upstairs when the woodstove is really cranking on very cold days. We let it get up around 80 downstairs before going to bed, then cut back the airflow to allow the fire to burn longer and sometimes die out overnite and not have the temp drop out of the 60s even when it's single digits outside. I'm up at 4 to do chores and stoke the fire. Of course, this is a 1000 sq foot 2-story house. We do have a small ceramic heater for the bathroom which never seems to get warm on cold days.

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i use wood heat exclusively.i'm gone most of the day so i don't use much wood.load it up a couple times a 24 hr periodand it keeps it warm enough for me aand keeps the pipes from freezing.

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We heat with a wood furnace located in the basement, and SW Wisconsin has been seeing some cool weather this winter, but on ly dh could keep a 3200 sq ft BARN of a house at a steady 75 degrees! Drives me nuts! I close the bedroom door & heat duct to make it as chilly as possible. Its one thing to have to wear a t-shirt in the house all winter - but I have to breath while I sleep!

On the other hand, we are NOT buying lp - have plenty of wood cut and put up!

It's 82 degrees right now. It has been cloudy here for a week so burn a little extra wood but not much. Haven't put any wood in the stove since last night.

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We have now officially entered the twilight zone.

at 50-55 degrees, I'd have to have your handle: I'd be numb from the cold and in a comfortable stupor!

Forgot to add, around here we keep it pretty toasty on the main floor, around 66 during the day, 60 at night. Basement's mighty chilly (you'd think all this junk and the computer down here would generate some heat!)

...

During the day, we keep our small remodeled ranch style mobile home on about 64. On very below zero days, we may hike it up to 68, but not over that or I get hot.

Our place is very well insulated; husband redid the walls. Our heat for the winter totals about six hundred dollars and that includes our cabin next door. The cabin we would like to convert to wood eventually. The cabin stays on fifty degrees. Is okay to work in but glad it's warmer over in our main living place.

At night the hubby covers the living room windows (three of them) with stryofoam sheets and he puts the temp down from 68 back to about 64.

So basically, when we are all home and around the tv, reading, etc. we are very comfortable at 68, but when it's just me during the day, I put it down to 64.

We have these wall furnaces, fueled by propane that were about $500 each. Not sure where my husband bought them, but they said when they sold him the last one, that they couldn't sell to him anymore--guess they were industrial type deals. We didn't need anymore, so it worked out. Also, husband made sure they were not hooked up with a fan, so when the power goes out, we STILL have heat. We can even set a can of soup on it and it'll warm up.

We keep the thermostat upstairs on 65 and 68 downstairs. If it gets chilly at night (supposed to drop into the low 30s and upper 20s tomorrow night) we build a fire in the fireplace downstairs. All the rooms downstairs are open to one another so the heat spreads out and up the stairwell. Hubby cut up a huge oak limb that fell and we love the heat it puts out.

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We heat with wood pellets and set at low the bottom floor of our house stays at 68 - 70. Upstairs we have forced air eletric wall heaters in each room. They are turned on when the kids come home from school and off during the day. Our bedroom we don't heat since we like it cold. Pellets cost us the same as they did 11 years ago $135.00/ton and that will last us approximately 50 days.

BobG

70 daytime 67-68 at night.And i pay dearly in the winter,but i dont like being cold.
BooBoo

I live in a small, one room cabin. When I'm there, it's usually pretty warm (small woodstove, but still sorta too big for all but the coldest nights). At night, and when I'm at work, it can get pretty cold. The cat's water ices up most nights that get down in the teens. On our coldest night last winter (-15°F), I put the cat's water up on the bed next to me. It was frozen the next morning. That evening when I got home from work it was 11°F inside. I think my cat was kinda unhappy.

Ever since we got this Fisher woodstove form freecycle we have been dying. As I type the inside temp is 97 and the outside is -3.

We have to open windows just to run this thing it is so hot!! (but cheaper than propane now at $2.49 gal)

The last time we had to buy propane here on the other side of the state was last Feb, and we paid $1.19 cash/gal. I haven't checked the prices lately, but I can't imagine we are too far off! :no:

Freecycle? You lucky @#$&!! I paid $125 for mine, but it's paid for itself easily by now. Do you know which model you have? (ie, fireplace style with the chimney out the top, or the two-level box type with the chimney out the back?) We had a Fisher (a baby bear, the smallest model they made) when I was growing up, and that thing was great. I still can't believe how efficient they are, considering the simplicity of the design. When we moved to the farm, I searched high and low before finding ours, but it was well worth the wait.

We went through the same thing when we first installed ours...that thing puts out some heat! The hottest we ever got inside was well over 90, the thermostat for the radiator wouldn't register beyond that. The smoke from the new chimney was setting off the fire alarms, had the windows open, a fan blowing the hot air and paint fumes out...a good time was had by all, I assure you! :haha:

April

Freecycle rules!!!

I don't know which model it is but it has 2 doors with pine trees and the name Fisher across them. It measures 28" wide, 24" deep and 18" high at the front half and 24" high in the back half. Chimney comes out the top. Brick lined and SUPER HEAVY. Thank goodness for a tractor with a loader and those super sliders sold on TV or it would still be out in the truck or on the deck.

The nice thing about it is I only have to load it once a day, let it get hot and it'll still be 70+ through the house in the morning and the stove will be hot to the touch. Let it sit all day then re-light it the next evening. And with a forest full of free wood it's a time only investment.

I did a little experimenting with temp and found out my mobile home has to be at 70 if it's -15 or colder, otherwise the drains will freeze up.
If it's warmer than that, I keep it at 60. Once the night temp is over 20, I turn the furnace off altogether.
This week should be fun. Tonight the low will be 25- and the highs will be below 0 today thru Tuesday. I've put straw bales around the base of the house and banked snow on top of it. Hope that wil hold the heat enough.

Of the two "fireplace" styles they manufactured, I think thats the smaller one, but not that you'd notice!! I'd have to dig out my old TMEN, but I believe they weigh well over 500 lbs.

DH and I went up to Ely, MN in February a couple of years ago for my birthday. At the resort where we were staying, the main lodge building had the larger Fisher fireplace style stove. We were there one morning (-24 without considering the windchill!) waiting for the dogsledding guide's pickup to start.. :haha: ...so we could get out to the lake. The lodge owner had been on the phone a good part of that morning trying to get an extension for his ice auger...gives you an idea of the winter they'd been having up there!

The lodge was pretty big, I would say at least 2000 sq. ft on the main floor, and it was downright hot in there! We started talking about the stove, and the resort owner said basically the same thing, works like a charm, and you only load it a couple times a day. It's really a shame Fisher Stoves closed up shop!

April

If this is the small one I can't even imagine what the big one would do to us. The house is 2849sf and as I said before it's too much. We're going to have a full walkout basement built and the house moved onto it this summer so I'm going to have them modify the plans to build a chimney in the bottom so the stove can be down there.