Price of fire wood

[SquashNut]

How do I figure out if it would be better to heat the house with electric compared to buying firewood.
Cord is $140. But never get a full cord so it really is more.

[kirkmcquest]

Wood is cheaper...if it's only $140 per cord! It's about 200 here and it's still cheaper than electric which is the least efficient heat available.

Here, where it snows alot and is cold for 7/8months, I went thru about 3 or 4 cords heating primarily with wood ( small, well-insulated cabin ). Thats only $560 for the whole season for you, less if your winters are shorter than zone 4/5. Assuming you have an efficient wood stove...it's a no brainer.


PS

Just realized your in Idaho...that might change things a little LOL.

[SquashNut]

We heat from Sept through April. some times just a fire in the morning and night. Some time the fire is going and it's not enough. We sit around with blankets.
This year the winter was so long we burnt pallets we had laying around.

[edcopp]

As the price of gasoline goes up, expect firewood to go up too. It costs more to cut it and to haul it.

[TnAndy]

Originally Posted by kirkmcquest

Wood is cheaper...if it's only $140 per cord! It's about 200 here and it's still cheaper than electric which is the least efficient heat available.

It's the way you phrased it, I'm sure, but for the record, electric resistance heat is 100% efficient.....you put one BTU of energy in, you get one BTU of heat out......and electric heat pumps can be multiple times more efficient, you put one BTU in, you get many more out.

Burning any type fuel in a stove/furnace is never 100% efficient, though some new gas boilers get pretty close.

What you probably meant was it's the most costly form where you live, which is likely true.

For the record, I'm a big fan of wood

[RW kansas hogs]

Fire wood would be cheaper if you cut it yourself, That is if you have a truck, chain saw, buy xtra chain for the saw, gas & the oil mixture.
I'm rather lucky becuase i get my fire wood for free from the work we do, So far this year ive cut up 3 big dump truck loads of wood, Hopefully i can get a few more loads to start for next year.

[TnAndy]

Originally Posted by SquashNut

How do I figure out if it would be better to heat the house with electric compared to buying firewood.
Cord is $140. But never get a full cord so it really is more.

Uh, if you're paying for a cord, and not getting a cord, you need to have a conversation with your wood supplier. You wouldn't expect to go to a gas station and get 3 1/2 quarts of gas, and pay for a gallon.

As to your question of buying wood vs. electric heat:

I'll assume in Idaho, you have some type of softwood to burn, typically...pine, douglas fir, spruce, etc. Those types of wood have about 15-20 million BTU/cord.
Assuming the wood is seasoned ( 20% moisture) and you have a stove that burns at 50% efficiency ( mine is 85% ), you would "recover" about 7-10 million BTU in the form of actual heat for your home.

Electric heat contains 3340 BTU/KWH. If you pay 14 cents/kWh then electric heat costs .0000419 $/BTU. Most fuel cost comparisons are based on the cost/million BTU. So the cost for electric heat is $41.9/MBTU.....and thus, 10 million BTU that you would recover from a cord of softwood ( at 50% efficient burn ), would be 10 x $41.9, or $419......compared to the $140 you are paying.

IF your electric rate varies quite a bit from the 14 cents I used, that would affect the calculation, of course.....but unless you're using wood in an open fireplace, you're going to find electric doesn't even come close, pricewise. ( there are other factors to consider with heat, such as mess, safety, and so on )

[Becka03]

before we bought our pellet stove- we were strictly electric- we live in Central Pa- the winter of 2007- when we had nothing but electric- it was 300- 350 a month to heat the house- a small ranch 3 bdrm- with the heat turned off in the 3 bedrooms and the doors closed- the heat in the living room and kitchen ( connected) only set at 60 during the day.. starting at like 5 pm we would open the bedroom doors and turn it up to 62 in the bedrooms....
so starting in oct- thru march- we paid close to 2000.00 for heat@!

[gone-a-milkin]

The choice of stove really makes a big difference in how much wood you will use and how efficiently it will heat.

Do not settle for anything less than an airtight stove.

We buy our wood and we always get the full cord. We have a measured space that holds 5 cords.
The guy who sells it to us fills it completely with stacked wood.

< TNAndy, I covet your woodshed. >

[Stephen in SOKY]

Plug in the numbers and see how your particular input fuels compare: http://nepacrossroads.com/fuel-compa...calculator.php

[Harry Chickpea]

There is a lot of mystique and hocus pocus people will try to pull. Ultimately, if you go to a bakery, you'll find they measure flour by the POUND, not by the cup. Same is true of wood. To properly dry, a cord needs to be loose stacked. Consider that no matter what the wood, you are primarily burning cellulose in the cell walls. Time and time gain, studies come back that on a pound for pound basis wood (dried to the same percentage of water content) is the same in heating value, no matter what the species.

http://www.builditsolar.com/Referenc...uelCompare.htm

Burn wet wood and lose.
Use an inefficient burner and lose.

[TNHermit]

My electric bill has doubled this year I would wait and see

[TnAndy]

Originally Posted by Harry Chickpea

There is a lot of mystique and hocus pocus people will try to pull. Ultimately, if you go to a bakery, you'll find they measure flour by the POUND, not by the cup. Same is true of wood. To properly dry, a cord needs to be loose stacked. Consider that no matter what the wood, you are primarily burning cellulose in the cell walls. Time and time gain, studies come back that on a pound for pound basis wood (dried to the same percentage of water content) is the same in heating value, no matter what the species.

All quite true. The problem with wood over a small amount of flour is two things:

1. Hard to stick a large load of wood up on a scale unless you're REALLY in the business large scale enough to have truck scales. Most wood sellers are little, part time guys, so selling by volume is much easier.

2. REALLY hard to get a handle on moisture content, especially if you buy fresh cut, or whole logs to cut up yourself.....so, again, volume eliminates that problem.

And, since volume IS the way most firewood is sold, it pays to get the most dense wood possible for the same money......which is one reason hardwoods like oak, hickory, etc are preferred over less dense softwoods.

But you are right, there are many "games" played in the firewood business.

Around here, almost no one knows what a cord is...they all sell by the "pickup load".....which is an almost meaningless measurement, given the various sizes of trucks, whether the wood is stacked in or throw in, and so on.

And in places they DO sell by the cord, there's the "face cord" game, or the "rick".....which, again, have no meaning, unless both buyer and seller have an agreement ahead of time. "My 'face cord' is 4x8 x 16" ( 1/3 of a cord )"......and the next guy could be "My 'face cord' is 4x8 x 12" lengths"......looking at the FACE of each stack, they look the same, but the second is only 1/4 of a cord due to the shorter length of wood.

[TnAndy]

Originally Posted by gone-a-milkin

< TNAndy, I covet your woodshed. >

ahaaaa....I set up a little "firewood shed factory" couple years ago, and built a bunch of them for around the farm. They hold 3 cords each ( shade more if I stack right into the rafters ), and now I have 12 cords of wood sitting around when they are all full.



I'd build them in the shop, the drag out in the drive way to spray a coat of barn paint, and put the metal roof on.



Corner posts are oak 6x6's, mortise/tenoned into treated 6x6 skids.



Which lets me hook a chain around the post base, and drag the empty shed to wherever I have wood to thin out that year.




A Woodmizer sawmill, and timber, is almost a man killing combination, as there is no lack of projects you can come up with.....ahahahaaaaaaaaaaaa



Sawing the floor joists for a rental house, shown below.

[manygoatsnmore]

What a pretty house you built! Now I don't just have woodshed envy, but Woodmizer mill envy, too, lol. Except for the mortise and tenons, I could build the sheds, but I'd have to use pallets to do it.

[Pelenaka]

Here's a few hidden points in favor of heating with wood -


Factor in that we aren't using electric to bake, cook, or dry & iron laundry into cost as well as the blower motor on our natural gas furnace.

Once you'd bought your wood there's no worry that there's gonna be a price increase or that you simply won't have the money when the bill is due.
Have yet to see anyone bond over a heating duct, or electric heat run.

We have two sections in our wood pile. One is earmarked deep Winter or good wood and the other is Fall/Spring or junk wood.
We also make pellet packets (tp rolls stuffed with wood pellets) to burn when we need extra btu. Since we sit near the stove anyways to read or be online it isn't an inconvience. We bought 3 bags in May on closeout.

Maybe you can do a bulk order with another family for better pricing.
$140 in July seems high.

This Summer on my to do list is to build a few solar room heaters so that at least durning the day come Fall & Spring we hopefully won't have to lite the stove. Who knows maybe in deep Winter durning the day we won't have to run the stove so hard.


~~ pelenaka ~~
http://thirtyfivebyninety.blogspot.c...ng-ga-way.html

[Vickie44]

TnAndy Great shed !

I use 4-5 cords for Winter* , house is very small but old and not well insulated. I have oil furnace for back up , set at lowest so nothing can freeze up while I am at work. I get my own wood, ash, elm and oak .

Nothing beats the instant cozy heat of lighting the stove AND it heats where I need it instead of the whole house.

* Including second stove in shed / workshop

[stanb999]

The only thing that beats wood is Coal!

[TheMartianChick]

We go through 5 -7 cords of wood each year. Our house is 2100 square feet but I am never comfortable with just enough wood to get by. I prefer to have at least 10 cords in the carriage barn and more stacked on the porch and on covered pallets in the yard. Our wood comes from a variety of sources. Like Pelenaka, we live in a city so people often put wood out at the curb...free for the taking. We also pick up all of the branches that fall in and around our rental properties and hubby brings home sections of 4 x4's that are a by-product of his place of employment. We generally pay about $65-70 a cord and we've been using the same supplier for years. He gives us a discount for purchasing in larger quantities.The best thing about our supplier is that he operates his business year round so we can always get more in an emergency.

Last year, we didn't realize that our blower sensor had a problem. It was making the fireplace insert much less efficient. We went through a lot of wood in a 2 month period before we realized what was wrong. I was able to call our supplier and order another 3 cords just to make sure that we had enough.

Burning wood greatly reduces our natural gas bills. Our house has high ceilings and our local power company has really high prices. Burning wood allows us to delay using the furnaces until late November, sometimes early December. It also keeps the furnace from having to work so hard. Our insert is located downstairs but if it gets too warm, then we just open up the doors to the upstairs and let the heat rise. It works really well. If we had to heat with just natural gas, it would probably cost us $600 per month in the dead of winter.

[Pelenaka]

What I have noticed lately is that we have been having competition with firewood gathering. Both urbanites collecting & then selling as well as country coming into the city to gather. Add in that the tree trimmers no longer leave good wood behind for later collection, they are under orders not to give any away because they resell once it's split & dried.

In a 10 block radius I can count on one hand the number of working fireplaces or wood stoves.


~~ pelenaka ~~