If it's cold where you live, what are you heating with and what is it costing?

[MossRoad]

Um.. I my world, a cord is $175 at max price, delivered.

I just did a quick look around here. Anywhere from $50 a pickup you load to $180 per cord to $275 a cord.

 

[LD1]

LD1, good try. You explained it clearly and with great detail several times.

The significance of it really slapped me when I quit burning wood after doing so for 25 years. No going back for me.

I have a long "to do" list on my farm that gives me all the exercise I want. My minimal involvement in cutting firewood is cleaning up deadfall or storm damage out of my timbers. My Sons both still burn wood and use it up. I pole it.

They come and block it and split it. I do the easy grunt work helping them. When we get a large trailer load of wood split I always make this comment. "The best part about this load of wood is that I don't have to unload it and burn it". We all laugh. Repeat next load.

At least someone else understands logic and reason.


Nothing against those that choose to burn wood. More power to them. For some ot makes sense andis worth it. Others ....have blinders on.

Sometimes it just ain't worth the debate

 

[stumblinhorse]

It all depends on where you live I guess. I have propane and wood. Propane was $2.69 a gallon when I filled my 300 gallon tank in august. It is cold here. I used 11 cords of pine last year to heat my place. I use heat from about 10/15 to 5/15, 7 months. I get semi loads of logs and I cut and split. Using wood is about 1/4 the cost of propane. Propane is about 60% efficiency at my 8k foot elevation. Wood is a no brainer. But it is a lot of work and headache sometimes. I am jealous of my buddy who just writes a check for propane and does other stuff with his time. But it is a big check, one my account couldn’t cover.

 

[Carl_NH]

Um.. I my world, a cord is $175 at max price, delivered.

Yes - wood prices vary by region - here in NH a cord of seasoned wood is $375 green $275. You can copy that table into excel and calculate for your area.

Point of the calculator is you can put in your local cost and efficiency to arrive at an annual cost. I have gone further to add the house BTU heat loss numbers to determine the cost of each type of heat. Since we have mini-splits and oil and prices have gone up a lot I like to determine what is most cost effective.

 

[Jstpssng]

The firewood producers can't even keep up here. I imagine that "seasoned" was gone months ago, and I can't imagine trying to heat with green wood. Some claim that ash burns good green but I have never found that to be the case. Even the tree I felled this spring and cut up into 4 foot pieces was still a bit stingy with the heat when I cut and split it for a fall fire.

 

[5030]

My buddy near Bangor buys a truckload of saw logs every spring, cuts and splits them and stacks them in his wood racks and covers them with black 10 mil plastic sheet and lets them sit 2 years before roasting. From the racks, he fills his basement, the wood boiler is there.

 

[ovrszd]

It all depends on where you live I guess. I have propane and wood. Propane was $2.69 a gallon when I filled my 300 gallon tank in august. It is cold here. I used 11 cords of pine last year to heat my place. I use heat from about 10/15 to 5/15, 7 months. I get semi loads of logs and I cut and split. Using wood is about 1/4 the cost of propane. Propane is about 60% efficiency at my 8k foot elevation. Wood is a no brainer. But it is a lot of work and headache sometimes. I am jealous of my buddy who just writes a check for propane and does other stuff with his time. But it is a big check, one my account couldn’t cover.

Good post.

 

[ovrszd]

The firewood producers can't even keep up here. I imagine that "seasoned" was gone months ago, and I can't imagine trying to heat with green wood. Some claim that ash burns good green but I have never found that to be the case. Even the tree I felled this spring and cut up into 4 foot pieces was still a bit stingy with the heat when I cut and split it for a fall fire.

Back in the day I piled my wood outside. That worked okay.

Later years I built a leanto where I piled my wood so it was covered. Wow. What a difference. The leanto would hold almost two years of wood. So I never burned fresh cut. Words can't describe the difference.

One of my Sons understands. One doesn't.

 

[Oaktree]

The firewood producers can't even keep up here. I imagine that "seasoned" was gone months ago, and I can't imagine trying to heat with green wood. Some claim that ash burns good green but I have never found that to be the case. Even the tree I felled this spring and cut up into 4 foot pieces was still a bit stingy with the heat when I cut and split it for a fall fire.

Yeah, lotsa luck finding seasoned wood much past early-mid August, even that was probably cut over the winter so to call it "seasoned" is a bit of a stretch. At this point not even much green wood available. Ran into the guy I buy log length from last weekend, got my order in for next year even though I still have a year's worth left. Prices are only going to go up.
I'd heard the same thing about ash, never tried it though.

Back in the day I piled my wood outside. That worked okay.

Later years I built a leanto where I piled my wood so it was covered. Wow. What a difference. The leanto would hold almost two years of wood. So I never burned fresh cut. Words can't describe the difference.

That must be one serious lean to!! Mine's 7' x 24 and it holds a little over a year's worth. I cut and split well away from the house so sawdust, wood chips, etc. aren't tracked in. Stack it to dry in that general area too, fill up the woodshed in the fall.

 

[Helogabals]

Here in this side of world energy costs was REAL roller-coaster
Pellets from 150 €/T went to 450 €/T. Electricity (for industrial customers) from 0,04 to o,5 €/kWh
LPG I even dont want to know. But to keep warm average house it used to be like 100 - 150 €/m for gas, now people are paying near 1k €



I have wood gasification furnace (or boiler ? I am a bit confused about terms you use).
It has 20 kW power and is connected to 2000 liters big heat accumulator. Every second day I am filling boiler with ~ 30 kg of wood and fire it up. wood burns like 5 - 6 hours, warms up accumulator from 30 C to 80 C. We have underfloor heating, so to go down till 30 is ok
/ Little break for ranting - SI system makes much more sense - 1 W is needed to warm 1 liter of water for 1 C /
Keeping that in mind we can figure out that my accu contains ~ 100 kWh of energy. That's enough for 48 hours. At least it was so till this fall


This year I have made extension for house and obviously now house needs more energy.

And parallel to wood boiler we have installed air - water heat pump
It is efficient is it has to go till 35 C max, which is ok for me. And if temperatures are negative, then as well efficiency is falling. I have used heat pump till + 5 and I have noticed ~ 3,5 COP, which is less than promised but still rather nice