Fire wood

[ultrarunner]

I heard an interesting lecture by a professor at Cornell. He was speaking about burning wood for heat. His comment was that wood is the only carbon neutral heat used today. As it grows. the tree absorbs carbon dioxide and gives off Oxygen. When the wood is burned it gives off the carbon dioxide but no more that it absorbed while it grew. Thus it is carbon neutral.

Carbon Neutral... I like that... and you can be sure I will use it the next time wood burning comes up in conversation.

My fear is that what ever starts in California eventually spreads to the rest of the country. Banning wood burning is just the latest from the West Coast. I'm already seeing burning restriction in Western Washington of all places!

I found it interesting when I worked in Austria that every new home MUST have a wood burning chimney installed at the time of construction by law. There is no requirement for a wood burning stove or furnace, only that the home have that capability. Austria is very environmentally conscious.

The cost of firewood there fluctuates with other sources of energy... electricity, oil and propane. If a tree on private land near a road falls in a storm, it is not unusual for the owner to be PAID a nominal fee by someone wanting the wood to haul it away.

My Grandfather heated his entire home from a wood-fired boiler in the basement. Most single family homes in the Austrian Alps have wood-fired ceramic tile ovens which are extremely efficient... one arm full of wood in the morning and one at night to keep things nice and warm. The thermal mass keeps temperatures even and the tile is never too hot to touch.

The downside is walking into a could house and knowing it will take hours to warm things up!

Here is a link in English for a company in Utah that builds European Tile Ovens...

Biofire Tile

Biofire History

 

[txdon]

TXDon, A REAL man gets up in the middle of the night to keep the fire going so the house stays warm and cozy all night long. That way when She Who Must Be Obeyed gets up in the middle of the night She is warm.

Later,
Dan

Dan, I only need to do that when it is in the twenties. Luckily in central Texas that's only about 5 days a year. Our cabin is divided by a breezeway (dogtrot) and only half (256 sq. ft.) of the house is heated. I'm going to look for my nightcap my hair is thinning.

 

[WTA]

Our stove has been going nonstop for a little over week now. We're in West Texas where most people wouldn't figure it gets very cold but boy it does! It's been in the 20's for more than a week now. We had three solid days of snow just now too. A white thanksgiving. Two years ago we got a white halloween even. Go figure. I'm taking turns with the boys getting up and stoking the fire. My house used to be a church and is 3500 sq. ft. It's a booger to keep warn with all the drafts. I'm still working on fixing all of them. We have two propane furnaces but I am keeping the thermostats way down and trying not to let them come on at all. It will burn through 500 gallons of propane a month real easy if I turn them up to 70. I can't afford that!

One of the boys here is an exchange student from Germany. He has a lot of family in Poland and he is used to chopping firewood. I don't even tell him to do it, it seems automatic to him. This kid was out there chopping wood in shorts and no shirt yesterday. It was 26 degrees too. What a nut, I thought! He said that firewood is all they use in his grandparents house I think. They have a coal furnace in his house. Must be nice. We had one of those in Pa in another big house and coal was cheap compared to liquid fuels. We can't even get coal here.

 

[RichM96067]

pine and cedar 150-160
oak and madrone 225-235

 

[WayneB]

Out of the local Sunday paper in southern New Hampshire prices range from $175 for green and as high as $275 a full cord for seasoned wood. The average dry wood is selling for around $230 a cord delivered and dumped. I cut all of my own wood off from our property and would have trouble buying wood for these prices, but people do it everyday around here.

The state really regulates wood selling and I think require wood sales people to be registered with the state. In our town we also have to pay a fee for logging the land if for commercial sales of the wood. If for private use there is not requirement to report wood cutting.

The NH dept. of Agriculture weights and measurements law requires that:

1) Cordwood (firewood) be sold by the cord or fraction of a cord.
2) Cordwood must contain 128 cubic feet pre cord when stacked.
3) Be accompanied by sales slip stating the amount of wood sold and the price.

From what I have been told the fine is $3000.00 if the amount doesn't stack up to what the person states on the sales slip. Just another case of government intervention!

 

[sandman2234]

In the ritzy subdivision just south of me, wood cutters stack wood in stacks of ten pieces and sell them for $10 a stack. I used to cut wood for my Mother, Father in Law, and a good friend, and did it for many years. You would be surprised at how much wood 3 fireplaces can burn if they don't have to cut the wood or pay for it. The good friend only heated by firewood, but he would also help in finding wood to cut.
David from jax

 

[guyrj33]

burning wood does not contirbute to global warming, the carbon would be released when the wood decays, and recapured when another plant grows.

 

[Lloyd_E]

WTA/Txdon,

Guyrj33 is correct - zero footprint issues to use the now politically correct flavour of the day...

Fuel per cord - 4x4x8 is around $180 average cut, split and delivered.
I pay $85 per cord (8' lengths) chunk and split it myself. Built my own splitter which may be paid off after 100 cords of splitting. To rent a splitter is only $35.

I have been burning straight time for about a month. Haven't turn the furnace floor zones on as yet and haven't told the misses. Not alot of complaints. I almost submitted the other morning -10 degrees celsius / 14 fahr.

I live in a 200 year old farmhouse with a big vermont casting stove in the cavity of the fireplace/bake oven. I am going to try to see how long this experiment lasts. We have the zones (2) on timers and they operate only a couple hours per day - until the wood stove gets going.

cheers,

Lloyd

 

[ToadHill]

WTA, what happened to global warming.

 

[Wayne County Hose]

burning wood does not contirbute to global warming, the carbon would be released when the wood decays, and recapured when another plant grows.

Exactly. I even read a study that found that the rainforest gave off more carbon emissions than it absorbed. When the wood decays, the organisms doing the decaying emit carbon. The amount of carbon emitted from the decaying process was more than what the tree put out in it's life.