Heating Oil Rip

[mentat30]

We have a pellet stove, provides 90% of our heat in the winter...we live in Wisconsin so it gets pretty cold. Stove was $2400.00 installed, I installed it myself. Pellets cost $160.00 ton in bulk, I used just about 2 3/4 tons last season. Our house is not huge, but it is 2000 sqft. Total cost for pellets was under $500. This winter will be our 4th winter, we love it. The pellet stove is totally automatic, except for filling it. When we are not home temp was set at 75, wife's nickname is Ice Queen, because she is always cold. When she would get home from work last winter, she would crank the heat up to 80+. She gets home around 3:30pm, goes to bed about 10:00pm, that is when the temp would go back down to 75. Wouldn't trade our pellet stove for anything.

 

[gemini5362]

Let me respond with my little bit of knowledge about woodstoves.

The catlytic wood stoves were the first generation woodstoves to try and cut down on emissions. The problems with cat stoves are that you have to have a hot fire to keep from having problems with the catalyst. Most of the stoves I have looked at you get the fire going then you put move the catalyst into place and then when the fire starts dieing down you have to move the catlayst back out of the draft. There are a lot of new generation wood stoves that do secondary burning. The smoke is redirected back into the flames and reburnt a second time. When I was looking at wood stoves it seemed like both kinds of stoves had about the same emission rate. The secondary burn stoves were a better choice for me because I did not have to worry about the messing with the catlytic converter and when those converters have to be replaced they are a tad bit pricy.


I was seeing high quality stoves in the 3 to 4 thousand dollar range that is for the stove not counting installation. I bought a soapstone stove during the spring last year. I had been looking at them during the winter and waited until late in the spring and saved about 1500.00 on the purchase price. Depending on what you want to do with your stove look at the various types of stove. I bought a soapstone stove and I absolutely love it. It is made of 1 inch thick tiles of soapstone that are held in a steel framework and then sealed to be airtight. There are two advatages to this stove. 1. You can fill the stove up and let it burn out and still get heat for around 3 to 4 hours after the wood is gone and the flame is out. It does this because the soapstone absorbs heat and then reradiates it. 2. Because the stone absorbs heat and reradiates it the maximum temperature out is about 600 degrees versus 1200 degree heat spikes with a steel stove. So you can put it a bit closer to walls and furniture. The disadvantage of a soap stone stove is that when you start the fire and get it going to where it is a good hot fire the stove does not start radiating any heat for a good 45 minutes to an hour.

If you are thinking about a woodstove for the winter start getting your firewood now and if you can get some already seasoned get it. I have all my firewood for this year already purchased and have had for a few months. I am starting to collect wood now for next year.

 

[gemini5362]

We have a pellet stove, provides 90% of our heat in the winter...we live in Wisconsin so it gets pretty cold. Stove was $2400.00 installed, I installed it myself. Pellets cost $160.00 ton in bulk, I used just about 2 3/4 tons last season. Our house is not huge, but it is 2000 sqft. Total cost for pellets was under $500. This winter will be our 4th winter, we love it. The pellet stove is totally automatic, except for filling it. When we are not home temp was set at 75, wife's nickname is Ice Queen, because she is always cold. When she would get home from work last winter, she would crank the heat up to 80+. She gets home around 3:30pm, goes to bed about 10:00pm, that is when the temp would go back down to 75. Wouldn't trade our pellet stove for anything.

I have looked at pellet stoves and they seem to be pretty efficient and one or two of them that I have looked at also burned corn cobs. The problem that worried me about them was the availability of pellets. I understand that pellet stoves are getting to be more popular and should make a more stable supply of pellets. I am probably going to build a work shop in the next couple of years and I might heat it with a pellet stove.

 

[LBrown59]

I just bought 170 gallons of home heating oil at the price of $850.00. How the heck are people going to heat there homes this winter shelling out that kind of money monthly? People are going to start going postal.

Do you use it in your tractor also?

 

[plowking]

The pellet stove dealers here have orders in with the stove manufacturer for stoves. Manufacturer said because of sudden volume of stoves,there isn't enough time to have orders filled by winter. Dealers are in the middle between manufacturer and customers, they might have to get stoves if possible from another stove maker. Pellets here can be in short supply and get real expensive. I think the stove manufacturer was located in Pennsylvania. plowking

 

[LBrown59]

I hope to burn less than 10 gallons of heating oil this winter. !!!

Only 10 GAllon=->then what do you run in your tractor ?
Hard to picture someone running a house and a tractor on 10 gallon a year !

 

[Deerlope]

I also can see a lot of sickness in the very young and elderly because of the lack of heating funds. Also there will be many deaths because of makeshift heating arrangements. Our elected leaders don't care because their families are safe and warm on our backs.The working poor don't have a chance.

 

[fairlane]

we are using corn stove to heat our 126 year old house, it burns about a bushel of shelled corn a day. even if you have to buy corn since its gone up in price its still cheaper than oil and its supporting local farmers. the stoves are very efficient and very little maintenance.when I planted my field corn I just planted couple acres for my own use. unfortunately I dont think oil prices are going to fall much, but I hope they do, buying diesel for tractors is killing my wallet.

 

[ultrarunner]

I also can see a lot of sickness in the very young and elderly because of the lack of heating funds. Also there will be many deaths because of makeshift heating arrangements. Our elected leaders don't care because their families are safe and warm on our backs.The working poor don't have a chance.

I think this is the reason for long waiting lists to get Housing Assistance through HUD...

Once a family is in the program... the family housing expense, including utilities, is capped at 1/3 of the family income.

Section 8 and Vouchers are two examples...

I know a city bus driver with Section 8 housing earning 50k per. She pays about 90% of her rent and HUD pays the remaining 10%

 

[LBrown59]

i just got 400 gals for 1,756.00

Do you use it in your tractor to?