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

[MossRoad]

Having heated our home in Ohio with chunk wood from the property (we had 20 acres of woods and I cut was deadfall and dead trees), I don't miss it one bit. Storing wood inside in the basement where the forced air chunk wood burner was, always brought in sleeping bugs that migrated out of the splits and got upstairs plus cleaning out the ashes and disposing of them every other day or so and of course hauling the wood into the basement. With the biomass stove, all it takes is a 40 pound sack of pellets every day and ash cleaning is maybe a weekly deal and it has an ash pan so it's easy and I buy the pellets in full tons on pallets and they go on the barn and no bugs and my corn comes in bags as well.

I can burn our stove for about 14 days before I have to clean out any ashes. It's very efficient.

We don't have problems with insects too often. On the rare occasion where a bug comes out of the wood, the spiders or cats get it before it can leave the stove room.

But yes, firewood brings a lot of dirt into the house, and if you're not on it daily, it can track around the rest of the house.

 

[RSKY]

We heat primarily with natural gas. A central gas pack heats the main house. Cost is less than $160/month with about $20 of that being for the large water heater. An electric Mitsubishi split unit heats the sunroom, and an electric space heater in the utility room is used only when temps get below freezing.

We have gas logs in the den fireplace which are seldom used. In the sunroom there is a small cast iron stove with gas logs in it. During the month without power in 2009 we heated the house with these two sets of logs and wife did some cooking on the small stove. Now we have a NG powered backup generator and those will be seldom used.

RSKY

 

[cqaigy2]

Electric mini-split works most of the time. The last few years, i've been using the AC because having to close up because of all the smoke from fires.

Wood stove is Morsø 3440, works great for our sized house.
Stihl 025 that i got as a gift, when working at a medical facility.
PT tractor i would have bought regardless.
Splitting axe
Trees galore, fir, maple, cherry, alder mostly.



Actually kind of a funny story about the chain saw.

At a work get together and they were giving out gifts to employees that had made or saved the company money. Mostly women, getting house stuff like curtains, carpets stuff like that, and then they called my name, and handed me a chainsaw. I held it up over my head, and all the guys perked up and "wow", then i drop started it and revved it a few times to applause. At least from the guys. When i'd had it over my head i saw that there was a named engraved on the bottom, "Shirley". I looked over at Shirley, and asked 'what the heck?'. She had gone to Madsen's and bought the saw as a gift and some kind of mix up on the engraving some reason they put her name on the saw.

 

[Alan W.]

Once I fire up the wood stove in the basement our heatpump doesnt run except when I run the thermostat up once a week to keep it exercised.
My wife likes it warm so I sleep under a sheet all winter and wear shorts while lounging around.

During the summer I can get my truck loaded with end pieces and cutoffs for $20 a load.
80% will be oak the rest poplar and pine.
You can load it yourself and pick what you want or they will load it with their loader same price. In the summer they have trouble moving it out so its cheaper.
Took these pics while mine was being loaded.

 

[MossRoad]

Boy, that's a nice resource to have nearby.

 

[bdhsfz6]

I installed oil fired hot water baseboard heat when I built the house. When the price of oil spiked 25 years ago, I put in a Harman Stoker coal stove and have been burning coal ever since.

I just paid $1245 for 3 tons last month but it's still far cheaper than $6/gal heating oil. I used to burn around 500 gal in winter which would have cost around $3000.

In spring & fall when it's not cold enough for the coal stove, I used to use the oil burner to take the chill off. Last spring I installed heat pump mini splits with both A/C & heat capabilities to replace my 20 year old A/C only system. I also installed a heat pump electric hot water heater to replace the tankless coil in the oil burner. I now turn off the oil burner in spring, summer & fall and only use it for backup during the winter. This saves around 150 gal of oil. My electric bill went up just 20% or about $40/mo.

This gives me the option of using oil, coal or electric heat, whichever is cheaper. With all the federal, state & local power company rebates, and doing a lot of the work myself, the new systems will pay for themselves in just under 5 years.

 

[Oaktree]

Last truck load of logs went up from $750 to $900.
Over a year's worth, but it's getting harder to get a load in. Competition with the pulp buyers.

That's still a good price, I think I paid $1100 a couple years ago, ~10 cords/load. Waay cheaper than cut & split, though it's getting harder to find log length as time goes by. Talked with my firewood guy over the weekend, got my next year's order in. He's a trucker, not a logger. Contracts with loggers to buy what they cut and then resells it.

 

[Oaktree]

Boy, that's a nice resource to have nearby.

It is. I'd imagine all those odd size pieces might be a PITA to store though.
I stopped by a local firewood dealer a few years ago and asked what they wanted for the end pieces, etc there. Guy told me $50 a pickup load. Uhhhhh, yeah. No thanks. I think it came to more than their cut & split price.

I agree selling wood by the pound would be better but not all that practical. How far out of the way is the average seller going to have to haul to get it weighed? How is the buyers going to verify the weight?

So how do they weigh it, dry or green? Big difference. A cord of green pine probably weighs as much or more than a cord of seasoned maple. Which one would you rather have?

I see firewood sold all different ways around here, face cords, full cords, ricks and bundles. I think most are probably a rip off. I know what I'm getting with pellets and corn because it's all by weight not volume.

A full cord is 4x4x8. Period. A face cord, if I'm not mistaken is 4 x 8 x whatever the seller wants...could be 6" could be 6'. Bundles, at least around here are mostly sold to tourists for campfires. I have no idea what a rick is.

We don’t have AC either because it only gets uncomfortably hot for 2-3 weeks at the 6,900’ elevation where we live. Ceiling fans and open windows at night work well most of the summer.

Same here. We also have a box fan in an upstairs window exhausting air at night. I'd imagine in N. Mex. humidity is much less an issue than it is here in New England.
For a 200 year old house, ours is pretty tight and holds the heat/cool reasonably well.

 

[jyoutz]

It is. I'd imagine all those odd size pieces might be a PITA to store though.
I stopped by a local firewood dealer a few years ago and asked what they wanted for the end pieces, etc there. Guy told me $50 a pickup load. Uhhhhh, yeah. No thanks. I think it came to more than their cut & split price.

So how do they weigh it, dry or green? Big difference. A cord of green pine probably weighs as much or more than a cord of seasoned maple. Which one would you rather have?


A full cord is 4x4x8. Period. A face cord, if I'm not mistaken is 4 x 8 x whatever the seller wants...could be 6" could be 6'. Bundles, at least around here are mostly sold to tourists for campfires. I have no idea what a rick is.

Same here. We also have a box fan in an upstairs window exhausting air at night. I'd imagine in N. Mex. humidity is much less an issue than it is here in New England.
For a 200 year old house, ours is pretty tight and holds the heat/cool reasonably well.

Most of the year, humidity is low here, but it does get humid during the summer monsoon season (July-September). But temperatures are also lower during that season compared to June.

 

[Agvg]

When it's not to cold I use a heat pump, very cheap solution, it's a air to air and doble as an AC in the summer. And of course two wood stoves when it's cold.

The price is very hard to figure out as the price of electricity goes up and down from day to day, had had negative price from time to time but this year all energy is very expensive because of the war in Ukraine.