What and how do you heat your home and possibly shop during the cold winter months??

   / What and how do you heat your home and possibly shop during the cold winter months?? #1  

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I'll start it off by saying we heat with propane (Bryant Plus 95) for the house and in floor PEX (propane fired hot water heater in the shop, but we also heat with 2 biomass stoves, one in the house and one in the shop.

We burn primarily dried off grade seed corn (which I get for free) plus processed wood pellets. I mix the corn and pellets together and the stoves burn them

Each stove is capable of 80K Btu output though I rarely run them flat out and about the only time the central furnace comes on is when the heat load exceeds the output of the stove in the house. I do keep my in floor PEX system active all winter and hold the slab temperature around 60 degrees, I like warm feet when working in the shop.

My total biomass fuel bill is around 600 bucks (for processed wood pellets) during the winter and I usually consume one 500 gallon bottle of propane as well.

I pre bought propane this year at $1.99 a gallon and glad I did as propane here is at $265 a gallon presently and going higher.

Where are you at concerning heat and what do you use for fuel?
 
   / What and how do you heat your home and possibly shop during the cold winter months?? #2  
Heating oil at $4.45 per gallon at last fill. Supplement with wood when the power goes out or the outside temps drop to -60F. We also have a couple of propane unit heaters if we don't feel like messing with wood.
 
   / What and how do you heat your home and possibly shop during the cold winter months?? #3  
I heat 100% with wood. I burn about 5 cord a year or so. I have a fireplace insert I use for the beginning and end of winter. Usually end of November or early December I fire up the blaze king in the cellar and o take the cellar door off. The heat comes right up the stairs and heats the house perfectly without the use of any fans at all.

I used to heat with oil and when I got the blaze king I took the exhaust pipe out of the oil burner and put the blaze king in it’s place. I switched the water heater over to electric when I took the oil burner off line. It’s been like that for many years and I have no regrets at all. I never but split wood as I’m never happy with it at all. So I buy log lengths and process it myself. I do get the occasional tree here and there. Actually this weekend I got 8 pickup loads from my dads place and there’s plenty more. I’m still gonna get a few cord delivered in log form in the next couple weeks.
 
   / What and how do you heat your home and possibly shop during the cold winter months?? #4  
Home is wood, shop is propane radiant tube.
 
   / What and how do you heat your home and possibly shop during the cold winter months?? #5  
Wood, with a bit of electric for when I'm not home... or don't feel like crawling out of bed at 1:00 AM to feed the fire.
 
   / What and how do you heat your home and possibly shop during the cold winter months?? #6  
Our primary heat is wood and maybe pellets backed up with an unvented propane heater and our electric AC/heat pump. We run the heat pump above 40 or 45 degrees since they are more efficient at those temps, no sense burning wood on warmer days. When it's really cold I have a propane heater for the shop.
 
   / What and how do you heat your home and possibly shop during the cold winter months?? #7  
House is primarily wood. My stove is slightly undersized for the load and sometimes the natural gas furnace has to help. My shop is natural gas. I don’t want wood heat on the shop. There’s the obvious problem of a fire hazard in a woodworking area and I like the speed at which the natural gas heats up. A wood stove would take a lot longer.
 
   / What and how do you heat your home and possibly shop during the cold winter months?? #8  
Mini-splits until the outdoor temp drops below 40 degrees F. Then mini splits plus wood stove.
Since adding insulation to the house 2 years ago, I have gone from 5 cord per year to 3 cord per year.
Insulated the crawl space this summer and hope to reduce the wood stove use to below 2 cords of wood.
 
   / What and how do you heat your home and possibly shop during the cold winter months?? #9  
House is propane. They used to let us "prepay" for winter fuel, but no longer. They have a "set price" for winter months. I think it is $2.65 a gallon. We get by on about 300 gal a year usually.
 
   / What and how do you heat your home and possibly shop during the cold winter months?? #10  
Coal, supplemented by an oil furnace and mini split electric in the house. I vary the usage depending on the cheapest individual energy cost.

I used to heat the shop with propane but put in a mini split last year. I'm retired now and spend a lot more time out there. With the mini split, I get both heat and A/C.
 
 
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