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

[ovrszd]

One thing I've learned.

It doesn't matter what you heat a poorly built building with.

It doesn't matter what you heat a well built building with.

Money spent on insulation and building quality can offset any heat type.

 

[5030]

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.

I will say that if rice coal was readily available here and if my free corn supply somehow dried up, I'd have a Keystoker in a minute. Years ago when we lived east of Cleveland, Ohio, the house we owned had a complete Iron Fireman hot air coal furnace in the basement minus the shaker grates with a gas burner in their place. I found the grates, took out the gas burner and heated with chunk coal the time we owned it. I like coal heat and don't mind the clinkers or the ash removal. No coal available here but if it was, like I said, I'd have a Keystoker in a minute.

 

[5030]

One thing about a biomass stove and that is, no getting up at midnight to fill it. Even wide open, it will run a12 hours on a full hopper. I keep my pellets (which I buy as full skids, 50, 40 pound bags, shrink wrapped) and my corn which is either in 50 pound bags or sealed supersacks in the barn and I'll mix up (corn and pellets) in 4 large plastic refuse cans with lids on a skid and I set that up on the back deck by the door with one of my front end loaders so getting fuel is about 10 steps from the inside stove and I keep another plastic refuse can full of mix in the shop for that one which is usually idling along on low most of the time. Always on guard for vermin (mice love corn), but my 3 bucket traps baited with Skippy handle that chore.

Energy choices are kind of limited out this way as it's mostly crop land so cleared of trees to cut for firewood anyway.

I'd have Geothermal myself (one of my good friends has it) but he's 15 years younger than my wife and I. The ROI on Geothermal isn't there for us at 72 years old. His total electric bill averages 70 bucks a month year around for ac and heat.

Electricity isn't cheap here and going up every month is seems like and I suspect propane will follow suit unless we get a change in government. Remember, electricity still mostly comes from coal and NG pants and some Nuclear and propane comes from oil (in the cracker).

Pellets are pretty much the same cost as last year when you buy in full skids and like I said, my corn is free so it's a pretty good deal for us and I do like the new Bryant Plus 95 condensing furnace, so quiet you cannot hear it run.

I believe, depending on where you live and the availability of various types of energy (electric, NG, propane, wood or biomass, determines what is most economical to use.

Being retired (both of us), we have to watch our pennies more closely than before,. besides, I'm cheap.....

 

[Oaktree]

One thing about a biomass stove and that is, no getting up at midnight to fill it. Even wide open, it will run a12 hours on a full hopper.

I have a woodstove, and I've never needed to get up at midnight to fill it. Unless it's WELL below zero the Harmon I have will keep the house warm 8-10 hours. If I ran it wide open, the house would be a sauna.

 

[Rustyiron]

100% wood. That is after it's cold enough to heat the shop and fire up the gasification wood boiler for the in slab radiant (shop and house) . The mini splits do the "shoulder" seasons before and after the real cold, usually the 2nd week of December through March.
The wood boiler provides all the domestic hot water and I'll tell you there's something a little different (satisfying) using "home made" hot water.

 

[JasperFrank]

The hydronic, electric boiler, radiant floor heating system that I designed, ended up not really working. Very expensive and complicated to maintain. And I most likely, designed it wrong. So we have three, free standing, corded, quartz heaters that are used as a back up to the wood stove. Which makes the house comfortable. Most months in the fall, summer and spring we average 80 dollars a month in electrical usage. The winters, using the floor heating, went to between $180 and $210 a month. Then went back down to $110 to $120, using the plug in quartz heaters and every other day, the wood stove.

 

[Larry Caldwell]

I have a woodstove, and I've never needed to get up at midnight to fill it. Unless it's WELL below zero the Harmon I have will keep the house warm 8-10 hours. If I ran it wide open, the house would be a sauna.

I could afford the power bill or a few pallets of pellets, but for me the advantage of wood heat is that it's my own private energy utility. When things go to crap and the power goes out, the comfort level of my house doesn't change. I'll run a generator for a few hours after a couple days, but mostly it is a gentle silence. I even have a porcelain cowboy coffee pot and an antique coffee grinder, so can make gourmet coffee right on top of the stove. A while back I fed hot meals to a couple neighbors with all-electric homes. I have trivets to get pots off of the stove surface,

If I should have a lot of people to feed, I have a fire pit and a big Dutch oven, plus a BBQ smoker, all fired with my own wood.

 

[dodge man]

One thing bad about geothermal, our house is all electric, is a lot of our electric bill goes for hot water. We have a desuperheater(sp?) so we do get some hot water from the geo but that’s only significant when it gets really cold out. I don’t know exact numbers but our electric bill is probably around $200 per month.

 

[mapper]

Heat pump with propane for outdoor temperature less than 35 degrees. Shop is a wood stove, go through about 1/2 - 3/4 cord per year. This year I have vowed to reduce my scrap wood bins to free up space in the shop, you know those bits and pieces that have to be good for something.....
Slow start to fall heating season this year, October and daytime temps are still in the eighties, haven't seen significant rain since June either.

 

[Yander]

We use Propane only. I would love to use wood heat but my wife is a bit **** about smoke and dust and thinks our house would be both smelly and dusty. I grew up with it and love wood heat. I even like the smell of the wood smoke.

I do have interest in the Corn stove @5030 mentioned and looked at one on Ebay. Have to do some more looking into it, if it would affect my insurance etc. I may if nothing else, get one for the garage and sunroom. They are connected and I could heat them both with it for when I'm trying to grow veggies in the sunroom in the winter.

We let our house get down to prob. 63 before kicking on the furnace. Except when grandkids stay with us, we kick it on at 65 then. We keep our house at 65 - 68 in the winter and 71 in the summer, except around 7pm in the summer we kick the temp down to 69 because we both sleep better in a cooler room. Lot's of research to prove that we sleep better in a cool room too.