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

[ultrarunner]

We were 'uptown' last night eating out, we eat out about once a week lately and I was somewhat taken back looking at the fuel price sign on the Speedway Gas station across the road. Gas prices took a very healthy increase in a matter of a day. Up to $4.48 here. Didn't see the diesel price but I'm pretty sure it was well over $5.00 a gallon so I imagine heating oil here is at least as high as off road diesel which usually runs about 45 cents below the on road price.

$7 regular and higher norm today...

At the cabin heat is wood using a built in place ceramic tile oven...

Wood is loaded once a day from the stair house to the basement keeping the living areas smoke and wood free.

When temps drop to the teens or colder the oven is loaded 2x a day.

The downside is it takes hours to get first heat when first firing...

 

[kenmac]

I heat with heat pump ! No power, nat gas logs, or generator back up. My choice

 

[Eagle223usa]

I use almost 100% wood, we have a pellet stove back up.

 

[dodge man]

One thing that seems to be rare in my area is heating with fuel oil. Must be an east coast thing.

 

[LouNY]

It is and always has been a fairly high btu per gallon value, easy to ship by most methods road,rail, water ways, ect. No high pressure tanks or regulators required, no pipelines required.
Available for a reasonable price most of the times, it was the fuel of choice for many years as homes converted from wood/coal heating with it's associated shoveling cutting splitting, ash hauling and constant tending to setting a thermostat and enjoying.
Almost no natural gas lines around here once you leave the cities and larger Villages.
#2 Fuel oil has approximately 138,690 btu's per gallon,
#1 kerosene has approximately 135,000 btu's per gallon,
Propane is only around 91,333 btu's per gallon.
Oil is an easy fuel to store and move around.

 

[jyoutz]

One thing that seems to be rare in my area is heating with fuel oil. Must be an east coast thing.

I have never seen or heard of anyone heating with fuel oil in my country, even though we have local refineries. The fuel of choice is natural gas where available, and propane or wood where NG is unavailable.

 

[TractorTYMe]

Wife and I work full time, so in 2001 we had an electric furnace installed that has worked well, we have a $300/month electric bill but I pay for convenience. However when it goes below -20F the furnace has a hard time keeping up, so I always have a couple of cords of wood ready to go for those instances. I started using IBC totes for easy hauling with my tractor. We have a full working mill in the background. So I could easy have another full time job.

And now I've got this exceptional tool for gathering logs that can be milled or used for firewood.

 

[John_Mc]

Fire Wood in my area is basically free. Its the work involved and can you do somthng else with the time to make money, as apposed to saving money. I certainly didn't see this till later in life. Working, I can just have someone else deliver wood at a lesser cost in time, then if I collected and cut it my self. This year we are doing the experiment to see if the wood stove is even worth it, aside from the esthetic reasons.

Firewood still standing in the forest here goes for about $10/ full cord - and that's if the access is easy. If you are working far from a road or with otherwise difficult access it may be worth nothing. All of the real value is what is added in the harvesting, processing, and delivery.

I'm not the most efficient firewood harvester. I do it in my own way and at my own pace. If I kept track of all of my equipment costs and billed my hours at what can can make otherwise, it would most likely not be the cheapest way to heat. I do it because I enjoy the work (well, I enjoy it other than the splitting and stacking part.) I also plan my firewood harvesting to accomplish other goals, such as improving wildlife habitat or timber value or putting in recreation trails. The logs I take out for firewood are just a byproduct of that activity. Most are not good for much else: too small or poorly formed or diseased to use for lumber, though I do occasionally harvest trees to turn into lumber or logs for construction projects (some of the structures in the obstacle course in our woods are made from logs/lumber I harvested here.)

 

[5030]

Far as I can tell, if you want a wood stove or outside wood fired boiler, today you now have to deal with the EPA and their catalytic combuster stuff to contain particulate emissions and I've read that in some areas, wood stoves have been outlawed.

None of that happens with a biomass stove because they all meet or exceed the EPA guidelines for visible and particulate emissions and biomass stoves are carbon neutral as well (not that I care), but they are and quite a bit of pelletized fuel comes from Forestry slash and discarded wood products like old pallets and skids that would wind up on landfills.

One of my favorite companies that uses their forestry slash and excess lumber (from the trim of their flooring mills is) Somerset Hardwood Flooring in Somerset, Kentucky. What started out for them as fuel to heat their boilers and plant has become quite a value added business. Somerset hardwood pellets are sold all round the Kentucky, Ohio, Indiana and Michigan area. Even have their own fleet of delivery semi's.

 

[IndyIan]

We heat with a mid size woodstove, and a bit of electricity if we are away for a few days. I use a 5lb Collins maul, or a 4lb Fisker maul to split, and if they don't work, the chainsaw splits it...

 

[Mtsoxfan]

Electric boiler radiant heat in slabs. Costs $100 a month per 1000sq-ft of house in winter. house is larger than 1000 sq-ft

You must have some pretty cheap electricity prices to heat for that price...

 

[ovrszd]

You must have some pretty cheap electricity prices to heat for that price...

I thought that was an accurate assessment.

 

[ovrszd]

I thought that was an accurate assessment.

Oh wait.... Does he mean $100 p/month p/1000 sqft only during Winter months? Heating costs should always be stated per year.

His cost spread over 12 months is about right.

 

[Rustyiron]

Firewood still standing in the forest here goes for about $10/ full cord - and that's if the access is easy. If you are working far from a road or with otherwise difficult access it may be worth nothing. All of the real value is what is added in the harvesting, processing, and delivery.

I'm not the most efficient firewood harvester. I do it in my own way and at my own pace. If I kept track of all of my equipment costs and billed my hours at what can can make otherwise, it would most likely not be the cheapest way to heat. I do it because I enjoy the work (well, I enjoy it other than the splitting and stacking part.) I also plan my firewood harvesting to accomplish other goals, such as improving wildlife habitat or timber value or putting in recreation trails. The logs I take out for firewood are just a byproduct of that activity. Most are not good for much else: too small or poorly formed or diseased to use for lumber, though I do occasionally harvest trees to turn into lumber or logs for construction projects (some of the structures in the obstacle course in our woods are made from logs/lumber I harvested here.)

John, let's all admit it. A large part of wood cutting is the toys and the opportunity to put them to work.
I used to travel through my woods looking for good firewood prospects for managment. Now ..... well, just don't ever get a sawmill

 

[wawajake]

When we bought our 2000 sq ft of home ( including finished basement) it had a rare inside the home woodboiler that was ten yrs old and lasted 5 more years before unit rusting out . I replaced it with high efficiency propane boiler because rads and pipes already in place. We use about 400 US gallons of propane per winter ( does our domestic hotwater too, but use electric hot water heater in summer) We pay roughly $3.50 per US gallon propane here in Northern Ontario Canada. House is very well insulated. My 500 sq ft insulated garage I heat with wood all from my property, or when away use one elec heater set to 50 F . I also find propane hard on the boiler burners and spend more on maintenance of high efficiency complex boiler. So avoid turning boiler on till late in season. So I can go two years before a $700 burner cleaning etc, the odd sensors etc. If I was to do it again I would go with less efficient propane boiler that I could do maintenance on and less to go wrong. No natural gas lines close by. I still have insulated chimney up centre of house so could put a woodstove in , but they have become expensive steel boxes and house insurance effected if have wood heat again.

 

[jyoutz]

Far as I can tell, if you want a wood stove or outside wood fired boiler, today you now have to deal with the EPA and their catalytic combuster stuff to contain particulate emissions and I've read that in some areas, wood stoves have been outlawed.

None of that happens with a biomass stove because they all meet or exceed the EPA guidelines for visible and particulate emissions and biomass stoves are carbon neutral as well (not that I care), but they are and quite a bit of pelletized fuel comes from Forestry slash and discarded wood products like old pallets and skids that would wind up on landfills.

One of my favorite companies that uses their forestry slash and excess lumber (from the trim of their flooring mills is) Somerset Hardwood Flooring in Somerset, Kentucky. What started out for them as fuel to heat their boilers and plant has become quite a value added business. Somerset hardwood pellets are sold all round the Kentucky, Ohio, Indiana and Michigan area. Even have their own fleet of delivery semi's.

The catalytic exhaust on wood burners is actually a good thing. It causes a hotter burn, so less emissions and more heat.

 

[ovrszd]

John, let's all admit it. A large part of wood cutting is the toys and the opportunity to put them to work.
I used to travel through my woods looking for good firewood prospects for managment. Now ..... well, just don't ever get a sawmill

I actually carry rolls of orange flag tape on my tractors and RTV. I mark trees that I see have died or going to die so when I go back in the Winter with leaves off I know which ones need removed.

 

[DieselBound]

Three years heating (only heat the house- I don't do a lot in my garage during the heating season; anything that I do is quick work [I'm not retired, so not a lot of time anyway]):

I only put the current season's wood under cover (next year's gets covered out in the field [above picture- had not gotten cover on it yet]). Roughly 15 crates. Stacking takes nerves of steel: I'm getting better; smoothing out the access helped!

About 1/3 cord per crate. Lasts anywhere between 8 to 12 days on average, with the first and last crates on the edges of the heating season going for several weeks (not all that cold). Grab a crate (with the Kioti) and drop it on our deck where we pull directly from (a few steps outside). Most of the wood comes from blow-down or stuff that I've selectively cleared (a tree here and there- most all within our homestead area- out on the greater property I rarely cut anything that's standing): I'm always out on the property with the dog in which case I know where ANY available firewood is. Go out and cut wood and then place crates out such that I then come along with the splitter and the split wood goes right into the crates (shuttled back via the Kioti) and I don't touch it again until I'm pulling it from a crate on the deck to go into the house.

Plans were a long time in the making: LOTS of thought.

 

[5030]

The catalytic exhaust on wood burners is actually a good thing. It causes a hotter burn, so less emissions and more heat.

They seem to have a tendency to plug up as well or at least the guys on Firewood Hoarders Forum say they do. I don't know, neither of my biomass units require one.

 

[John_Mc]

They seem to have a tendency to plug up as well or at least the guys on Firewood Hoarders Forum say they do. I don't know, neither of my biomass units require one.

The catalysts in catalytic stoves will last many years if you operate them properly. Two key points: don't burn stuff other than wood in them, and make sure the stove is up to proper operating temperature before switching in the catalyst. The single biggest reason for catalyst failure is turning it on before the stove is up to proper temperature.