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

[shooterdon]

House is 65-75% wood heat and balance is propane. I used to head my workshop, but it got too expensive

 

[5030]

House is 65-75% wood heat and balance is propane. I used to head my workshop, but it got too expensive

One thing I learned about propane that I did not know from the HVAC folks that replaced our old Bryant condensing furnace with a new Bryant Plus 95 was that propane is hard on the burners where as NG isn't. Propane tends to leave deposits in the burner tubes that eventually upsets the air to fuel ratio and causes them to burn rich and causes the secondary heat exchanger to plug up which is what happened to our old furnace. I said hw so to the tech and he showed me when he pulled the burners. You could readily see the carbon that had built up on the heat exchanger and the flame roll out switch was also tripped. They told me I need to replace them about every 3 years if the furnace was the main source of heat (which it isn't) so I set it up for replacement every 6 years. Not that expensive either (burners) either, like 50 bucks each. Better than having to replace the entire furnace because the secondary HX is plugged with carbon.

 

[RoyJackson]

Oil here, supplemented with 2 oil filled electric space heaters and one standard electric heater.
Oil prices are going to be a ***** this winter.
Fortunately, the house is well insulated, and we keep the thermostats at 62° to 65°. We wear flannel PJ's, insulated pants and other gear to keep warm and the oil usage down

 

[Oaktree]

What is log length? How much do you pay for a load?

Never measured, but I'd guess ~15', maybe a bit longer. Last time I bought it (couple years ago) it figured out to ~$110/cord.

 

[Oaktree]

When I'm around, I heat mostly with wood with a single wood stove in the center of our open floor plan home. (The bedrooms upstairs open onto a balcony hallway running above the wood stove, so leaving their doors open heats them as well.) Our home is very well insulated and sealed. Even so, it's surprising how well a 40,000 BTU stove can heat the place. It won't keep up if the outside temperature is well below 0˚F, but we can stay quite comfortable otherwise.

Woodstove heats my place better than the furnace, especially the upstairs. Furnace is FHA, with ducts only on the 1st floor (house is approx. 200 yrs. old, and no easy way to get ducts upstairs). Heat coming out of the ducts is only 100° or so (just barely feels warm on your hand), and it's just not hot enough to rise up the stairway. Woodstove much hotter.
Looks like some previous owner tried to cut a hole in the upstairs floor to let heat circulate better, but all they did was kind of f* it up. It's a post & beam house, and there's a lot of "stuff" between the floors.
Only room that's kind of cool with the stove is the bathroom, diagonal from where the stove is, and a couple walls in the way. Not so cold it bothers me, but the Mrs. has a space heater she uses when she takes a shower.

 

[JasperFrank]

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.

 

[ovrszd]

I consider myself as having a pretty perspective of heating costs and ways to be most efficient.

I understand lowering heat temp and raising cool temp is cost effective.

Beyond that I have no desire to run my heat temp so low that I have to dress warm to be comfortable.

I also have no desire to run my cool temp so high that I sleep hot.

So our thermostat setting is same heat/cool at 72F. We sleep under a sheet and light blanket yeararound. We sit comfortably in our house dressed normally.

 

[Yander]

in our house dressed normally.

 

[ovrszd]

View attachment 765294

Minus the Bud. Gives me a headache. BL guy.

 

[coobie]

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?

H,mm you pre ought propane for $1.99 here in michigan? Hell of a deal since the cheapest price I found was $2.45 and we are not that far from each other.What company did you purchase from?