Heating with wood

[wdfifteen]

While our furnace was down I kept the house warm with the wood stove. It's a Vermont, with a catalytic converter. We've only used it a couple of times before now. I used to heat with wood exclusively (another time, another house) and it got to be a real pain. Life seemed to revolve around keeping the fire going.
So far I'm enjoying this stove. I've got a little Seebeck generator fan on it that circulates the air some but mostly gives me something to talk about when someone comes over. A couple of weeks ago I tried the stove when the temp was 15 degrees at night. As with our old house, when it gets that cold it's hard to keep the whole house warm. It gets too hot near the stove and too cold in the extremities of the house.



I kind of like the rituals of keeping the fire going. I also like knowing I can set the thermostat on my new furnace and let the fire go out if I don't feel like messing with it.

[911 Rod]

That looks like the Encore I had for years. Amazing stove. I could heat the whole house for 8 hours with 3 pieces of wood.
It is the Cadillac of all stoves ($4,000?) This means it has all the bells and whistles and they will go for a **** after a few years. lol
Be careful not to over fire it. The insides will warp and the converter will fall apart. My boys would get home first and get it going by opening the ash tray for air. This stove will get hot and not like it.
I miss the nice dry heat from coming in from outside.

[LakeCleElum]

Been cutting firewood over 40 years. Keep saying I'm gonna stop. Then someone offers me wood.........If I sell my chainsaw and splitter, I guess I'll have to stop. This pile is a 2 years supply.....

[ckelly78z]

I have been burning wood for 25 years now, with the last 10 years being exclusively heat from our Regency woodstove. We had a small Vermont Castings stove with the catyletic burner, but ended up warping a few things inside, so we bought the heaviest unit we could fing. The Regency has the most 3/8" thick steel on the market, and weighs in about 650#, but keeps the whole house warm on 3 small arm loads of wood per day (seasoned hard wood), or about 5 cords per year.

At 53 years old with some health issues, I will be looking at replacing our old un-efficient water baseboard boiler with some new technology in the next year, or two, and possibly adding central air, or a couple of those Mitsubishi room units..

From the picture, it looks like you also have plenty of good Ash wood to burn (damn those killing beetles).

[Mark Henry]

If I had free hardwood I'd still be burning wood, but since I have to buy wood it it's not worth the effort. Gas (propane) costs me the same as wood without the work and mess and the fireplaces have a thermostat.

I burned wood in my shop for 15 years, my insurance company made me put in direct vent gas.
My house I have a gas fireplace upstairs and a gas "wood" burning stove in the basement. I also have mini split 2 head (up and downstairs) ductless heat pump. Open concept house.

If I was building a house from scratch I'd build in a Kachelöfen. No huge temperature swings, super efficient, heats house up to 24hs after it goes out, and I'd build it so the firebox is on the outside of the house, no inside mess.
Downside is cost and not common with north american inspectors.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masonry_heater

https://www.google.com/search?q=Kachel%C3%B6fen&source=lnms&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjsxprpyaffAhXwUt8KHbp3DMQQ_AUICSgA&biw=1303&bih=697&dpr=1

[wswartzwel]

I have an Englander insert in my fireplace. Inside is lined with firebrick, with a blower that pushes air under the firebox up the back and out the top into the living room where the fireplace is located. Once I get a nice bed of coals going I can fill it with wood once a day, throttle everything back and set the fan to low and it will keep the house comfortable. If I close the bedroom doors though they will get cold. I have noticed that if I keep a pan of water on the top the air does not dry out as much, but still we have more sinus issues when using wood heat. It is dusty, and requires messing with wood. Our city owned utilities are quite inexpensive compared to most, so we usually just use the electricity to heat the house.

[oldE]

One of the problems with wood heat is make up air. People often complain a wood stove dries out the air in a house. What is actually happening is the air the stove requires for combustion is drawn from within the envelope of the house. Air to replace that comes in through cracks, gaps and leaks from outside and, at low temps, that air is quite low in humidity.
The way around this is to have a dedicated air supply for the stove or furnace. That way air for combustion is going straight into the firebox. The humidity level inside the house envelope does not drop with the outside temps.
In this way you are also not using air you have just heated to support combustion.

Best
Les

[Evans, Marv]

I have an insert fireplace similar to Bill's, except that it draws air from the outside of the house. We don't get as cold as some places you guys live, so we use it only in the middle of winter when I want supplemental heat to help cut down on how much the heater runs. We have ten foot ceilings, and I discovered that's high enough for the air to stratify. I've found out running a (quiet) fan to gently circulate the air helps out tremendously to cut down on how much the heater runs and how much the fireplace helps out. Some of you might explore that option as a help.

[pete3799]

I've heated solely with wood for close to 40 years. Last year i burned mostly oil and about a cord i had left over from the previous year. This year i haven't cut so much as a stick of wood ( still have some in the garage for the wood stove there if i need a little).

I do miss the warmth of a wood stove but at 65 years old i find it a lot less strenuous to just turn a dial. I may buy a cord just because.

Maybe after i retire i'll have time to get back in the woods more.

This stove will take 30" wood but i used to cut mine 24"

[911 Rod]

When I heated my house with wood, I picked up each piece 5 times. Starting from the driveway to the fireplace. Now that I think about it I don't miss it as much.

[flatbutt]

I used firewood until my right arm became crippled. Then I went to a pellet stove. there are several advantages over traditional wood. There is no creosote, you get a constant temperature and it uses outside air for combustion. You must have electricity to run so it's useless during an outage but pros outweigh cons.

[71T Targa]

Heating with wood warms you three times.
Once when you cut it.
Once when you stack it.
Once when you burn it.

[Alfasrule]

Live in VT as well. Love me stove. Have 2 in my house, a fireplace, coal as well.
But living up here the best investment is a generator. Got a 6500W 13HP motor.
Runs everything and I have 4 refrigerators, well, furnace, etc. Haven't used it much but very handy.
BTW nothing like a wood fire!

[VincentVega]

Pacific Energy here, love it. Between wood and a mini split I might use 5gal of oil a year. No complaints.

[TimT]

I have two Vermont Casting stoves now, one in my house on LI and one in the Vermont place..

The top loading feature rocks..

At my place in Vermont I have an Encore.. that house is fairly new ( well its old but recently remodeled and modernized),with an open design.. I can and do heat the place with just the wood stove when I use the house in the winter....granted it might take a day to get the house comfortable if the house has been closed for awhile..Plenty of wood is available for free , well just my and my brothers labor.

At my place on LI, I have a Resolute, its a discontinued model that is has been in service to me for 30+ years..I plan on replacing it next fall with an Intrepid.. Yea I def over fired that stove a few times..

On LI I use the wood stoves for supplemental heat and to lessen the load i.e. use less oil.. Even here on LI I can pretty much get hardwood for free... sometimes delivered in various states of dryness..occasionally Ill buy a face cord for convenience..

I'll be doing the wood heat thing until I physically can't

[Erakad]

I mainly heat my house with wood as well with supplement of a natural gas boiler first thing in the morning. I'm in Colorado. The plus is the fireplace is a high efficient model that will heat the house to 80 degrees (if I choose) with abundant logs. However, with just 3-5 logs a night the house stays a comfortable 70-72. I use aspen and pine (from the property). The downside is cutting the trees, cutting, splitting and stacking. Last summer it was 15 trees (small to large). The dead aspens I use right away, but wait 2 years for the green (read pine) to season. That's how I spent my "summer vacation". I find it does keep my gas bills down...which can hit up to $250 dollars in Jan then tapers off as the year warms up. I can't see doing this at 70, soooo, can see buying wood in the future. Here, a cord of pine runs about $150 aged, $100 green.

[wdfifteen]

Originally Posted by ckelly78z

From the picture, it looks like you also have plenty of good Ash wood to burn (damn those killing beetles).

Yeah goes up like newspaper.

[Crowbob]

I heated with wood for 5 years. Had a nice stove on the first floor and a combination oil/wood furnace in the basement which has subsequently been outlawed. The furnace used the same combustion chamber for wood and oil. When the t-stat called for heat the furnace would come on and ignite the wood.

The living room was floor to ceiling glass on two walls. It was fun playing with the kids in our pj’s during a raging blizzard. Where I live blizzard is not an overstatement, either.

I started getting nervous at night knowing there was a fire in the house, though.

I miss the wood heat, don’t miss the wood fire, or the work.

[wdfifteen]

I’ve got nothing to do but keep my foot up while it heals. May as well sit and tell stories.

When I was a kid the office of the feed store was a local gathering place. The place was great, smelled like feed supplement and horse lineament. And tobacco. They had four or five chairs sitting around a Warm Morning wood stove. A big old guy named Warnie ran the place. He probably weighed 300 pounds and wore bib overalls with a ratty cardigan sweat over them. He chewed tobacco constantly and kind of gargled when he talked. On a cold winter day the old farmers would gather around the stove and pass a bottle around and gossip. Dad would take me in with him to unload a truckload of grain. I would wait inside and sit on the bags of supplement and listen to the men while he unloaded. It seemed Warnie’s mission in life was to reduce the stove to a pile of molten iron. He’d take a chaw, take a drink, and jamb some more wood in the stove. He’d spit on the stove now and then and if the glob of tobacco juice sizzled on the stove he’d get up and jamb more wood in it. When the stove was showing a little red and seemed to be jumping up and down Warnie would launch a gob of spit at it and the spit would just vaporize. He’d take a sip and slap his knee and say, “She’s hawt now boys!”
Warnie and the boys fascinated me, but Dad couldn’t get me out of there fast enough.

[Rusty Heap]

Originally Posted by LakeCleElum

Been cutting firewood over 40 years. Keep saying I'm gonna stop. Then someone offers me wood.........If I sell my chainsaw and splitter, I guess I'll have to stop. This pile is a 2 years supply.....

brilliant way to move whole logs! 2" ratcheting tie-down straps?


my 30 hp Kubota says thank you.

But You bought the wrong color machine.