Anybody Heat with Wood?

[Fishindude77]

This is very common in the rural midwest, many are using the outside wood boilers they load with wood a couple times per day as their primary heat source.

Curious how you think this plays out financially after you consider; cost of the stove purchase and install, truck for hauling, chain saw, splitter, fuel, etc. Have you ever really analyzed these costs compared to energy efficiency upgrades; windows, insulation, etc. using a conventional furnace?

We use wood as supplemental during extreme cold and take comfort in the fact that we can keep warm even if the power goes out for an extended period. Not sure I would want to solely rely on wood heat?

[greenskeeper]

I heat solely with wood (fireplace insert). I get the wood for free and process it into splits myself. The last 4 years I have had an arborist drop wood already cut into rounds right in my driveway. I only have to split and stack from there.

I have a 1600 sq ft house in southeast PA. This year being extremely cold I went through 4-5 cords of wood. I figure it would have cost roughly $2500 to heat with my baseboard electric.

[GREENBACK]

I heat quite a bit with wood in winter but no experience with central boilers. I have 1900 sq. ft to heat and use a good size indoor stove as much as possible. My wood comes from a few property owners and sometimes the wood off my own lot. My main heat source is heating oil and it truly is "Black Gold". My house was built in the early 50's and is not the most well insulated. It is way cheaper for me to heat with wood. I also enjoy getting out and cutting wood in the wintertime. I have chainsaws but use a maul to split. It is physical but so is the gym and wood pays me back. I have done this for many years and any cost spent on wood would have been dwarfed by fuel oil and insulating an old house probably isn't worth it.

[bjl584]

I do and I love it. A few Saturdays worth of cutting and splitting and I have wood for the entire winter. There is nothing like heat from a wood stove. It's a nice dry hot heat.

[CashUp Sammy]

In my holiday home here in Australia, yes, we certainly do have wood.

I gather it myself from accepted places where it has fallen. Fill up the trailer a couple of times a year, that's plenty. Take a chainsaw and cut it up on the location as well.

[JBinKC]

Although I have backup systems 99% of my heating needs are from firewood using a Jotul EPA stove. BTW you do not need a truck- a trailer with hitch would suffice and any vehicle able to pull 1/3rd of a cord or more and if wood is a less valued commodity where you live you could likely advertise to be a dump site for arborists to dispose of their logs without any vehicle provided you have enough room to do so.

As for the speed of the payback period it depends upon how many convenience bells and whistles you buy and cost of fuel but generally if you heat with fuel oil, propane or baseboard electric your payback will be very worthwhile ranging from 1-4 years on the variables.

[electric_mikey]

just as a complete kind of off topic:

i just love the smell of burning wood.
i wish i had a fireplace, but i live in a city center, not many fireplaces around these parts.

[greenskeeper]

still burning at night, so I figure I'm into 6 months of burning wood this past season....incredible considering I live in SE PA. "Global warming" go figure

[craig47]

wood heat

My wife and I live in the Ozarks of Missouri and the only heat we have is wood heat, we don't even have air vents in our house.
I cut, split and stack our wood, I aways make sure I have 2 years worth of wood on hand in case I was to get sick or something, I'm 68 years old but a person never knows when something could happen.

[greenskeeper]

I'm two years ahead and working on year 3 at the moment. Probably won't split just stack the rounds until this winter's stack is gone.

[craig47]

wood heat

I,m going to start on my 3rd year of wood also, but I'm going to wait until early fall, to hot here in the summer for me.
I have about 10 logs down from the end of this past winter, but had other things I needed to get done on our homestead first.

[daledegagne]

I grew up on wood heat - used about 4-6 cord/year in a pot belly stove and 1600 sq ft house. Got a lot of the wood from our own yard, and eventually had people drop it off. Sometimes paid, sometimes not.

The factor that was rarely accounted for here though were the days of splitting and piling and the hours moving it from the wood pile to in the house.

If I was to estimate, it was about a week to two weeks worth of time to do the whole year.

How you value your time will be different, but I consider factors like hourly wage, how much I could pay someone to do the cutting/piling etc for me, whether I have flexibility to increase my regular earnings through more hours working (ie spending more time earning commissions might be more effective) and whether or not I'd rather spend time with my kids (hell...if they're big enough, they can help!)

[greenskeeper]

Yes it is definitely not "free heat" as some looking from the outside might believe. I look at it as a part-time job that saves me thousands each year in heating costs.

[Fishindude77]

Had a bad storm blow through here last week and I've got five bid trees down in my yard. Will make the best of it and process it into firewood to use this winter.