Anyone Heat With Wood?

Geico266

Geico266

Touchdown! Greaser!
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Geico
Just wondering if I'm the only one that heats their home with wood. We love it, toasty warm all the time (unless the fire goes out :eek:) Fun cutting and splitting wood, good excersise, gets me out in the country. I don't like digging the wood out of the snow, but if I was smart I would just cover it. :mad2:

Friday night it is gonna get to -23F OATs so I'm excited to see if we can make it without tunring the furnace on.

Anyone else heat with wood?
 
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Nope, and if I were you, I would not advertise it. Pretty confident that there are those who would contend you were an ecological disaster, try to have you excoriated for daring to burn wood and make smoke.
 
SCCutler said:
Nope, and if I were you, I would not advertise it. Pretty confident that there are those who would contend you were an ecological disaster, try to have you excoriated for daring to burn wood and make smoke.
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:rofl:

My airtight stove has a cataletic converter on it, so it burns very clean. Most of the time there is no smoke at all, the "cat" is reburning the smoke at about 1,400F. This way we get more heat out of the wood also.
 
I do and love it, but the wife hates it, especially when I am gone. She always has trouble getting a new fire going and forgets to put more wood on it to keep it going. It lowers my utility bill about $175 so she has learned to deal with it.
 
Used to, moved from VT to MA burbs. Miss having a warm central spot of heat for standing next to after walking in the house or getting out of the shower, and drying gloves and boots. I don't miss dealing with wood and running a fire 24/7. The propane stoves are great, some of them have friggin remote controls. Call me lazy but starting your 'woodstove' with a tv remote would be awesome. Of course moving further South would be ideal.
 
Geico266 said:
:rofl:

My airtight stove has a cataletic converter on it, so it burns very clean. Most of the time there is no smoke at all, the "cat" is reburning the smoke at about 1,400F. This way we get more heat out of the wood also.
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So what? Just because you don't actually cause harm, does not mean you won't be accused of doing so. Ignorance, as you must be aware, knows no bounds.
 
We had a wood burning fireplace when I was kid, with a wood pile next to the house. I think we lost more heat up the chimney than we got in the house, then termites moved into the wood pile and then the house.
 
I heat with wood also and love it for all the reasons you mentioned. I have had OATs go down to -40F and the woodstove kept us cozy and warm, of course we burnt a bit more wood that night...

As to the "green" aspect, I was told that it is ok because it is a "closed loop" as far as carbon goes. I guess they are using the same logic as to why ethanol is the greatest thing since sliced bread!
 
We have a woodstove in the living room -- keeps that part of the house nice and warm, but the rest of the house gets downright cold.

My parents lived in a house with only a wood whole-house heater in Winthrop NY (Near Massena). Goodness gracious that was a ridiculous amount of work -- including the 0230 feeding.

It's fine when it's an option, but I wouldn't ever want it as the only source of heat!
 
When we still lived in Germany the house had a tiled coal stove (Kachelofen). The thing was pretty big and all of that firebrick took a while to heat up. Once that thing was up to temp though it was really nice to just sit near it and feel the heat.

Also the nice thing about using coal was that ou didn't need to do the 2:30 feeding :-)
 
When I'm at the house I feed the Ashley stove (with blowers) and the house stays incredibly toasty.
I split two big cherry logs (seasoned for a year) last weekend with the maul and that lasted the weekend. Mostly burn hickory, oak and poplar. Will be splitting more tomorrow morning once I get back.
 
-27 here right now.... I heat my whole house, 1800 sq ft, with a EPA approved woodstove... little if no smoke and set up to draw outside air for combustion. Wood costs 20 bucks for 4 cords. My furnace has not come on since 1991...:):):)

It is a Country T top model... I LOVE my stove.:yesnod::yesnod:

And I have never used more then one cord per year... yet.
 
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dmccormack said:
We have a woodstove in the living room -- keeps that part of the house nice and warm, but the rest of the house gets downright cold.

My parents lived in a house with only a wood whole-house heater in Winthrop NY (Near Massena). Goodness gracious that was a ridiculous amount of work -- including the 0230 feeding.

It's fine when it's an option, but I wouldn't ever want it as the only source of heat!
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Up at camp near Gwinn MI (South of Marquette, East of 6y9, "camp" is Michigan Upper Peninsula for "cottage") all we had was a wood stove – it really wasn't bad even in the winter. It was essentially a one room log building with some partitions that didn't get up to the roof and no insulation.

But it was a PITA dealing with the wood, ashes, etc. Oh, and the outhouse wasn't something to look forward to (summer or winter).

One time, we were up there over Christmas, and dad suggested that I clean out the ashes. No problem. I scoop them out, go outside – OK, where do I dump these? Oh, yea, we dump them in the outhouse to help with the smell. But I forgot the step where you have to let the all the embers burn out and ashes cool down.

Sheeeew Doggie! When those burning embers hit the pile in the outhouse… That was some nasty steam!!!

Tip of the day – keep a toilet seat in the cabin behind the wood stove so when you have to go out and sit down, you have something warm to sit on. Makes a HUGE difference when it is –XX degrees F.
 
Yeah nothing speeds up "quality time" like an unheated outhouse seat in 0F weather :D
 
$20 for FOUR CORDS! Holy Crap! Thats like nickel a gallon gasoline! Please tell me it's pine and poplar

I thought I had a decent deal. I get paid to climb trees, trim them, take them down, whatever. I select the finest Oak, Locust, Hickory, Cherry, Ash leftovers, take em home, split stack dry and burn to heat my house for "free".

In actuality, it's a hell of a lot of work processing all that firewood but we use very little propane.

Our stove is set up in the corner of the living room right next to the furnace cold air return. I just run the fan to circulate heat to the rest of the house. Works pretty good.

I know I've got a good burn going when all the dogs are passed-out on the floor next to the stove. There is a certain radiant heat threshold and when it's reached resistance is futile.
 
steingar said:
We had a wood burning fireplace when I was kid, with a wood pile next to the house. I think we lost more heat up the chimney than we got in the house, then termites moved into the wood pile and then the house.
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I have a wood burning decorative fire place which I might use a couple times a season but as you said, it does nothing to heat the house. Some of my neighbors have wood stoves but I would rather not mess with that and choose to heat with natural gas where all you need to do is set the thermostat...
 
kevin47881 said:
When I'm at the house I feed the Ashley stove (with blowers) and the house stays incredibly toasty.
I split two big cherry logs (seasoned for a year) last weekend with the maul and that lasted the weekend. Mostly burn hickory, oak and poplar. Will be splitting more tomorrow morning once I get back.
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Man. I get tired just READING that.

I'm starting to feel guilty, since all I ever do is, well, nothing. I used to move the knob on the wall around once in a while, but now I don't even do that, since installing a programmable thermostat ten years ago... :rolleyes:
 
wby0nder said:
$20 for FOUR CORDS! Holy Crap! Thats like nickel a gallon gasoline! Please tell me it's pine and poplar
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This was my reaction as well. Wood goes for $175+ a cord down here in Richmond.

Cheers,

-Andrew
 
$100/cord for pine, up to and over $200 for hardwood here.
The irony is that there are thousands of acres of beetle-killed pine trees just a few miles west of here...just have to go get it, I guess?

$2.65/gal for diesel fuel for the truck to drive there
$2.50/gal saw gas
$1.85/qt 2 cycle oil
$28 per chain for cheap made-in-china crap saw chain that will not hold an edge and is ruined in 2 days
$295 for new rear truck window after pitching a chunk of firewood thru it
$18,585 hospital bill for chain saw accident

Firewood - free! :) (no, not my actual results)
 
PINE! Can you really burn pine? Its so wet and sappy I stay away from it as it creates lots of creosote.

Anyway we have a wood buring fire place and as Michael says most of the heat goes right up the chimney but I LOVE the smell and the ambiance of a wood fire place. My cousin has a wood buring stove in his basement and the rising heat heats much of the house. I have considered putting in a stove insert into my fireplace to get some radiant heat as it is certainly more efficient than my fireplace but I just love sitting by the fire reading a book and watching the open flame and hearing that crackel.
 
Heat with wood? Twice, well three times if you cut it yourself.

I, also, didn't realize anyone heated with Pine because of the creosote and higher than normal risk of flew or chimney fires.
 
Pine does have all those drawbacks, but growing up in the Black Hills surrounded by pine... not about to buy hardwood - and not a hardwood tree within a hundred miles, anyway! Almost the same situation here in CO ...
 
Firewood: The fuel that warms you twice! :D

Actually, since we bought a brand-new, top-o'-the-line, Energy-Star, state-of-the-art Carrier package heat pump two years ago May, we've been burning a lot of firewood. That piece of junk went out Christmas Day 2008 (during a snowstorm) and was out for three weeks, and just quit again this New Year's Eve. It's still out. We're just waiting for the installer to come out and pick it up.

:mad2: :mad3:
 
A good modern fireplace insert can be a very efficient heater. But, they are spendy and installation can be very specialized (thats from someone who does almost everything himself). If you got the bucks and like to burn it's a great improvement over a fireplace.

I like to say, it isn't firewood till it's down, cut moved, split, stacked, dried, moved again, and sitting next to your stove.
 
Pilawt said:
Firewood: The fuel that warms you twice! :D

Actually, since we bought a brand-new, top-o'-the-line, Energy-Star, state-of-the-art Carrier package heat pump two years ago May, we've been burning a lot of firewood. That piece of junk went out Christmas Day 2008 (during a snowstorm) and was out for three weeks, and just quit again this New Year's Eve. It's still out. We're just waiting for the installer to come out and pick it up.

:mad2: :mad3:
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I know we're told that heat pumps are supposed to be efficient, but I think you cannot touch the simple effectiveness of gas heat.
 
I've had a pellet stove in my family room downstairs for about 12 years and swear by it. Lots of heat and a bag of pellets lasts about 30 hours of so.
 
AdamZ said:
PINE! Can you really burn pine? Its so wet and sappy I stay away from it as it creates lots of creosote.
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It depends on which specie of pine you are talking about. Longleaf Pine (pinus palustris) aka Southern Yellow Pine aka Pitch pine, which grows in the Southeast is much different than the Lodgepole Pine (pinus contorta latifolia) which grows here in the Rocky Mtns. The Lodgepole that I burn has much less pitch, and therefore creates much less creasote than the Longleaf Pine. To be safe I burn my pine relativly hot with a fair amount of air supply (I have an EPA phase II airtight stove with an outside air supply) to ensure complete combustion. When I had the stove pipe cleaned after the first winter, the chimney sweep comented on how clean the new modern stoves burned and how little is deposited in the chimney.

Lodgepole is about the best firewood we have in the Rockies on a btu/lb rating. Unfortunately we don't have any hardwoods that are native and available for firewood. I do on occasion burn hardwood scraps from my Cabinet Shop. My favorite is Hickory, man does that stuff have a lot of btus!!!!!!
 
stagecoachco said:
It depends on which specie of pine you are talking about. Longleaf Pine (pinus palustris) aka Southern Yellow Pine aka Pitch pine, which grows in the Southeast is much different than the Lodgepole Pine (pinus contorta latifolia) which grows here in the Rocky Mtns. The Lodgepole that I burn has much less pitch, and therefore creates much less creasote than the Longleaf Pine. To be safe I burn my pine relativly hot with a fair amount of air supply (I have an EPA phase II airtight stove with an outside air supply) to ensure complete combustion. When I had the stove pipe cleaned after the first winter, the chimney sweep comented on how clean the new modern stoves burned and how little is deposited in the chimney.

Lodgepole is about the best firewood we have in the Rockies on a btu/lb rating. Unfortunately we don't have any hardwoods that are native and available for firewood. I do on occasion burn hardwood scraps from my Cabinet Shop. My favorite is Hickory, man does that stuff have a lot of btus!!!!!!
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I guess the only pine I really know are the Long/Short leaf variety of the south and we didn't burn them unless it was all we had. Normally we had an Oak of some sort down in the back 40 we would save for winter.

Hickory, should only be smoldered under a nice piece of pork, not wasted in a heater!!! :D
 
Hickory IS amazing.

We used to find Pitch Pine for our camp fires when I planted trees in down in the southland. That stuff was amazing. You could lite a log on fire with a match. Burned like crazy with lots of black smoke (pitch black you might say) and smelled great. I loved that stuff. Would suck in a woodstove but amazing for kindling
 
When I was young we had a farm. This was back in the days of bottom plows and chisel plows. Every year it seems like we would hit a stump and pull one up out of the ground. This was in the South and those buried stumps would be old growth pine. After thy have been buried for many years the only thing left would be "lightered". You broke these stumps into small pieces to start the fire under the (usually) Red Oak in the fireplace. You would light it by getting a small piece of this lightered stump and using your pocket knife cut some slits in it and then light that with your match. Amazingly hot fire and you're right in an outdoor fire they were great, you wouldn't want to roast a Marsh Mallow but boy howdy, what a fire.
 
wpierce said:
Hickory, should only be smoldered under a nice piece of pork, not wasted in a heater!!! :D
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To get techinical again, what I am probably burning is actually pecan as it is comercially acceptable to mix hickory and pecan and call it hickory. In other words pecan looks enough like hickory that we can use it as hickory.

I have noted a strong pleasing scent when cutting pecan/hickory, particularly pieces that are dark in color. At one shop that I worked at years ago, the office manager would save the hickory scraps for her husband's smoker. He was an avid hunter and the elk jerky they made was sublime!
 
SCCutler said:
I know we're told that heat pumps are supposed to be efficient, but I think you cannot touch the simple effectiveness of gas heat.
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Air to air heat pumps (I have one) are not much good below 20-25F. If I had it to do over again I would go with either a ground water heat pump (pump & dump). Ground water temp is around 52F, lots of heat in ground water.

But for now, I love running a chain saw & log splitter, I enjoy being outdoors, and we love the hot heat it provides. Right now it is 2F OAT and 78F IAT, and I can only hope an environmental wacko shows up at my door to tell me to shut down my wood stove.;)
 
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Being in a relatively mild clime, I am now mainly a recreational burner (I like the act of tending a fire), it will be 11F tonight so its time to light it up.
Y'all burn your creosote off now and then!
 
I better clarify that number. The national forest service sells firewood permits so you can harvest your own. That is 5 bucks a cord up to 20 cords for any one homeowner. With the massive beetle kill that has decimated the forest around here it is easy pickings. I left home @ 8 am, drove to the woods. dropped four trees right next to the road, cut them up into 20" logs. loaded and got home by lunch. It worked out to about 2 cords... I am good for at least another year. Oh yeah, Jackson is full of kazillionaires and that has driven the price of delivered firewood to over 300 bucks a cord. Next year I 'might' cut my allotment of 20 cords, and pirate it. Two weekends of work could generate 6000.00... That ,my friends will buy ALOT of go juice for the plane.:yesnod:



wby0nder said:
$20 for FOUR CORDS! Holy Crap! Thats like nickel a gallon gasoline! Please tell me it's pine and poplar

I thought I had a decent deal. I get paid to climb trees, trim them, take them down, whatever. I select the finest Oak, Locust, Hickory, Cherry, Ash leftovers, take em home, split stack dry and burn to heat my house for "free".

In actuality, it's a hell of a lot of work processing all that firewood but we use very little propane.

Our stove is set up in the corner of the living room right next to the furnace cold air return. I just run the fan to circulate heat to the rest of the house. Works pretty good.

I know I've got a good burn going when all the dogs are passed-out on the floor next to the stove. There is a certain radiant heat threshold and when it's reached resistance is futile.
Click to expand...
 
Geico266 said:
Just wondering if I'm the only one that heats their home with wood. We love it, toasty warm all the time (unless the fire goes out :eek:) Fun cutting and splitting wood, good excersise, gets me out in the country. I don't like digging the wood out of the snow, but if I was smart I would just cover it. :mad2:

Friday night it is gonna get to -23F OATs so I'm excited to see if we can make it without tunring the furnace on.

Anyone else heat with wood?
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Yes, some times, but we use Northwest Energy Logs, that cutting and splitting sux when you are70. plus the facts that wood here abouts is a production crop, the tree farmers don't like you cutting, and the state requires a permit for cutting on state land, which has been leased to the tree farmers.

Northwest energy log are made from 100% wood no fillers or binders, it looks like compressed saw dust. 4" round logs which one pallot contains the energy of 1.25 chords of raw wood.
 
We heat with a normal gas furnace but we have an insert type fireplace as well. This year with the bitter cold we only let the wood fire burn down long enough to evacuate the ashes. Thankfully we have an abundant supply of maple and other hardwoods this year so if we stoke the fire good at night there are still hot coals in the morning.

It's nice to be able to keep the house toasty warm without going broke, as the wood we burn is deadfall from the woods that we live in. My only expense is fuel for the chainsaw and some elbow grease.
 
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