(NA) Heating a house with wood

kath said:
His favorite sourcing technique is to buy "off-cuts" from a lumber outfit and chop them up.
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My parents heated our house with wood while I grew up using a similar technique. We had a pallet manufacturer nearby which allowed us to get Some nice, long pieces of scrap that only required us to cut it up in sections that would fit the stove. The cost for enough wood to heat for an entire winter was at most $200 and it would take a weekend of cutting with a chainsaw to get everything prepared for the winter.

Despite helping my dad with the wood for over a decade I’ve never split a single log. Getting the wood the way we did made for a positive experience. I don’t know that I’d say the same thing if I had to spend all summer scrounging and splitting wood just to get through the winter.
 
Current home has a rather large fireplace with natural gas plumbed in for the starter. Inefficient as hell, but we like to fire it up when it gets really cold out (teens or lower) and when it snows, just for ambiance. I do sometimes wish it had a fireplace insert or glass doors, but it's not enough of a concern to drop $1K+ on a set of doors. When I bought the house it had a tiny set of gas logs in there (looked completely out of place), so I had the chimney inspected (was basically spotless) and then tossed the gas logs for a large wrought-iron grate to hold 6-7 logs at a time. When it's really going, it puts off too much heat to even sit next to it on the built-in seating in front. It even has one of the ash-dump trap doors so that you can collect the ash from outside, but the trap door is so small it's really not worth the effort to shove it all through. Also has an armature which pivots out to hold a pot or other cookware if you wanted to cook over the flames. I haven't bothered with cooking aside from roasting marshmallows, lol. I normally buy a rick of wood each year (1/3 cord for you northerners), so we're not exactly using it a ton. Natural gas is too cheap to even consider burning wood for primary heat. I have to be careful about running the fireplace because the thermostat for the kids rooms is in the living room with the fireplace, so while that room is quite toasty, the heater won't kick on for the kids rooms and they drop temps pretty quick!

Parents live nearby but don't have natural gas on their road, but they built the house plumbed for it if it came available. The are all-electric for a 3,700 sq ft house. They don't have any issues, but it is more expensive to heat with electric. Their neighbors on the acreage across the road use a pellet stove for a 3K sq ft home, and reportedly spend more than my parents do on heating.

I'd think the best option is to build/buy an extremely efficient home so that the leaks are minimal and energy loss is lessened. Hard to get builders to spend the time to button everything up tight and caulk/tape every last joint.
 
RJM62 said:
I did it for a while.

In terms of practicality, I found the compressed bricks that Tractor Supply sells to produce the most heat with the least effort. They also were the cleanest solution. I took the chimney off to clean it after a winter of using those bricks, and there was nothing to clean. There was little or no visible smoke coming from the chimney, either, once they ignited (which also was much easier than when using logs).

The bricks also were much less-expensive than self-harvested wood if I assigned even a dollar an hour to my own labor. I forget the exact price, but they were pretty cheap by the pallet. They were more expensive than purchased cordwood by bulk, but probably pretty close on a BTU / dollar basis.

Environmentally, I don't buy the argument that burning wood is "carbon neutral" because the carbon was sequestrated in the tree. The same can be said of the carbon in petroleum if you widen the time scale. As I see it, what is being released now is what matters, not when or how it got into the fuel in the first place. Nonetheless, I suspect that the bricks emit much less carbon than logs simply because there's little or no smoke. That's not very scientific, I know. But it seems sensible. More complete combustion should produce less atmospheric carbon.

I've thought about installing a wood stove in this place, but it's too much work for too little benefit. Propane and electric oil-filled radiators do the job just fine at a low cost. Unless I have guests, I heat the house to about 55 F with the propane and the rooms we're sitting or sleeping in to about 68 F with the oil-filled heaters. I pre-buy the propane in May or June to get the best price, so my combined total heating costs usually come out to between $2,000.00 and $3,000.00 / year. I doubt I'd ever recover the investment in a wood stove at that rate.

Rich
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Back when I heated in the 90's, my woodstove was the type that just limited air as a way to be efficient. There was always a stream of smoke from my stovepipe while heating. Now, woodstoves are "catalytic", and I'm noticing almost no smoke from my chimney. In fact, I took a friend flying yesterday on a clear day, and we flew over my house. I expected to be able to point out my house to him from the smoke trail of the woodstove, but there was no smoke to see.
 
Weekend Warrior said:
Back when I heated in the 90's, my woodstove was the type that just limited air as a way to be efficient. There was always a stream of smoke from my stovepipe while heating. Now, woodstoves are "catalytic", and I'm noticing almost no smoke from my chimney. In fact, I took a friend flying yesterday on a clear day, and we flew over my house. I expected to be able to point out my house to him from the smoke trail of the woodstove, but there was no smoke to see.
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I had plenty of smoke when burning logs, as well as plenty of soot and creosote in the chimney to clean out. I had none of that with the compressed wood bricks. They ignited easily with the little fire-starting thingies, and they burned hot and cleanly once they ignited.

The other nice thing about the bricks was that they burned for a bit over six hours, which is longer than I usually sleep; so if I generously fed the stove before going to bed, I didn't have to get up in the middle of the night to feed it again.

It also helped to stack the bricks kind of like a bridge with the upper bricks located to either side of the flames. Those bricks wouldn't fall into the flames until the "bridge" under them collapsed, which extended the burn time. There's engineering in everything if you look closely enough.

Rich
 
We have electric heat but use the fireplace when we want a fire. The friends I have in New York have a cool wood fired system that consists of a remote located wood stove which heats water and circulates it into the house via a pump. It provides hot water and central heating for the house. They load it in the morning and at night. I suppose when the electricity goes out, the pump does too but some are pretty fancy and have battery back ups.
 
Timbeck2 said:
We have electric heat but use the fireplace when we want a fire. The friends I have in New York have a cool wood fired system that consists of a remote located wood stove which heats water and circulates it into the house via a pump. It provides hot water and central heating for the house. They load it in the morning and at night. I suppose when the electricity goes out, the pump does too but some are pretty fancy and have battery back ups.
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They're fairly popular here. Some people have the fancy, EPA-certified kinds; and others have the home-built redneck kind that occasionally kill people. They take the air exchanger from an old propane or oil furnace and mount it inside a firebox, which works fine until the air exchanger corrodes and start pumping smoke into the house.

The same thing happens with the el-cheapo air exchangers that some people install in wood stove chimneys. They capture the heat that usually would be lost up the chimney; but eventually they either clog up with creosote or get leaks that blow smoke into the living area.

The safer kind of wood-fired furnaces that pump water are often used as supplemental heat sources for conventional water or steam heat. It's a pretty clever idea. The wood-fired boiler is placed between the return line and the conventional boiler. When there's a good fire going, the conventional boiler may not cycle on at all. When there's not, the conventional boiler kicks in. It's a good way to preserve the ability to go away for a few days without the pipes freezing, while saving money when you're home to feed the furnace.

Rich
 
On top of the mess and inconvenience, burning wood to heat a home here raises the insurance cost drastically. We have electric heat here only, no gas or propane. We do have two backup generators though.
 
SoonerAviator said:
Current home has a rather large fireplace with natural gas plumbed in for the starter. Inefficient as hell, but we like to fire it up when it gets really cold out (teens or lower) and when it snows, just for ambiance. I do sometimes wish it had a fireplace insert or glass doors, but it's not enough of a concern to drop $1K+ on a set of doors...
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I'm with you.

When I built the house at the ranch a decade ago, for my wife (she's the horse owner, so that's why a city boy like me is living in the sticks), it was mandated it had to have a real wood burning fireplace. So we hired a Belgian trained mason who built a real brick masonry fireplace. It's a Rumford, has a nat gas lighter/starter and the external brick chimney is fashioned after some of the Victorian ones we saw in England when we lived there.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rumford_fireplace

Given we get 5 to 6 months of "winter" around these parts, we use it a lot. Prefer to burn seasoned birch over any other locally available wood. And I won't put doors on mine either. We heat with piped nat gas, which is pretty low cost and likely to stay that way.
 
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Whatever you do, inspect your flue every few weeks during heating season. Around here, we get lots of chimney fires come January.
 
We had a new HVAC put in this summer. We put in dual zone for two purposes: 1. So we don't freeze out downstairs trying to keep upstairs cool in the summer and 2. So we can use the wood burning insert to take the chill out downstairs and let the two-stage furnace keep upstairs warm in the winter possibly saving a few pennies in the process. We shall see...
 
Use about 3 pallets of pellets about $900 total cost for the season, we have FHA propane furnace. We only use the furnace once a day just before bed I'll click the thermostat to heat the second floor (bedrooms). Our pellet stove is in the basement, it's tropical down there, about 70 on the first floor and about 65 on the second floor. Prior to the pellet stove we always turned the heat down to 62 at night.
 
Weekend Warrior said:
IAnyone else heat with wood?
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Pete Seeger split his own wood every winter up until the year he died at 94. Can’t say he did it fast or efficiently, but it is something he was known for and enjoyed the activity very much.
 
NHWannabe said:
Use about 3 pallets of pellets about $900 total cost for the season, we have FHA propane furnace. We only use the furnace once a day just before bed I'll click the thermostat to heat the second floor (bedrooms). Our pellet stove is in the basement, it's tropical down there, about 70 on the first floor and about 65 on the second floor. Prior to the pellet stove we always turned the heat down to 62 at night.
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Wow, sweltering! We use 60°F in the day, and 55°F during the night.
 
Kenny Phillips said:
Wow, sweltering! We use 60°F in the day, and 55°F during the night.
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Wow you're a trooper 60 during the day...holy crap.

I work from home so need a little warmth but we keep it warmer with the pellet stove than we ever did without it.
 
23057E7A-13A4-452C-919E-D42210F55034.jpeg I do the wood thingy, it’s in my blood. I actually like dealing with firewood., clean my own chimney etc.. I keep an eye out & sniff out ‘free’ wood where able. I’ve not had trouble finding places to cut, usually about two years out with the pile.

I have a free standing, Vermont Castings wood stove, a little ‘old school’. I like a warm house, 78 isn’t to hot.
 
sourdough44 said:
View attachment 79428 I do the wood thingy, it’s in my blood. I actually like dealing with firewood., clean my own chimney etc.. I keep an eye out & sniff out ‘free’ wood where able. I’ve not had trouble finding places to cut, usually about two years out with the pile.

I have a free standing, Vermont Castings wood stove, a little ‘old school’. I like a warm house, 78 isn’t to hot.
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Mine is made by Vermont Castings as well. I love the look of it, and when I replace it, I'm going to have to spend big bucks to get one that looks as nice. This pic was before my rebuild. I now have the glass spotless and the metal nicely black with stove polish.

ra.jpg
 
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gdwindowpane said:
https://centralboiler.com/

These are becoming quite popular up here. I hear they are quite efficient, load them up with wood and it will heat for a couple of days.
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Yep.
Neighbor has one. They load it in the AM and maybe the evening. Well technically it was heating her house and mine as the previous owner was her sister. They removed the heat exchanger and added a propane furnace prior to selling. Depending on how much propane I burn this winter i may add a boiler using the existing water lines and heat exchanger. Best part is i have family taht does logs and firewood so i can get split hardwood cheap.
 
I had a relative with the outdoor wood burner, then know a few more with them. As with anything, a few negatives are mixed in. They require a fair amount more wood, higher installation cost, and need electricity to work. Of course no chimney & keeping the mess outside is a plus.

Access to ‘free’(besides labor) wood is a biggie when heating with wood.

I don’t mind emulating ‘Pa Ingalls’ somewhat.
 
A quick thanks to @RJM62 for the pointer to the Tractor Supply bricks. They made for a quick wood supply for the neglected woodstove when the boiler went out in my Uncle's empty house recently, kept pipe freezing at bay while we waited for parts.
 
We have both, wood and Natural gas, the wood is Idaho energy logs. (press-o-Logs)
 
In 1986 I moved to the boondocks with a King heater and a chainsaw. My kids were six and two at the time. My time was also at a premium, but i could selectively down a tree and have a pickup bed full of firewood in short order. Worked great for about ten years until one day someone made a comment to my wife that her hair smelled like wood smoke. After that the propane tank got filled much more often.
 
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