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

[5030]

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?

 

[Doofy]

Heating oil at $4.45 per gallon at last fill. Supplement with wood when the power goes out or the outside temps drop to -60F. We also have a couple of propane unit heaters if we don't feel like messing with wood.

 

[Skeletor]

I heat 100% with wood. I burn about 5 cord a year or so. I have a fireplace insert I use for the beginning and end of winter. Usually end of November or early December I fire up the blaze king in the cellar and o take the cellar door off. The heat comes right up the stairs and heats the house perfectly without the use of any fans at all.

I used to heat with oil and when I got the blaze king I took the exhaust pipe out of the oil burner and put the blaze king in it’s place. I switched the water heater over to electric when I took the oil burner off line. It’s been like that for many years and I have no regrets at all. I never but split wood as I’m never happy with it at all. So I buy log lengths and process it myself. I do get the occasional tree here and there. Actually this weekend I got 8 pickup loads from my dads place and there’s plenty more. I’m still gonna get a few cord delivered in log form in the next couple weeks.

 

[Larry Caldwell]

Home is wood, shop is propane radiant tube.

 

[Jstpssng]

Wood, with a bit of electric for when I'm not home... or don't feel like crawling out of bed at 1:00 AM to feed the fire.

 

[Ken45101]

Our primary heat is wood and maybe pellets backed up with an unvented propane heater and our electric AC/heat pump. We run the heat pump above 40 or 45 degrees since they are more efficient at those temps, no sense burning wood on warmer days. When it's really cold I have a propane heater for the shop.

 

[4570Man]

House is primarily wood. My stove is slightly undersized for the load and sometimes the natural gas furnace has to help. My shop is natural gas. I don’t want wood heat on the shop. There’s the obvious problem of a fire hazard in a woodworking area and I like the speed at which the natural gas heats up. A wood stove would take a lot longer.

 

[MAX-24-Dean]

Mini-splits until the outdoor temp drops below 40 degrees F. Then mini splits plus wood stove.
Since adding insulation to the house 2 years ago, I have gone from 5 cord per year to 3 cord per year.
Insulated the crawl space this summer and hope to reduce the wood stove use to below 2 cords of wood.

 

[ljjhouser]

House is propane. They used to let us "prepay" for winter fuel, but no longer. They have a "set price" for winter months. I think it is $2.65 a gallon. We get by on about 300 gal a year usually.

 

[bdhsfz6]

Coal, supplemented by an oil furnace and mini split electric in the house. I vary the usage depending on the cheapest individual energy cost.

I used to heat the shop with propane but put in a mini split last year. I'm retired now and spend a lot more time out there. With the mini split, I get both heat and A/C.

 

[techman]

A friend has a large pole building for car repair. He has a waste oil burner for heat. A year ago I put in a 3 ton 18 seer heat pump in his shop. In the summer he keeps it at a reasonable temp and moderates the humidity inside. In the winter he keeps the temp in the low 60's and fires up the burner when he is working in there. This goes a long way to prevent rust from forming from moisture condensing on metal items. Great combo plus it makes distilled water for batteries !

paul

 

[Oaktree]

Wood with oil furnace for backup in the house, wood for my shop. Since I only use the shop for specific projects in the winter, I'll just burn the "junk" wood (pine, spruce, poplar) there...not really concerned with creosote since I never bank it down.
On average we use 3-4 cords/year. This house is reasonably tight, especially given that it's almost 200 years old and isn't that hard to heat.

 

[ovrszd]

House is propane fired hydronic floor heat, 2,400 sqft. Propane fired Domestic hot water. Thermostat on 72F.

Shop is propane fired hydronic floor heat, 1,900 sqft. Thermostat on 68F.

We use 1100-1200 gallon of propane per year.

I contracted for $2.15 p/gallon this year. $1.79 p/gallon last year.

I'm in the process of installing a 1,000 gallon tank. I probly won't need to contract then.

 

[oldballs]

"Country Boys know how to survive".....so the song goes.

Cheers,
Mike

 

[dodge man]

We have geothermal for the house, during normal operation it uses about 1900 watts of electricity. It has electric grid also but it doesn’t usually run. Also a fireplace which more or less heats the house if it’s above 20 degrees outside. My 28 by 30 shop has a propane heater hanging in the corner up high and I normally keep it at about 45 degrees.

 

[oosik]

I'm talking about when we first built here in 1982. We heated the house with our wood stove. All the firewood was harvested from the property here. That lasted about ten years. The wood brought in too much dirt, dust, bark and bugs. My big 'ol pine trees still had Mt St Helens ash in their bark.

Then we went to a pellet stove. That lasted about twenty years. Then pellets got expensive and it was a real PITA ferrying them from the storage area to the house.

The last ten years its been baseboard electric heat. Clean - nothing to cut/split - nothing to haul AND electricity is very cheap around here. After thirty years - the pellet stove still decorates a corner of the living room.

My shop is heated with a propane fired salamander heater.

 

[JJT]

The house is heated by fuel oil, $3.99/gallon last week. We burn 600 gallons in a mild winter, closer to 1000 gallons if it's a bad winter, (multiple weeks of -25F with a 25 mph wind). The shop is heated by kerosene, less than 50 gallons a year.

I grew up heating with wood, and will never go back. The next upgrade to the heating system will be geothermal.

 

[Paddy]

Electric boiler radiant heat in slabs. Costs $100 a month per 1000sq-ft of house in winter. house is larger than 1000 sq-ft

 

[not2old]

Open loop geothermal in 4600 square feet on two floors plus 650 square foot attached garage. Keep house at 68 in winter and 76 in summer. Garage at 56 in winter with construction electric heater for a few minutes when I want to work out there. Annual electric bill is a little over $2500.00. Shop isn't finished yet, but has pex in floor and plan to use electric home made boiler initially and hope to be able to afford a waste oil boiler when done. Don't know how much it will cost in the shop over a whole winter.

 

[ovrszd]

I'm talking about when we first built here in 1982. We heated the house with our wood stove. All the firewood was harvested from the property here. That lasted about ten years. The wood brought in too much dirt, dust, bark and bugs. My big 'ol pine trees still had Mt St Helens ash in their bark.

Then we went to a pellet stove. That lasted about twenty years. Then pellets got expensive and it was a real PITA ferrying them from the storage area to the house.

The last ten years its been baseboard electric heat. Clean - nothing to cut/split - nothing to haul AND electricity is very cheap around here. After thirty years - the pellet stove still decorates a corner of the living room.

My shop is heated with a propane fired salamander heater.

My previous house was heated with elec baseboard. Very comfortable with a thermostat in each room. Very cost effective to run.