If it's cold where you live, what are you heating with and what is it costing?

[LD1]

I LOVE

the uneven heating associated with wood.

A warm place when I'm cold from coming in from outdoors. And easy to get away from when I;m running a bit hot.

Plus, a great place to stand with my honey, backsides up to the stove, arms around waists....;-)

MY woodburner is in the basement.
But what I mean by uneven is after fixing it, it gets HOT, and you dont want it to stay HOT so you choke it down, then by the time you fix it again, and it gets roaring again.....it gets HOT again.

Not to mention....you stoke the thing good at night so you still have good coals in the morning....Leaves you going to bed with a very very warm house only to wake up in the morning and its cold....(unless you fix in the middle of the night). So it takes awhile to warm the house back up....then its hot again....rinse and repeat...

So maybe "uneven" was the wrong term, rather temperature swings.

With my Geo, I never have more than 1.5°F fluctuation. With wood, its easy to see a 10°F several times a day.

 

[jyoutz]

I LOVE

the uneven heating associated with wood.

A warm place when I'm cold from coming in from outdoors. And easy to get away from when I;m running a bit hot.

Plus, a great place to stand with my honey, backsides up to the stove, arms around waists....;-)

If you have a forced air furnace it’s easy to distribute wood stove heat evenly. Just turn your thermostat to cool air and let the fan run (or have it wired to do this). If you keep the fan running it will keep the heat evenly distributed around the house.

 

[Jstpssng]

I LOVE

the uneven heating associated with wood.

A warm place when I'm cold from coming in from outdoors. And easy to get away from when I;m running a bit hot.

Plus, a great place to stand with my honey, backsides up to the stove, arms around waists....;-)

Also a great place to hang your gloves at night, so they are dry and toasty warm in the morning.

 

[jyoutz]

MY woodburner is in the basement.
But what I mean by uneven is after fixing it, it gets HOT, and you dont want it to stay HOT so you choke it down, then by the time you fix it again, and it gets roaring again.....it gets HOT again.

Not to mention....you stoke the thing good at night so you still have good coals in the morning....Leaves you going to bed with a very very warm house only to wake up in the morning and its cold....(unless you fix in the middle of the night). So it takes awhile to warm the house back up....then its hot again....rinse and repeat...

So maybe "uneven" was the wrong term, rather temperature swings.

With my Geo, I never have more than 1.5°F fluctuation. With wood, its easy to see a 10°F several times a day.

Most modern wood stoves should hold a even burn for at least 10 hours.

 

[LD1]

Good stuff.

Only thing your data lacks is the initial cost of your Geothermal system. Then we have to figure a lifespan, cost per year of use, etc. Gets complicated.

IT was 2015 I installed it. House had NO ductwork, because it was a baseboard heat and wood burner house. So this was like a total new install rather than a geo conversion of existing house with forced air heat or AC that already had ductwork. So the ductwork cost me $2500, but that was gonna happen anyway....because I needed (Wanted AC) and a better way to distribute the wood heat if I stuck with wood.

But total system cost was $12k out of pocket. Got a $3600 fed rebate (30%), got a rebate of $1000 from the electric company for going geo, and got another $400 rebate for the 50 gallon lifetime warranty water heater I purchased because I went with a buffer tank for the geo desuperheater for DHW.

So $12000-$3600-$1000-$400 = $7000 final cost in the system. Installed myself with exception of the ductwork

 

[CalG]

MY woodburner is in the basement.
But what I mean by uneven is after fixing it, it gets HOT, and you dont want it to stay HOT so you choke it down, then by the time you fix it again, and it gets roaring again.....it gets HOT again.

Not to mention....you stoke the thing good at night so you still have good coals in the morning....Leaves you going to bed with a very very warm house only to wake up in the morning and its cold....(unless you fix in the middle of the night). So it takes awhile to warm the house back up....then its hot again....rinse and repeat...

So maybe "uneven" was the wrong term, rather temperature swings.

With my Geo, I never have more than 1.5°F fluctuation. With wood, its easy to see a 10°F several times a day.

I hear what you are saying!

First thing we do in the morning is stoke the stove!

But to me, it is just another beat to the rhythm of life.

The seasons change, and so do I.

 

[LD1]

The other thing when it comes to wood burning....I dont agree with the argument that its free when you cut it yourself. And not even talking about the cost of the equipment involved, tractors, truck, etc.

But the fact that the firewood has VALUE that you are BURNING.

IF you cut 5 cord of firewood a year and it cost you nothing but $20 in saw gas....most people view that as cheap heat that only cost them $20.

BUT, that 5 cord of firewood has a value (around here) of $1000.

You too the time and effort to produce $1000 worth of product just to burn for your heat.

I enjoy cutting firewood. And I grew up as a kid heating with nothing but firewood. So I know all the ins and outs. I still cut firewood. ANd in a way, you could say I still heat with firewood, but rather indirectly. I heat my home with $500 worth of electric via GEO. So I cut $500 worth of firewood, and trade it for cash, which I in turn trade for electric to heat my house.

I get it....some people just like wood heat and cannot be convinced otherwise. But those that do it to "save money", are you really? Whats the going rate of firewood in your area? And however much it takes to heat your home for the winter you cut and sold instead....would that be enough to buy your heat via other means? And if so, what are you really saving?

I dont like the mess in the house, the chimney maintenance, the bugs, etc. And back when I worked 12hr days and was away from home for 14hrs a day....the burden on the wife to fix the fire. Not to mention cutting firewood out of necessity is a whole lot less enjoyable than doing it on my terms just because I enjoy it.

 

[ovrszd]

MY woodburner is in the basement.
But what I mean by uneven is after fixing it, it gets HOT, and you dont want it to stay HOT so you choke it down, then by the time you fix it again, and it gets roaring again.....it gets HOT again.

Not to mention....you stoke the thing good at night so you still have good coals in the morning....Leaves you going to bed with a very very warm house only to wake up in the morning and its cold....(unless you fix in the middle of the night). So it takes awhile to warm the house back up....then its hot again....rinse and repeat...

So maybe "uneven" was the wrong term, rather temperature swings.

With my Geo, I never have more than 1.5°F fluctuation. With wood, its easy to see a 10°F several times a day.

As I've gotten older I've became a whiny *****. I want consistent temps, no smell, no mess, no physical labor!!!! I'm wayyyy too whiny to heat with wood. I spend less than 4% of my annual income on heat for my home and shop. I'm fine with that.

 

[deezler]

If air is going out your chimney, air is coming in your house from outside. No magic.

For sure. The point is, that a meager ~20 CFM chimney flow is not enough to substantially depressurize or deoxygenate even a tightly sealed house. In reality all exterior door frames do leak some air. Our walls and casement windows are air tight though!

My house has a continuous 300 CFM fresh air exchange going via HRV… but it’s flow/pressure balanced so all other forced air venting is still a valid concern.

 

[deserteagle71]

MY woodburner is in the basement.
But what I mean by uneven is after fixing it, it gets HOT, and you dont want it to stay HOT so you choke it down, then by the time you fix it again, and it gets roaring again.....it gets HOT again.

Not to mention....you stoke the thing good at night so you still have good coals in the morning....Leaves you going to bed with a very very warm house only to wake up in the morning and its cold....(unless you fix in the middle of the night). So it takes awhile to warm the house back up....then its hot again....rinse and repeat...

So maybe "uneven" was the wrong term, rather temperature swings.

With my Geo, I never have more than 1.5°F fluctuation. With wood, its easy to see a 10°F several times a day.

You can blame the uneveness on your wood burner. My Blaze King stove had a thermostat control on it; when I filled it with wood it was good for a minimum 12 hours of good even heat.

I no longer heat with wood - only because wood became too difficult to get around here. Most of the trees are on public land (administered by the Federal government) and getting a woodcutting permit from the Feds is darn near impossible. They'd much rather see the trees burn in wildfires than have people cutting trees for firewood. So for the past few years I've used a pellet stove. And despite it also having a thermostat, the heat is much more "uneven" than what I had with my wood stove. For whatever reason the pellet stove will heat up the house till the thermostat turns it off - then it stays off, and the stove and house get cold before the stove comes back on again. Whereas the wood stove was putting out constant, even heat for hours on end.

And since the pellet stoves became popular, the price for the pellets has soared. I'm currently paying $7+ a bag for pellets. We've been in a cold snap for the past 3 weeks - low temps around zero every morning, rising to about 35 for a short time in the afternoon. So I'm using 2 bags of pellets a day. A lot more expensive than burning wood...works out to $420+ a month!