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!

 

[BoylermanCT]

I just read this & laughed... (ok cried)... so it always gets me how in Connecticut (the 3rd smallest State) their can be such a difference from town to town (only mile apart) for fuel, whether it be gas, diesel, heating oil etc...

I just checked prices on HHO this evening in our area (as we need to get a delivery this week.. ) & it is $5.40 per gal for under 150 gals & $5.20 per gal for 150+... From where BoylermanCT is located to where we are is only around 40 mile difference.

We heat with both wood & oil but unfortunately because we are not home for a good part of the time we need to rely on the oil furnace that is running a a radiant floor system...

Prices are going down. I was just quoted $4.44 at Price Rite Oil. Try www.cashheatingoil.com and put in your zip code to see if you can get a good price.

 

[deezler]

The other thing when it comes to wood 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.

Haha, total straw man there. For some of us anyway.

I dont run a firewood production/delivery business. I dont have a means for sales or distribution. And i sure as heck don’t want to deal with a bunch of flaky, whiny customers. Kudos to anyone who manages that.

My 1650 sq ft house only requires 8-12 face cords per Michigan winter…. That’s not a business. Heck it’s barely a hobby.

The key is to design your home as a low energy system, not just a nice looking floor plan that you piece components into (not directed at anyone). Super insulated & sealed, zero thermal-bridging walls, engineered passive solar design and orientation, earth-sheltered/bermed, etc.

Our firewood burning invites no bugs or appreciable mess inside (wood stays outside in screen porch 10 feet from the stove). No smell either (no draft issues). Nice even heat from our heavy stove full of firebrick, surrounded by 3 half-walls of paver bricks. A couple ceilings run on low to even out the house. We dont worry about blasting it overnight unless its in the single digits outside; probably peak at ~76f in the great room in the overnight and it drops to 70-72 by morning most days. If its sunny, no fire again until evening.

10 minutes of daily effort in winter, 30-40 hours of hard labor every spring or fall to cut and split. In our case it was an extremely deliberate house-planning decision, and kind of an experiment - but I wouldn’t trade it for any other climate or setup in the world. Well, unless i was a multimillionaire maybe, lol.

Sorry that turned into a rant. I just want to share how well this dream of ours worked out, because its definitely good for all of us, if we can each be more energy independent and stop supporting highly subsidized but also grossly profitable energy companies. Our houses shouldn’t use nearly so much energy!

 

[LD1]

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.

Yea I don't like dealing with wood burning either so yes I'm a whiney ***** too....

But honestly for me, no other heat source is cheaper per month than geo period. So it just made sense

 

[LD1]

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.

Not sure I'd want a 300cfm fresh air exchange intentionally.

My house is 1250 sq ft with a full basement. So 16' total height. 20,000 cu ft.

At 300cfm....I'd replace ALL the conditioned air in my house with fresh 15° outside air once every 66 minutes. Seems kinda counter productive to efficiency. Heat the entire volume of air in the house once every hour just to pump it outside and do it again.

Furthermore, the btu is roughly 50 cu ft of air 1° per hour.

So if it's 20° outside and 70° in your house....and you pump 18,000 cu ft outside per hour.....that's 18,000 btu per hour pumping outside.

So just get a 18000btu furnace and install it outside and let it run continuously heating the outdoors

 

[LD1]

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!

No ductwork is part of the unevenness of the heating with my wood burner. It's a combistioneer or knock off. It does have a bimetallic damper. But it's still hard to get 1.5° consistency like my geo.

Sure, I could spend $2000+ on a wood burner that was better, $2500 to hook ductwork to it, and another $2500 on AC.....but why. Geo was $7k

 

[CalG]

To

Not sure I'd want a 300cfm fresh air exchange intentionally.

My house is 1250 sq ft with a full basement. So 16' total height. 20,000 cu ft.

At 300cfm....I'd replace ALL the conditioned air in my house with fresh 15° outside air once every 66 minutes. Seems kinda counter productive to efficiency. Heat the entire volume of air in the house once every hour just to pump it outside and do it again.

Furthermore, the btu is roughly 50 cu ft of air 1° per hour.

So if it's 20° outside and 70° in your house....and you pump 18,000 cu ft outside per hour.....that's 18,000 btu per hour pumping outside.

So just get a 18000btu furnace and install it outside and let it run continuously heating the outdoors

me, heated air is wasted heat.

RADIANT heat is the trick!

 

[LD1]

Haha, total straw man there. For some of us anyway.

I dont run a firewood production/delivery business. I dont have a means for sales or distribution. And i sure as heck don’t want to deal with a bunch of flaky, whiny customers. Kudos to anyone who manages that.

My 1650 sq ft house only requires 8-12 face cords per Michigan winter…. That’s not a business. Heck it’s barely a hobby.

The key is to design your home as a low energy system, not just a nice looking floor plan that you piece components into (not directed at anyone). Super insulated & sealed, zero thermal-bridging walls, engineered passive solar design and orientation, earth-sheltered/bermed, etc.

Our firewood burning invites no bugs or appreciable mess inside (wood stays outside in screen porch 10 feet from the stove). No smell either (no draft issues). Nice even heat from our heavy stove full of firebrick, surrounded by 3 half-walls of paver bricks. A couple ceilings run on low to even out the house. We dont worry about blasting it overnight unless its in the single digits outside; probably peak at ~76f in the great room in the overnight and it drops to 70-72 by morning most days. If its sunny, no fire again until evening.

10 minutes of daily effort in winter, 30-40 hours of hard labor every spring or fall to cut and split. In our case it was an extremely deliberate house-planning decision, and kind of an experiment - but I wouldn’t trade it for any other climate or setup in the world. Well, unless i was a multimillionaire maybe, lol.

Sorry that turned into a rant. I just want to share how well this dream of ours worked out, because its definitely good for all of us, if we can each be more energy independent and stop supporting highly subsidized but also grossly profitable energy companies. Our houses shouldn’t use nearly so much energy!

I'm glad you are happy with your setup. That's all each of us can hope for.

My comment may or may not have been directed at you. So it may or may not apply to you.

All I am saying is you have to factor the VALUE of the wood you are burning to realize any savings. Compare that VALUE to alternative means.

Don't know what 8-12 face cords bring in your area.

Selling firewood is no bid deal. Maybe other areas are different? I have had no complaints. Probably because I don't treat it as a business. And years of burning firewood....I know what firewood is. Not some joe blow with a pickup and craftsman saw doing tree trimming and cleanups and trying to sell pickup loads of trash wood.

But most people that cut firewood and burn, have the means to haul and deliver.

So to me.....hauling a cord of wood and offloading into my basement once every 6 weeks or hauling it to someone else's place and offloading once every 6 weeks....no big deal.done it for years.

And if I don't feel like cutting wood, I don't. Those that rely on heat can't say that.

I'm not trying to change anyone's mind or try to talk them into selling firewood. I just don't agree with the argument that "some" who burn, claim they save hundreds of dollars a month....because in reality, they are turning hundreds of dollars worth of wood into worthless smoke every month and the only thing left is ashes.

 

[ovrszd]

To

me, heated air is wasted heat.

RADIANT heat is the trick!

Yep. We love our floor heat.

 

[deezler]

Not sure I'd want a 300cfm fresh air exchange intentionally.

My house is 1250 sq ft with a full basement. So 16' total height. 20,000 cu ft.

At 300cfm....I'd replace ALL the conditioned air in my house with fresh 15° outside air once every 66 minutes.

Sorry, i had my specs wrong. My HRV can only do 160cfm on high, but we run on low or medium mostly. Like 80 watts power draw for 100 cfm, i think.

Sounds like you maybe aren’t fully familiar with erv/HRV technology. An air-to-air heat exchanger with super high surface area exchanges heat between the inward and outbound air flows. So you get close to half of the temperature difference back. Nonetheless, its a very real trade off of exchanging heated inside air for fresh air, in the name of improving indoor air quality. Highly, highly recommended for all new home builds.

 

[fishheadbob]

Geothermal. Initial cost $24,000, after tax rebates went down to $12,000. For the 40 years before geothermal we burned about 7 cords a year from our woods, and went through about 100 to 150 gallons of oil backup. Also went $40 per month for propane for hot water (propane company was murdering me). Electricity fluctuates but about 13 1/2 cents to 14 1/2 per kwh. Electricity is up about $960 per year. For the $960 we get a year round 72 degrees including central air and hot water.

I got too old to screw around with that much wood. I've lost my chiropractors phone number as I don't injure my back anymore, and my 200 year old drafty house is cool in summer, warm in winter. It isn't apples to apples because of the air but we figure the payback was around 4 years opposed to oil. We still burn about maybe 2 face cords out of old habits and because it's a nice heat, especially when I'm not doing it as a part time job.