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

[ovrszd]

One thing I've learned.

It doesn't matter what you heat a poorly built building with.

It doesn't matter what you heat a well built building with.

Money spent on insulation and building quality can offset any heat type.

 

[5030]

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.

I will say that if rice coal was readily available here and if my free corn supply somehow dried up, I'd have a Keystoker in a minute. Years ago when we lived east of Cleveland, Ohio, the house we owned had a complete Iron Fireman hot air coal furnace in the basement minus the shaker grates with a gas burner in their place. I found the grates, took out the gas burner and heated with chunk coal the time we owned it. I like coal heat and don't mind the clinkers or the ash removal. No coal available here but if it was, like I said, I'd have a Keystoker in a minute.

 

[5030]

One thing about a biomass stove and that is, no getting up at midnight to fill it. Even wide open, it will run a12 hours on a full hopper. I keep my pellets (which I buy as full skids, 50, 40 pound bags, shrink wrapped) and my corn which is either in 50 pound bags or sealed supersacks in the barn and I'll mix up (corn and pellets) in 4 large plastic refuse cans with lids on a skid and I set that up on the back deck by the door with one of my front end loaders so getting fuel is about 10 steps from the inside stove and I keep another plastic refuse can full of mix in the shop for that one which is usually idling along on low most of the time. Always on guard for vermin (mice love corn), but my 3 bucket traps baited with Skippy handle that chore.

Energy choices are kind of limited out this way as it's mostly crop land so cleared of trees to cut for firewood anyway.

I'd have Geothermal myself (one of my good friends has it) but he's 15 years younger than my wife and I. The ROI on Geothermal isn't there for us at 72 years old. His total electric bill averages 70 bucks a month year around for ac and heat.

Electricity isn't cheap here and going up every month is seems like and I suspect propane will follow suit unless we get a change in government. Remember, electricity still mostly comes from coal and NG pants and some Nuclear and propane comes from oil (in the cracker).

Pellets are pretty much the same cost as last year when you buy in full skids and like I said, my corn is free so it's a pretty good deal for us and I do like the new Bryant Plus 95 condensing furnace, so quiet you cannot hear it run.

I believe, depending on where you live and the availability of various types of energy (electric, NG, propane, wood or biomass, determines what is most economical to use.

Being retired (both of us), we have to watch our pennies more closely than before,. besides, I'm cheap.....

 

[Oaktree]

One thing about a biomass stove and that is, no getting up at midnight to fill it. Even wide open, it will run a12 hours on a full hopper.

I have a woodstove, and I've never needed to get up at midnight to fill it. Unless it's WELL below zero the Harmon I have will keep the house warm 8-10 hours. If I ran it wide open, the house would be a sauna.

 

[Rustyiron]

100% wood. That is after it's cold enough to heat the shop and fire up the gasification wood boiler for the in slab radiant (shop and house) . The mini splits do the "shoulder" seasons before and after the real cold, usually the 2nd week of December through March.
The wood boiler provides all the domestic hot water and I'll tell you there's something a little different (satisfying) using "home made" hot water.

 

[JasperFrank]

The hydronic, electric boiler, radiant floor heating system that I designed, ended up not really working. Very expensive and complicated to maintain. And I most likely, designed it wrong. So we have three, free standing, corded, quartz heaters that are used as a back up to the wood stove. Which makes the house comfortable. Most months in the fall, summer and spring we average 80 dollars a month in electrical usage. The winters, using the floor heating, went to between $180 and $210 a month. Then went back down to $110 to $120, using the plug in quartz heaters and every other day, the wood stove.

 

[Larry Caldwell]

I have a woodstove, and I've never needed to get up at midnight to fill it. Unless it's WELL below zero the Harmon I have will keep the house warm 8-10 hours. If I ran it wide open, the house would be a sauna.

I could afford the power bill or a few pallets of pellets, but for me the advantage of wood heat is that it's my own private energy utility. When things go to crap and the power goes out, the comfort level of my house doesn't change. I'll run a generator for a few hours after a couple days, but mostly it is a gentle silence. I even have a porcelain cowboy coffee pot and an antique coffee grinder, so can make gourmet coffee right on top of the stove. A while back I fed hot meals to a couple neighbors with all-electric homes. I have trivets to get pots off of the stove surface,

If I should have a lot of people to feed, I have a fire pit and a big Dutch oven, plus a BBQ smoker, all fired with my own wood.

 

[dodge man]

One thing bad about geothermal, our house is all electric, is a lot of our electric bill goes for hot water. We have a desuperheater(sp?) so we do get some hot water from the geo but that’s only significant when it gets really cold out. I don’t know exact numbers but our electric bill is probably around $200 per month.

 

[mapper]

Heat pump with propane for outdoor temperature less than 35 degrees. Shop is a wood stove, go through about 1/2 - 3/4 cord per year. This year I have vowed to reduce my scrap wood bins to free up space in the shop, you know those bits and pieces that have to be good for something.....
Slow start to fall heating season this year, October and daytime temps are still in the eighties, haven't seen significant rain since June either.

 

[Yander]

We use Propane only. I would love to use wood heat but my wife is a bit **** about smoke and dust and thinks our house would be both smelly and dusty. I grew up with it and love wood heat. I even like the smell of the wood smoke.

I do have interest in the Corn stove @5030 mentioned and looked at one on Ebay. Have to do some more looking into it, if it would affect my insurance etc. I may if nothing else, get one for the garage and sunroom. They are connected and I could heat them both with it for when I'm trying to grow veggies in the sunroom in the winter.

We let our house get down to prob. 63 before kicking on the furnace. Except when grandkids stay with us, we kick it on at 65 then. We keep our house at 65 - 68 in the winter and 71 in the summer, except around 7pm in the summer we kick the temp down to 69 because we both sleep better in a cooler room. Lot's of research to prove that we sleep better in a cool room too.

 

[mike0000]

If we’re home, it’s wood during the day. We have a heat pump and a high efficiency propane furnace for when the fireplace insert isn’t going. I’m retired so mostly it’s wood, from our property that I cut/split. We have a buried 500 gallon propane tank that we own. I have it filled each year on the “summer fill program” it’s usually down to 15-20% at fill time. We typically go through about 300 gallons (water heater is propane too). Electricity is getting high around here, I’m so glad I opted for propane and wood heating when we built (Natural gas isn’t available). I try to keep about a year ahead on firewood.

Mike

 

[Popgadget]

House is open loop geothermal heat pump, I’m on the 3rd one since 1983. Shop has 100k propane furnace with 16 SEER 3-1/2 ton air to air heat pump coil on top of it. Added a 21 SEER 24k mini split on second floor this year.
The furnace only ran for defrost cycles and days below 15 degrees. Used about 150 gallons of propane a year for heat and standby generator. I suspect that the mini split will do the majority of the work going forward.

 

[repete]

I have a pellet stove in our finished basement that I run when it is under 40 degrees out or so. I have two forced air propane furnaces, one downstairs and one upstairs. 5400 SF (2700 on each level) the upstairs runs maybe 45 minutes a day when it is 30 degrees outside. R-21 walls and R-50 attic. Excellent sealing against air infiltration into the attic space.

For my 2000 SF shop I use a forced air high efficiency propane furnace. I also have a greenhouse on the south side of the shop. It collects a lot of heat. I move the warm air mechanically from the greenhouse to the shop by the following system. The system uses a comparator pressure switch to control a damper and fan. The comparator switch is connected to a 10' ABS pipe in both the shop and the greenhouse (equal air volume) that is sealed and connected to the switch. When the air is warmer in the greenhouse that the shop, the resultant pressure increase on the greenhouse side of the comparator closes a switch that causes the damper to open and the fan to start. When the temperatures are equal in the pipes, the comparator switch contacts open and the system shuts off. I hope this makes sense....

 

[5030]

We use Propane only. I would love to use wood heat but my wife is a bit **** about smoke and dust and thinks our house would be both smelly and dusty. I grew up with it and love wood heat. I even like the smell of the wood smoke.

I do have interest in the Corn stove @5030 mentioned and looked at one on Ebay. Have to do some more looking into it, if it would affect my insurance etc. I may if nothing else, get one for the garage and sunroom. They are connected and I could heat them both with it for when I'm trying to grow veggies in the sunroom in the winter.

We let our house get down to prob. 63 before kicking on the furnace. Except when grandkids stay with us, we kick it on at 65 then. We keep our house at 65 - 68 in the winter and 71 in the summer, except around 7pm in the summer we kick the temp down to 69 because we both sleep better in a cooler room. Lot's of research to prove that we sleep better in a cool room too.

Only a couple 'corn capable' stoves on the market today. I believe Harman sells one and the USSC 6039-41 Hearth Focus models are all corn capable. In fact the USSC's can combust any bio mass fuel including pelletized wheat straw and pelletized switch grass.

Had ours running last night basically idling and shut it off this morning because it was 74 in the house, way too warm for us. We like it around 68 to 70.

Never any smoke smell inside, all gets vented outside and the tiny amount of smoke it makes on startup goes outside as well and both of ours get their combustion air from outside as well so no heated air is used for combustion.

Only downside is, you do have to clean them inside, they do make 'ash' Not like ashes from a conventional wood fire however. More like a really fine ash. They both are really efficient at consuming all the fuel too.

Presently, I'm burning straight pellets but as the colder temps come on, I'll start mixing pellets and corn together as corn burns hotter than pellets.

I'd just a soon not run the propane furnace at all. Propane is expensive and getting more expensive as the economy tanks.

The 6039-41's have a large ash pan so it only requires emptying maybe every 2 weeks. Not sure about the Harman as I don't own one.

 

[5030]

My issue with heating with wood is, not everyone has access to a woodlot to cut wood in the first place and reading along on other forums like 'Firewood Hoarders' or 'Hearth.com', people buy their saw logs or buy already cut and split firewood to burn which in my view defeats the purpose of cheap heat. If you do have access to a woodlot for wood, you still have to cut it, drag it out of the woodlot, split it stack it and let it season. Have a good friend neat Bangor Maine that heats his home and hot water entirely with wood and he spends his entire summer and fall cutting, splitting and stacking wood and he's buying saw logs as well. At my age (72) I don't want to be doing that. He's basically a slave to his wood boiler and he says he enjoys it. me, I can find other way more enjoyable things to do...lol

I'm very lucky in that I have access to free corn,. not something everyone has, in fact few have. Much easier to buy a couple skids of pellets and haul the corn down the road with one of my tractors and keep it all in the barn and mix up fuel in plastic refuse cans placed on the deck and keep the stove chugging along.

Our hot water heater is electric and is on a separate meter from everything else and at a reduced rate (something the utility we have don't offer anymore) so hot water isn't all that expensive. If they decided to pull the meter and end the discount, I'd switch to a high efficiency propane fired water heater but so far that hasn't occurred and like I said previously, Geothermal isn't in the cards for us, the ROI isn't there at our age.

 

[5030]

Utility rates seem to be climbing by the month so it's getting incrementally more expensive to use utilities to heat and cool with and I suspect, especially in the New England states, lots of homeowners will be switching or at least augmenting their oil fired furnaces with biomass stoves. With heating oil around 6 bucks a gallon (and climbing), it's not a cheap date by a long shot and processed wood pellets have gone up a bit in price, but not excessive, so far.

 

[Rustyiron]

I had a friend about 20+ years ago that was a HVAC contractor but also sold the corn stoves. I thought it was a great idea. I've moved away and occasionally wonder about corn stoves. Iirc it was basically what today's "pellet" stoves are but I don't think they were around yet, at least in my travels.
I used to buy shelled corn pretty cheap from the Southern States Co Op to feed the deer in the dead of winter when we actually had snow cover (mid Atlantic region) . I'm thinking that between the ethanol business and the high commodity prices that have been created by Washington, it might not be so much of a savings today, at least at the retail level.
5030 you have a great connection. Why do you mix with pellets? Better burn?

 

[ovrszd]

It's hard to define cost without clarity as to the structure being heated, the amount of "fuel" being used and the cost per unit of that fuel.

 

[Oaktree]

My issue with heating with wood is, not everyone has access to a woodlot to cut wood in the first place and reading along on other forums like 'Firewood Hoarders' or 'Hearth.com', people buy their saw logs or buy already cut and split firewood to burn which in my view defeats the purpose of cheap heat. If you do have access to a woodlot for wood, you still have to cut it, drag it out of the woodlot, split it stack it and let it season.

Before I bought this house I got most of my firewood from my own land. I don't here because (1) Not a lot of easily accessible hardwood at this place and (2) gettin' too old for felling trees, etc. I buy log length from a guy down the road, then cut & split myself. The loads are generally 10-11 cords, and depending on the severity of the winter can get almost 3 years out of a load. I'll supplement it with stuff I cut on the property (dead trees, blowdowns, etc). I'm sure there'll come a point where I won't be able/interested in doing that anymore, but that time hasn't come yet. I'm also 72.
Agreed that buying it cut and split doesn't save much money, but it's still nice to have a source of heat that's not dependent on electricity.

You're the only person I know of that burns corn...can't beat the price! Nothing like that here.

 

[jyoutz]

Home is natural gas; shop is wood stove.I also gave a wood pellet stove in the basement.