I've been thinking about the amount of wood I use (7-8 full cord a year), and I had an realization. Why am I burning wood during the weekdays, when me and my wife both work full time and don't get to enjoy the heat? I'm thinking of keeping the thermostat at 66, and starting the stove Friday morning, (I work long days Monday-Thursday), and last loading it Sunday night. I have Friday-Sunday off. Right now, it seems I'm waking up early to load the stove and rush out the door, get home late and restart it to go to bed a couple hours later. Doesn't make any sense. If I knew it would be really cold for extended periods of time, of course I could still keep it going continuously. I guess my question is, do people that are gone from home 11-12 hours day, bother burning wood? Things would be different if I was retired or worked fewer hours those days. It would cut back on wood usage and I like the idea of only burning when someone is home.
My wife and I work odd shifts and long hours. We keep the fire burning to save on propane. There have been times that I let it go out and the furnace gets exercise and I’ll check the cat. If your wood burning is mainly ambiance then I could understand weekends only. I just want to save on propane cost, plus it makes me feel like a self sustaining mountain man with stacks of firewood everywhere and the fire glowing.
I know it doesn't apply to most people here but that was just one more reason why I got my owb 9 years ago.
As TD and OhioStihl mentioned, saving other fuel cost is a good reason if that cost is more than the cost of firewood (and only you can determine that). Starting about 3 years ago, I began transitioning away from all firewood to a mix of that and nat. gas, just because as I get older, I'm realizing I can't replace time. I finally have time to be in the shop now, so I'd rather do that than process a chit-ton of firewood every year. Been retired for a little over 13 years. Everyone's different, so give it a try and see how it works for you.
"as I get older, I'm realizing I can't replace time" ... oh boy, does that ever nail it fer me these days too, Dave... ... when firewoodin' is in sync with ma ole body, it's something I still enjoy. Always feels gooder just knowing I'm offsetting the oil man, no matter how much $ we save...
In doing some math, it seems typical oil usage is .8-1.7 gallons per hour while in use. I'm assuming it kicks on half the time in normal winter weather, Monday-Thursday. Also assuming an average of 1 gallon per hour as my house is on the smaller side of the average with 2 zones. So 96 hours/2=48 hours of run time, and 48 gallons of fuel per week x $2.50/gallon = $120/week. It is a lot of money. I've never burned just oil. Do these figures seem accurate? 250 gallon fill ups every 5-5.5 weeks using 4 days/week? Run times of the boiler may be more like 30%-40% which would reduce the amount of oil and the money.
Uh....yeah, burn more wood. My nat. gas cost for any "extra" is .8447 cents/ccf, and I burn anywhere from 3-5 ccf/day if not running the stove (that's also with the shop furnace running a bit). That's only slightly more than if I was paying for firewood at $165/cord, when I do all the math. The heat from firewood is much more comfortable though. Bingo. I'll be back at it once some snow melts.
I run my wood insert 24/7. It handles the majority of my heating for my 1700 sq ft open concept ranch here in southeastern Wisconsin. I keep the thermostat for the furnace at 67. It turns on typically one a day, in the am. I load the stove with wood at night, and in the am before I leave for work. My wife will add a couple splits during the day to keep it going. My natural gas usage has dropped to a little more than the minimum bill of~$10 a month because of my wood stove. Without the stove, I'd have heating bills every month of at least $100 probably double that in cold snaps in winter. I use ~5 cords a year. And I'm a little on the extreme side for that figure. Your rate is about what a big house with an old inefficient owb will use.
Its hard to compare different house styles. Your open 1 level house with an insert on that level is a lot different than a 2 level house with the stove in the basement. I'm essentially heating three floors, where you are heating one. I've also noticed most people who have commented have at least someone home during the day to load the stove at some point. I don't mean it negatively, I just want to make sure we're comparing apples to apples. Neither me nor my wife are home during the day. Its essentially a re-start every night with 2 hours of heat enjoyment then to bed on the highest level which receives the least heat.
sirbuildalot I guess I can help out here, I have HHO For a back up heat and hot water, My Buderus boiler is very efficient, because of my house design my woodstove is on the second floor of a split level 40 feet away and 7 feet above water lines to the kitchen. Therefore the basement zone to my house is set to 50* And those pipes of never froze. My boiler, I just had it filled yesterday, used 150 gallons for heat and hot water from August 29 to January 25 and I live with women’s so a big% of that is hot water.. in general I burn 150 gallon of HHO 6 months winter and 100 gallons in summer months. Now onto wood stoves, if you can’t keep a fire going in your store 12 hours without a match you’re really need a different stove. may I suggest a day trip to Lebanon NH I heat 4 floors above stove Most have over 16 foot vaulted ceiling’s but my house style is not comparable to anything normal
As our house has a wall of windows that face south, we would not keep the stove going when we were both working. We'd lower the thermostat to 60, when we'd leave in the morning. First task when getting home, was to light the stove. Oftentimes, the house temp was above 60, when we got home. So, the oil furnace had not kicked on. Cloudy days, obviously different. We used to go through much more kindling, also obvious.
That's what this website claims, How Much Heating Oil Will You Use This Winter? - Santa Energy Corporation and that might be for the McMansions in Norwalk Ct. but in average weather for an average home the average I've always read was more like 5-6 gallons a day. The average for the Winter heating season, not all year. For a smaller house you're probably closer to 2-3 gallons a day except on the coldest of days, depending on how far north you are. If you have an average burner with a 1.0 gallon/hour nozzle/pump and it runs for 15-20 minutes to bring the house temp back up to satisfy the thermostat/heat loss rate, in warmer weather that will be .3 gallons about every 4 hours and maybe every hour on really cold days. So between 1.8 and 7.2 gallons a day. Depending on the weather and how fast your house bleeds off heat to the outdoors.
I’ve used nothing but wood heat since 2014. I work full time as a physician so my hours are irregular and there are times when I have one fire a day. But my house is super insulted with high thermal mass and I can keep enough coals for a re light after 24 hours if I set things up right. So it works for me. I’ve never thought about burning fossil fuel to save wood (more like the opposite) but life’s too short to be doing things you don’t want to do. If you are happy running the central heat and supplementing with wood when you feel like it, go for it!
This makes me feel a lot better about my plan. 5 gallons a day is a lot better than the 12 gallons I was thinking of. Using 20 gallons in 4 days is $50/week at $2.50/gallon. In comparison every time I load the stove fully, its around 5 cubic feet of wood. Once in the am and once in the pm before bed, plus a few sticks when i get home. That means in those same 4 days I'm saving about a third of a cord of wood. Every three weeks is an extra cord I didn't burn through while no one was home. It may sound stupid to some, but it makes sense to me. If I can reduce the wood I use down to 4 cords a year instead of 8, by not burning for 12 weeks each winter, I can get on a 5 year plan pretty quickly. All it would take is not burning Monday-Thursday for 6 weeks in October-November, and 6 weeks in March-April.
This is precisely my plan once the T5 is in. The 96%, variable speed furnace running on natural gas will be set to run accordingly.
Because of the amount of wood you are consuming, switching to another source sounds really expensive. And my guess also is that the way you are trying to heat with your wood stove is working against you. Probably the walls in the basement are soaking up way too much heat rather than heating the home. This is common. As for your question, although we are now both retired, in the past we've been in your type of situation but it did not cause any problems for us. Perhaps it is because both my wife and I grew up in a home heated with wood and we really did not know a different way so just did it. Of course we did try right after getting married to heat with oil but did not like the house always feeling cold. Also as Canadian border VT stated, perhaps you need a different stove that can throw heat for a longer period of time. Indeed different stoves can make a tremendous difference. Just ask that fellow about it! Also in our case, where we live now we used to battle the elements and were cold in winter. Then we got a good stove and wow! It cut our needs in half or more and we were also able to keep the house warm no matter the outdoor temperature (although the coldest we've had was only -26 degrees). In short, do you heat with wood to save some dollars and keep warm? What can you do to increase the efficiency of what you have? Do you really want to spend dollars heating the home?
I run my woodstove mostly 24/7. We have an old 1840 stone farmhouse about 1650 sq. ft. Has old windows upstairs and at places there's a slight gap between flooring and stone wall on main floor. So cold air comes up from basement. (Issues hopefully be fixed this spring). We also have oil heat. Bought house in mid december 2017 and didnt move in until mid march 2018. I would go there to work on it and move in. From that december until march we got oil 4 times @ $500 a fill And that was keeping thermostat around 65 - 70*. Made me sick. With stove it's around 72-75* (thermostat is across room from stove). Temp. obviously goes down during day since the air is shut down, but it keeps room warm enough and has coal bed for easy start up. I do same at night before bed. I couldn't imagine how much the furnace would have to run to keep room above 72*. I don't have my furnace set to come on right now. And only ran it shortly each month just to make sure it works. It's worth the effort for me. When I do run the furnace to test it I realize how much I love the heat from burning wood. It's totally different. I'll use about 4 -5 cords, planning on burning until end of March. Let me add that no one is home during the day. I leave before 8 and get home around 5. My wife will occasionally get the stove going, but she gets home just a short time before me. If it's really cold out, I'll ask my son to put some splits in after school.
If the price of oil keeps dropping like it has for the last week burning a little oil might not be so painful. We dropped from about $2.50/gal to about $2.20 today and there's usually a couple days lag from a crude drop to retail HHO. We might be at $2.10 by the end of the week. I figure my hardwood is worth current market price of about $250/cord which is about $2.10 HHO equivalent. So if the price drops much more I figure I have to look at the two at replacement cost(s). It doesn't take a whole lot geopolitically to drive the price of HHO back up above $3/gallon so I'd rather be sitting on a good supply of hardwood to hedge that possibility. We're not living paycheck to paycheck so hedging is a bit easier to do.
