I bought an OWB 3 years ago because I was sick and tired of paying $2000 a year on LP, after all, I have access to a lot of firewood. I bought my house 10 years ago that had a Defiant Encore wood stove and have loved it ever since and fully appreciate the heat both provide....But, every time I spend an entire weekend cutting & splitting wood I get to thinking.... OWB (Hawken Energy) - $14,000 (pro-rated 10 years) Cost of concrete pad /wood shed - $1500 Wood splitter $2000 New Stihl 271 - $400 (several years ago) Used Stihl 270 - $250 New Stihl 461 -$1000 Chains / gas / fuel mix/ bar oil per year -$300 Warped doors / new rope gaskets in Defiate Encore - $500 New catalytic converter for wood stove - $ 100 per year pro-rated per year Miscellaneous expenses - truck fuel / hydraulic oil / etc. related to firewood - $150 Cash spent per year on wood burning - about $2000+ depending on life of OWB, saw maintamence, fuel prices, chain / oil prices, etc. This is all accounting for $0 spent on the price of my labor hours (countless). I still work 60 hours a week at my normal job. So, it begs the question ----is it worth it? Don't get me wrong, i love cutting wood. I love the idea of going inside after a long day of being in the cold and stoking a fire in the wood stove, I love the idea of having the girl at the gas company say we haven't ordered in over a year and watching the needle on the tank move only about 10% a year. I love a fire when I watch the snow come down. But, what I don't love is the idea that my time devoted to firewood equates to about to minus $27.33 cents an hour.
That's a tough one. You are getting heat, much the same as you would with a furnace. Only good things there are that you are not using dino, and you are keeping physically fit. Wood heat from an inside stove is another thing. It is a dry, uneven heat, that you work on constantly to keep going, you like the looks of it, you like sitting by it, you enjoy feeding it and cleaning it like it was a dependent. It is a social thing. Furnace heat, well, it is heat. That's about all I can say about it.
Gym membership + the independence from oil/electric monopolies + Uncle Sam not taking a cut with the taxes on fuel + the pride of knowing how and doing so to keep loved ones warm + price of hobbies/entertainment + equipment that is yours that has potential to be a secondary source of income or the almighty forbid resale value of the equipment + you get to be a FHC member. Add it all up and you are a rich man....priceless!
If the wood falls on your property it needs cleaned up. You might as well use it. You also haven't put a figure on being self sufficient. That's worth real $
I agree, but I'm fit enough and would dare anyone to try to follow me around for a week. As far as taxes go, what about taxes on the rest of the things we buy? Don't get me wrong, I love cutting wood, but let's face it, cutting wood and burning wood to save money is like deer hunting to save money on the cost of meat. Add up the real costs and it's pretty apperant...
I look at it as a lifestyle. I provide a service doing tree removals, I recycle the wood, I self-sustain the warmth of my family, and I love doing it.... So I never really questioned it.
Being some what self sufficient? PRICELESS. I am not understanding the problem here. My wife and I have 7000 square feet of garden that we tend and feed ourselves from. Could we just say screw it and buy the tainted crap at the store? Sure we could but it wouldn't be satisfactory to our tastes and we would have to work harder at our day to day jobs to afford the food that we normally grow for ourselves. But then thats just us. If you dont like the path in life you are on than it is up to you to change it. Just my 2 cents beg my pard.
I try to eliminate taxes as much as possible. I barter, trade, make and do as much as possible out away from Unkle as I can. Can't remember the last beef or pork I bought at the store. Jams, salsa, bread, eggs ect can't remember them either. Pimped myself to a farmer and the agreed wage is paid in pickup fuel. Make stuff to sell and buy a lot on flea markets cuz our state has a flea market tax exemption. Sorry here I go getting radical bitter clinger anti preachy. Just spouting my theory of not every single thing is equatable to the almighty and evil dollar. I will quit now. Buy the way did you see how nice the weather is. Lets go camping and fishing. Good game last night.
If I kept my thermostat at the temperature that I keep my house heated with wood in the winter it would cost me a lot more, I am much more comfortable in my house in the winter and I like processing and burning the wood. On top of that my expenditures are nowhere near what sawdog quoted, very little maintenance on my tube stove that I bought used for, 450 bucks, $30 door gasket that's it.
My stove cost me $650 new in 1983, my saw I bought used for $150 close to 12 years back, and my splitter (recent addition) cost me $1399 a few years back. Total cost I've spent on wood since 1982, zero. Gas, oil, and chains are insignificant peanuts. We also grow our own food and put up what we can for the winter. $75 plus/minus for seeds etc. Independence and connection to our ancestors way of life, priceless. I have more fun working (playing) with my wood than almost anything else. I live by the seasons, if I didn't burn wood when the weather turns cold in the fall, why, I'd be like a duck that didn't fly south as nature intended. I would be sitting around thinking, I am supposed to be doing something, and I'm not. I will burn wood till my last dying breath, because if I have to stop, I will cease to exist spiritually and emotionally. Those are my thoughts, of course I'm not like everyone else, and I'm not normal..........I am addicted to wood.
We're at the very end of the line on the electric grid. The longest we've ever been down was 4 days. But guess who was toasty warm for those 4 days?
My math comes out diff rent. I got about $600 in saws, $800 in stoves, $900 in splitter. About $160 in chains, another $100 in ppe (not counting gifts I've received). $1k in chimney. $3760. Those I am done with for the most part, and we are going into year 5. That's $752 a year and dropping each year, and also not something I am further investing in on a regular basis. Chainsaw and splitter gas-- I go through two gallons of chainsaw gas, and one bottle of 2 cycle oil and less than one jug of bar oil. $17.50. I usually do 5-10 gallons of gas and a quart of oil in the splitter- $28. Truck gas in the biggest annual expense-- about $100 four five trips to a bigger city. That's less than $150 in fuels. So this year it costs $900 a year to heat my home with wood. It falls by about $100 next year and the one after that unless I buy new equipment. There might be a new saw in my future, after all. Now the big question: what does it cost to heat this place with natural gas? About $2000 on the average year to keep the house at a mere 60 degrees. This year I am coming out $1100 ahead, and only investing $150 because I have my supplies bought and paid for. Also, we keep it much warmer than 60. Do people with furnaces figure the cost of the furnace when they calculate their heating costs? Also, keep in mind that I would have found something else to spend money on if I didn't buy the stove, saws, etc. Things that didn't end up saving me money.
Yeah the math really starts to not make sense once you start laying out 10-15 Gs on a wood gobbler...my dad did it, but I'm way too cheap. For me, in the interest of keeping my math on the positive side, all of my equipment has been purchased on the cheap, just whenever I can find a deal on a used one. Well, except for my black Friday splitter and a $400 stove...those were bought new because they were priced less than what many want for used. For me it all makes sense financially, but it is a huge time suck. I could buy $15 per bundle slab wood and cut the time suck down to size significantly, but I just can't seem to pass up "free" wood that would likely go to waste otherwise. I guess in the end it comes down to this, 1. I like not relying on the oil man and also the self reliance aspect of it all. No freezing when the power goes out here! 2. I enjoy the whole process (usually) and it is good exercise. 3. I like coming home to a truly "warm" house at the end of the day...and it wasn't that way when I used oil heat
Oh, and unlike people that heat with oil or gas, if we ever decided to stop heating with wood, we could get some ( a lot?) of our money back by selling our assets (stove, saws, splitter, trailer, etc) at least I think most of us could...I know some people are just hard on equipment, completely wear stuff out.
And my wife is home keeping the stove going 24/7 as needed. She prepares healthy home cooked meals based upon the food she grows abundantly. We are fortunate that she is able to be there and do that. Electricity is convienent and I don't want to live without it. But we can, for however long it is out. Not many can say that. The spirit of America is strong here, and that is not a bad thing.
I've said it many times, some choices just come down to what you want and what you enjoy or what makes you comfortable. I'm a pyromaniac and a wood hoarder tried and true. I do burn a little natural gas along with the insert and yes I have a perfect set up with hot water heat to use an OWB but I prefer not to cut that much wood to feed it and don't want to have to go outside on those cold February mornings to feed the stove when I can come down to the nice warm stove room and put another load in. I also pay for a little natural gas (not much) to heat my pool if I need to and I use some electric to run the air conditioner when I'm hot.
