Even if you figure in just the cost, I can buy 6 cords of wood for $1500, cut, split and delivered. That's half the price of the same BTU value of oil. I can also get a full lot truck of tree-length wood for about a grand, roughly 7-8 cords. A few weekends of work and it's all cut, split and in stacks. People who burn wood aren't usually just doing it for economy, they're willing to invest time and labor in it because it's worth it. Or in the case of certified crazy people like us wood hoarders, they LIKE it!
Even though we bought 2 cord of KD last year we saved about 1200 vs burning oil. At that rate the stove will be paid for by the coming spring. I can’t imagine how much more oil I’d have to burn to gain the extra 8-10 degrees we maintain all winter with wood. I bought another 2 cord this year but next year I’ll have enough of my own and the savings will accelerate. The less fossil fuels I have on my property the happier I’ll be. I want to reduce my carbon footprint as much as possible, but even more important to me is that independent feeling I get from producing my own heat.
The other big factor that has been mentioned is the difference in temperature. The study showed 38 MBTU per tank of oil, but it didn't mentioned any temps. To have a fair comparison you should have your thermostat set to what it would be for the wood. 68 degrees F with oil vs lets say 74 degrees F with wood makes the difference even larger.
Are there any links to the data of this "study" ? They appear to be using 38MBTU per 275 gallon tank. It would be nice to examine how they arrive at that figure. If you round up 138,600 BTU per gallon to 139,000 BTU to make the math easier on the back of a napkin, and then multiply that by 250 gallons, you most commonly arrive at a 34,750,000 number. I use 250 gallons for a tank because that's pretty much all you can put in a 275 gallon tank legally. Even if you were to ignore the whistle stop on a tank and over fill it, with most drains not exactly on the bottom of the tank, you couldn't get that all back out unless you start lifting the tank like a glass of wine. It would be interesting to see what they used for wood stove, furnace and boiler efficiencies to arrive at BTU net equivalencies.
Study was probably the wrong word to use. This is the link i researched for the #2 heating oil. Energy Content in Some Common Energy Sources I multiplied the 139,600 BTU per gallon x 275 to get the 38 million figure. I then compared to the BTU chart for various wood species I linked earlier in this thread. Good point about the tanks.
One reason, among the many listed is that she reallly likes to watch me make firewood. Always beneficial for me
WOW..... I just looked back at the original link and they are factoring 20% moisture content for wood which is a hair high, but about right, and get this......85 cu. ft. per"cord" due to factoring in airspace. I don't know about you guys but I stack my wood fairly tight, and there's no way that 34% of my stacks are airspace. I could see maybe 10%-15%, but 34%??? Seems excessive. As in you'd have to intentionally stack it bad to have those kinds of gaps. Especially with wood like Red Oak that splits up nice and square. So the wood is even further ahead than I originally posted. I didn't see any mention of furnace efficiency.
For sure that baloney about over 1/3 of your wood stacks being air is even worse than baloney. Some idiot threw a stack of wood together and guessed at the amount of air. Or perhaps some professor decided to do a big "study" so got some of his students (usually young lads) to stack some wood. Most probably had never stacked wood in their life so no doubt the wood stacks were not the best... I remember a time when my wife and I did not burn wood. Winter was always a challenge because of the cold inside the house as well as outside. At first we thought it would be great because we didn't have to spend all that time and work so we could get heat. However, sooner or later people get tired of being cold and we got that way too. I shudder to think just how much we wasted on trying to heat our home before wood heat. Then when we moved to where we are now we really struggled to keep this old crate warm and burned 6 cord or more of wood. We were okay until about mid December through mid March but then we were cold again inside the house. We finally broke down and bought a good stove and what a difference that made! Finally we were warm all winter long! Now we burn from 3-4 cord per year with most years being around the 3 cord range and we keep the house around 80 degrees all winter long, even when it is way below zero outside. Maybe one of these days I'll take some of those figures and try to find out just how much we spent extra during those years without wood and then through the years we burned wood to find out how much we saved. Yes, we have a few things now that perhaps we would not have if we didn't burn wood but those tools are used for more than putting up the wood. Also, some tools were purchased in order that we could continue burning even in our old age because our bodies just don't work like they did when we were younger.
We both prefer heating with wood instead of propane because the wood furnace continuously and slowly drafts heat into all the rooms via the ducts. The propane furnace has chilly periods between blows. If wood cost more than propane we would still choose to heat with wood. I can understand why some folks are "snowbirds", they do not burn wood and that chill between propane burns just wears you down. Look at all those small electric space heaters advertised during the winter to keep the room you are in warm. Besides, I lost 5 pounds during the past month "hoarding" as much as possible before the snow arrived to stay which may have happened with last nights storm (and no gym dues).
I think back to the days of expensive electric heat and relatively cold house. Firewood solved that one real quick.
Living in the mountains, the choices are propane, kerosene, electric or wood. My work takes me into lots of homes. In the winter I can tell if they are heating with wood the moment I walk in the door. If it's warm, it's wood.
While I don't believe in the Co2, global warming, global cooling, climate change or whichever phrase they're using these days, I love to point out to the Prius crowd this very fact. That and the fact that their little batteries are environmental disasters bubbling under the surface. They always seem to have a blank stare when I tell them this for some reason. I bet they about stroke out when I drive away in my full size pickup.
I burn wood because of my wife she gets cold easy and LOVES wood heat. She does it all with me. Split, stack, cut and burn. We also have a pellet stove and she’s all about loading that too.
Let's see... can I calculate an approximate amount of money I've save since going to wood heat 5 years ago (this is our 6th winter with wood heating)? So, heating with oil, we would consume something like 500 gallons per year. At $3 / gallon, that's $1,500 per year, or $7,500 for our first 5 years. In that 5 year period, we have put heating oil in our tank exactly 1 time at a cost of maybe $300. All the wood has been free... have not purchased any. During this time, I have purchased one saw at $600, one trailer at $700, maybe a dozen tarps (at say $6 per), some replacement parts (bar and chains) for my saws (say $50), chain oil (say $30), and gas and two-cycle oil plus gas for the vehicle (say $200). I'm not going to count my new hydraulic splitter in this because I didn't have it for the first 5 years. But, I'll throw in misc other expenses of $100 over that time. I either already had or was gifted my maul, wedges, sledges, little saw, and other tools, so they don't get counted in the estimated cost. So, my heating oil expense over the past 5 years would've been something like $7,500 And, assuming my summary of wood hoarding related expenses is accurate, and using hoarding expenses as a proxy for heating expenses, I estimate that we have spent $2,016 on heating over the same period. Of course, the gap will widen since I won't have to make the same big expenses again in coming years. I think I'm coming out well ahead, plus we like the wood heat better than the oil heat! And, I like the exercise. All good there. Note that I'm assuming that cost of electricity is a wash as the same electricity to run the oil furnace would be used to run the blower on the wood stove.
I was raised with wood heat and will raise my boys with wood heat. We love the heat and the independence. I honestly haven’t saved much money but that’s ok.
Don't forget the residual value of the equipment you've bought along the way, if you were to sell it...puts wood even further ahead. Don't get no stinking residual value if you burning dinosaurs...
That's the case around here too. I hate hearing the natural gas furnace run. It's rather listen to the chainsaws and get a workout while making the firewood as well. I process most of my firewood in fall and winter, because I get exercise in winter this way.