How much do you rely on your stove.....

I try to stay as close to 100% as possible but have a HHO furnace for backup. It usually kicks on overnight at some point if it is really cold. During the day while I'm at work I usually get enough solar gain that the furnace wont run unless the wind is blowing. I have it set to come on around 66*.

 

My friend has one in the off grid house he is building I will see if I can get him to logon and tell you about it.


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I know folks who have used composting toilets. My impression is that they are not all that they are cracked up to be. Maybe newer models are better?

 

Heat with OWB exclusively. Also, domestic water is heated by it. Usually start up is in Oct and I'll pull the fires in late Apr/early May.

There is nat gas furnace for the shoulder season and also a drolet Eldorado "kicker" stove in the basement that'll get fired up during the -0 weather from time to time.

 

A large Lennox heat pump hot air furnace is our primary heat source, keeps the whole house around 22ºC. The house was built 13 yrs ago to r-2000 standards, so its quite air tight. is about 2500 sq feet, 3 levels, and the wood stove is on the main floor, early in the middle of the house. There's a fan in the furnace that runs 24/7 to circulate air within the home, no matter if the heat pump is on or off. With the heat pump in operation the entire house is the same temp. But with the wood burning, the house is uneven heat, it will be 18-20ºC in the basement, 23-25ºC on the main floor and 27-29ºC upstairs.

While its 10ºC or less outside we have the wood stove going, keeps it around 23-25ºC indoors. Otherwise the heat pump does its job, and provides a/c in the summer. When the weather is mild and around 0ºC we sometimes have issues with the stove backdrafting. Its a Harmon Oakwood model, it can take 20" sticks. We have to keep a bungee cord on the lever on the rear damper because the back drafts can be bad enough to blow open the damper. The stove will run away at that point, dangerous really. So we don't trust it 100%. When filled, the stove only gets about 3-4 hours burn time before its reduced to coals such that we need kindling to get it going again. We'll fill it in the evening but typically let it burn out overnight unless the temps are forecast drop to -15ºC or lower. Then we'll get up through the night to fill the stove.

Last winter was mild so we only burned 3 cord all winter (Nov-Apr). This year we've got 2 cord burned, started late Oct and been burning every day since, its now end of Jan. Interestingly enough, our power bill has gone down for the bi-monthly period (mid-Nov to mid-Jan) compared to last year. Due diligence I guess, keeping the fire going every day offsets the heat pump kicking in.

 

So I went back on this and tried to do some basic math. Full disclosure math was never my best subject

But doing some simple math of 1,440 minutes in a day and 30 days avg in a month is 43,200 minutes

Looking at my furnace usage I've been averaging anywhere from no usage to about 60 minutes of usage, occasionally 90 minutes of usage per day.

I went on the high end and took the 90 minutes per day and came up with 6.25% Furnace usage. I think I originally stated if I had to guess I was using stove for heat 70-75%.

But after re-looking at it I am using the stove over 90% of the time to heat my home. Admittedly I haven't burned 24/7 all winter because I don't have enough dry wood on hand but the past month or so we've been burning pretty much non-stop. It's more stove usage than I originally thought

 

Firewood is by far my primary heat, but we use propane for the stove, garage heater and run the propane furnace a little when we're not home and out traveling. I have been averaging about 80 gallons of propane/year..

We dont use a lot of electric... About 300KWH/month and that's for a dehumidifier, well pump, hot water and lights.

 

Wood heat 100 %. I do have a furnace for back up but I am retired so it never really gets used. I may turn it on in the fall just to make sure it is still working.

 

I have burned 0 dinosaurs and 0 electrons (other than running my pumps) to heat the house this year.

House is 74 all the time.

 

Nearly 100% since about November.

We keep our thermostat turned down to 60 or so as backup heat. I don't think the furnace has kicked on since we started burning around the clock. Fortunately, it doesn't get very cold here, our new manufactured home is well insulated, and our new stove is quite efficient, so it adds up to not needing supplemental heat very often. The back bedrooms are a little cooler but we prefer it that way.

 

I have an owb so 100%. Haven't burned a drop of oil in the last 8 years including this one. It does require a small amount of electricity though probably equivalent to about $30 a month.