Price of firewood vs. fuel oil in northeast

yup they were picketing the bank for financing running it down the Champlain valley..

LodgedTree as I own 6 houses it is not necessarily the cool factor some houses built 150 plus years ago are hard to insulate.. moreover you get goVT involved if I take off lathe and plaster to air seal and insulate I have to bring it to today's code here.. why landlords throw bandaid on it... would new rock and blown be an improvement yes but I can't get r19 into 4 inch walls cost effectively.. yes new replacement windows.. but they leak around frame

 

Confident Firewood is cheaper for you guys, compared to in England, UK. To ease the problem, I created the first Firewood subscription company, check it out: Buy Logs Online- Kiln Dried Firewood For Sale | Drier than Seasoned Logs

 

Yep, that seems much higher than US prices, at least here in the northeast US (New England in fact ). You are getting 217 GBP for 1.3 cu. meters of kiln dried wood, I can get 128 cu. ft. (3.625 cu. meters) kiln dried, delivered for $350 or a little less.

Then again, your people were in my country to a great extent for the wood in the first place so this is not all that surprising. All straight trees bigger than 17" were firebranded with the mark of the Royal Crown (the King's trees) so they would be saved for ships lumber and especially, masts. We colonists were NOT to cut them down or make use of any lumber from them. We have many old houses here in New England with planks wider than 17" but that wood is always buried somewhere in the house where it is not visible. Apparently you folks in the UK ran out of forests long ago and ended up with ships and making iron competing for the same wood for building material or fuel. The northern new world was filthy with fine timber and England was more than interested in exploiting that, of course.

Funny how things work..... when you find out how they actually worked out.

Brian

 

BDF, what ashp(s) did you install? EfficiencyMaine seems to think you should be using them for heat even with Northeast electric rates and cold winters rather than oil or buying firewood? The devil is in the details around the price and efficiency assumptions but I'm not sure I've seen this until recently.

Home Heating Cost Comparison Calculator - Estimate Annual Heating Costs

 

Sorry, not following 'ashp(s)'. ?? Can you expand on that a little bit and I will try to answer.

Thanks.

Brian

 

air source heat pump...ductless mini splits

 

Ah, OK. LG's. Three on each floor (2 floors). Two compressors, one powering 4 mini splits, one powering the other two. Each compressor is split with splits on each floor so in the event of a failure of one, the other <should> do a reasonable job of keeping up with all but the hottest days until the other compressor can be repaired / replaced.

I debated for a long time about this and sometimes think I may have been better off going with Mitsubishi. I preferred the indoor units and outside units from LG, and found LG offered more cost effective units in a fairly high efficiency range (21.X as I remember). But Mitsubishi is better supported and apparently LG has a nasty habit of changing lines so that old designs are no longer supported; it is going to make me really cranky if, say, a compressor fails and I cannot repair or replace it with a newer unit compatible with four inside evaporators!

Brian

 

so just for AC? I dont really need AC but I have been reading lately that the ashp tech has come a long way and might make sense as my backup and then get AC for free

 

Yes, my original plan was to just use the mini- splits for A/C. These LG units also make heat, and are pretty efficient when the outside temp. is close to what you want the inside temp. to be (Delta T or temperature differential) but as the gap between the two widens, the efficiency falls until there is no gain over just using direct resistance heaters, and no one I know can afford to heat a house that way in this area (RI). Also, these units work down to 5 degrees F I believe and then stop producing heat, it gets colder than that here every year so not a good choice for heat. The Mitsubishi units provide heat down to -14F and I do not think it has EVER reached that low a temp. here, and if it did it was not for more than 1/2 of a day I bet.

I was going to go with hydronic toe- kick heaters mounted in the walls of the upstairs rooms but they proved too noisy with the fan running. But now I have found baseboard radiant heat in a system 5" tall and 3/4" wide; it looks like tall mop board and seems to be top notch quality stuff. More expensive than baseboard but not ridiculous and it really is a very nice system.

Heat pumps (the process that makes mini- splits work) is great in very mild climates that need a lot of A/C and just a little heat, such as the deep south US for example. They are also very efficient for just A/C and use a very specific, high pressure, high energy refrigerant and extremely high pressures (up to 600 PSI) as well as inverter motors on screw pumps and so really, really are very efficient. They are also excellent in cooling individual rooms and isolated areas; we are enlarging our house at the very time only my wife and I are here (kids are gone) so I expect to have more rooms closed off and not cooled than those that are cooled, as well as cooling only one floor at a time. Central air has a hard time with multi- independent floor cooling and totally falls down on controlling each room independently. And while the price of the actual hardware is much higher for mini- splits, adding in the price of ducting for central air quickly eats the difference AND eats a tremendous amount of space inside the house for ducting.

I also plumbed my mini- splits completely inside the house so there are no unsightly outside plumbing runners dropping from random spots and then running along the skirt of the house to compressors. But this only worked out because I am replacing the entire second floor of the house so I was able to plumb, wire and remove the condensate from the first floor units in the ceiling above them, and do the same for the second floor units through the attic, down a chase inside a wall, and outside. I added mini condensate pumps to all the mini- splits so I can pump the condensate water up and out rather than having gravity pull it down. I did a lot of research on this and this was the best thing I could come up with but I am NOT an A/C professional nor have I ever done installed or worked on any A/C units before. Still, the wonder of the Internet is truly vast regarding learning through written, and even better, video examples, lessons and even the top- ten things NOT to do when doing XXX. I would never claim that spending time on the 'Net makes me an expert on any subject but I have gained tremendous amounts of information (let's see if it is enough!) and I have a reasonable degree of confidence I can pull this off. I am now debating on farming out the actual commissioning of the system (testing for leaks, drawing a deep vacuum on the entire system, adding the correct amount of refrigerant to the compressor to make up for long lines and bringing the vapor and liquid lines into a proper balance.

The downside is that I have a lot of time and effort invested into this whole house project only to use it one time, which is really inefficient and unfortunate. But that is what it takes to make this project viable financially, and even then it is not cost effective, which is why removing and re- installing an entire new level onto a house is almost never done, because one cannot recover the expense. But I suffered structural roof damage during the particularly heavy snowfall of 2014 / 2015 and had two choices: walk away from the house and sell off the land as an unbuidable lot (house does not meet town requirement and is grandfathered but if this house is demolished, another cannot be build in its place) or throw money at it and fix it as well as making it better overall. Two bad choice but I picked bad choice B. But I am not complaining or whining, and so far, it is coming out great- much, much better, bigger and the top half is all brand new so it is not as if I am not gaining anything out of this.

Anyway, that is why and how I chose the LG mini- split systems I am using. I am happy to share any other info. I have been able to gather if it may be useful to you or anyone else.

Brian

 

I have had really good luck with the Geospring heat pump water heater. Other than the gas range and wood stove, everything I have is electric including baseboard resistance and dryer. I have been watching those air source heat pumps dramatically improve in cold weather efficiency over the last few years to the point where it looks like they might be a viable heating option. That calculator suggests that they may now be a better option than buying firewood even in a cold expensive electricity locale.

I dont see buying firewood as making sense at 2-250/cord when I have never bought anything that would burn acceptably let alone properly without at least another year of drying. In addition to the space required and the two additional touches, that would mean having a couple grand tied up for an extended period before it can be used as fuel. I might think differently if it could be dumped and stacked into my burn shed for immediate burning. I also like making firewood.

 

That is what started this thread: the price of firewood went up when petroleum products went up to and over $4/ gallon but has not moved down much, if any, now that the same petroleum is closer to $2 / gal.

But beyond cost, we really like the woodstove because it is in our living room and we get a lot of direct infrared heat off it that we just do not get with central (hot water baseboard) heat. Then the other advantages that others have already mentioned: not sending money outside the US and especially not supporting governments that are behaving improperly, as well as the fact that burning wood cleanly is kinder to the planet we are all stuck on than burning fossil fuels.

Of course, your method of using solar heat is ultimately the very best, provided the actual hardware proves durable and lasts long enough to make it a positive- sum game for you (as I think it will). And solar represents the largest initial investment of all the methods although there may be some assistance available for that method. I only mention this because you mentioned having to pre- pay for firewood, which is certainly the case but going solar, at least with a system large enough to support an entire house, represents a much larger up- front investment and far more money tied up waiting for the payback. The single largest problem with solar from what I can see.

Brian

 

Got a call from my brother today and he held he heard an ad on the radio that a local, very large firewood dealer is advertising seasoned wood (2 years +) for $200 / cord. That is a far cry from $275 of a month or so ago when my brother actually bought two cord from them. As I said at the beginning of this thread, this particular vendor is piled with firewood reaching the stratosphere, at the end of his conveyor certainly, and now out of land area to store wood. He rolled the dice, hoping that all of his wood would become more valuable because it is seasoned, and it really IS seasoned 'cause I have seen it sitting there for several years now, but lost the gamble because oil prices have not risen much and it has been a very mild fall.

Again, not trying to beat anyone out of any money, profit or a livlihood but firewood prices shot up when fuel went from $1.75 / gal. to mid- $4.XX / gal. and now that oil has dropped in half again, firewood also has to drop at least somewhat. Looks like that is finally happening, at least somewhat.

And that particular dealer never, ever advertised before that either one of us know of.

Brian

 

I got curious and just checked. Heating oil is up to $2.49.9 a gallon, up from $2.39 a couple of days ago.

 

Below are oil prices for Central Rhode Island
High 2.7Low 2.179Average 2.303

From New England Oil Prices , and most are several days old so might not be exactly right but are close.

Brian

 

I have NG at my house. No way that wood is cheaper, especially for the amount of equipment that i use. But i clean up the dead trees at my place and use them to heat my house. I enjoy cutting wood, its fun for me and not work, just like most of my hobbies. I also use the trunks to make lumber, wayyy more money in that.

 

We have a NG line at the front of our property. If and when We need to upgrade our oil fired heating, we will most likely go to NG. With higher efficiency and lower prices it just seems to make sense.

 

NG is our "primary" heat source at the house but I really try to make the stove the primary source and NG secondary. Even though the furnace is from 2011, it seems extremely inefficient combined with our poorly insulated house. keeping the thermostat at 67 for an entire month will rack up a nearly $350 gas bill which I learned the hard way last year during our first month in our house, prior to the stove being in. The stove saves me big time on the utility bill. This past month ran me about $103 for gas/electric, only $30ish being gas. If I had to pay for wood, I do think the savings would be pretty minimal though.

 

Cord of wood is selling in $250 and better , and the sad part is , it's not even seasoned , poor customers that don't know , a gallon of #2 oil is about $2.25 and better