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A Farm of My Own:  Wood Heat Information  |
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kitchensqueen
True Blue Farmgirl
521 Posts
521 Posts |
 Posted - Dec 02 2007 : 08:37:14 AM
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So, in our quest to start doing some real planning for setting up our homestead, we're researching wood heat. Does anyone know of a good resource we can check into? Some of the questions we have are:
- What are the pros/cons of different heating options (fireplace, stoves, etc.)
- How much wood would we need per year to heat our home?
- What about providing hot water?
- How much daily labor does it take to keep the home heated?
Thanks in advance for any tips!
http://apartmentfarm.wordpress.com
http://shadetreestudios.etsy.com
New Rt 66 blog: http://historyinthemaking.wordpress.com |
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DaisyFarm
True Blue Farmgirl
1646 Posts
Diane
Victoria
BC
Canada
1646 Posts |
Posted - Dec 02 2007 : 09:59:43 AM
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We heated exclusively with wood for over 20 years at our old place. I really really miss our woodstove. So here is my personal thoughts, although our climate is much milder than yours.
Heating options - we tore out a fireplace and replaced it with a good quality, Osbourne free-standing woodstove. Way too much heat went up the chimney with our fireplace. The only "cons" I can think of...you have to be willing to chop up that wood and let it season. You can't decide in December that you need more wood! The other con is that it was miserable on the rare occasion that the stove went out in the night (our fault though).
Pro's - many, many. In power failures we always had heat and hot water and I could cook on the top of it if I had to. In the dead of winter, I could get the house too hot for comfort, but then be able to open every door and window to give the place a good airing out without watching money roll out the door.
Our old place was 1400 sq.ft. and we went through four cords of wood a year. It was a good house for wood heat however, with a sunken living room where the stove was and the other rooms sort of surrounding the living room. We had no cold spots in that house.
Daily labor - not much. Bring in one or two armloads of wood depending on the weather and sweep up around the stove. One a month we would let the fire die out and clean out the fire box. Twice a year we had our chimney thoroughly cleaned (important!).
I really miss our woodstove and would put one in this house in a heartbeat if we could afford it. Unfortunately this place is two storey and we would have to put up 20+ feet of insulating exterior chimney which just isn't in the budget right now.
Hope this helps. I don't think you'd ever be disappointed with a good quality woodstove.
Di
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farmgirl blessings
True Blue Farmgirl
777 Posts
Lea
TN
777 Posts |
Posted - Dec 02 2007 : 12:20:16 PM
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Hi Amanda ~
We also heat with wood. We're beginning only our 2nd year with our woodstove, but we just love it. Fireplaces are lovely but simply are inefficient if you want to consistently heat your home. They use a lot of fuel and most up the heat goes up the chimney. If you get a stove with a nice glass front, you get the pleasure of viewing the fire as well as a great heat source.
We have a small 1,200 ft. home. Our wood stove is centrally located and we use little 7x7 efficiency fans in the doorways to help circulate the heat to the furthest rooms.
I don't know how much wood we use as we have a woodlot and do not buy it from an outside source. That is something I need to keep up with this year. We get a lot of use from our stove in cooking as well. Tuck a few potatoes in the ash bin and you'll have hot baked potatoes for lunch. Or sit a pot of beans on top, and you'll have a yummy hot supper ready with very little effort.
I might also mention to be cautious regarding your home insurance. Our home was just being built when we chose to add a wood stove. Our insurance representative told us not to add the stove until the policy was active. If we added it before, our home would be uninsurable under their program. I don't know if that is a common practice, but thats what happened to us.
As Di also said, a wood stove is just wonderful when power is out in a winter storm and our home remains cozy and warm. Just plan on all those extra friends & family who decide to camp out at your place until the power returns. It really is a lot of fun!
By the way, I checked out your blog and just LOVE it! I spent many years on the Southside of Chicago and we too dreamed of our little homestead. Well, here we are. Dreams really can come true!
Blessings, Lea
www.farmhouseblessings.blogspot.com
"He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose." Jim Elliot |
Edited by - farmgirl blessings on Dec 02 2007 12:31:23 PM |
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laluna
True Blue Farmgirl
295 Posts
New York
USA
295 Posts |
Posted - Dec 02 2007 : 12:57:34 PM
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Hi Amanda!
A great on-line resource is www.hearth.com. They have an excellent wiki and a searchable messageboard. Any question you've got has probably been asked and answered by an incredibly knowledgeable group of wood-heat enthusiasts.
Pros/cons - the wood stove has the definite advantage due to efficiency. Pacific Energy and Lopis are among the best stoves out there.
Amount of wood - our house is a two-story, 1100 square foot home, and we probably go through about 4 FULL cords (12 face cords) of wood each season. (We live in the Western New York area - think lake-effect snow - in a very old house.)
Can't help you with the hot water question, and most wood heat systems are not designed to heat your water. A tankless on-demand water heater is probably your best bet.
Daily labor - daily really isn't so bad, it's all the acquiring, splitting, stacking, and moving before the season starts is where the real labor-intensive days are!
We love heating our home with our add-on wood furnace and wood stove! (We've heated our home this way for the past few years now, and have not turned the furnace on, at all, for the past two years!)
Good luck with your journey! |
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goneriding
True Blue Farmgirl
1599 Posts
Winona
Central Oregon
USA
1599 Posts |
Posted - Dec 03 2007 : 06:02:36 AM
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I love a fireplace but when I was married to my ex, it was a lot of work and too much heat went up the flue. But we put up with it just cuz... There is a lot of info already posted so I won't repeat. I learned to cook on our stove and am a whale of a dutch oven cook-er!! Heated water in no time flat too. Great stuff!
Winona :-)
When you lose, don't lose the lesson!!
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levisgrammy
True Blue Farmgirl
9353 Posts
Denise
Beavercreek
Ohio
USA
9353 Posts |
Posted - Dec 03 2007 : 2:56:43 PM
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We live in a 2000 sq.ft home and we use 6 cords a year. We have purchased almost all of our wood. The first year we had a friend who wanted some trees cleared out so we did get some of our wood from him but this year we have purchased all of it. It has run us about 750.00 this year. We are hoping to get a fireplace put in to our family room. It is part of an addition to the back of the house. The stove heats the front part and the upstairs quite nicely.
"She seeketh wool, and flax, and worketh willingly with her hands."
www.torismimi.blogspot.com
www.torisgram.etsy.com |
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CountryBorn
True Blue Farmgirl
1545 Posts
Mary Jane
New York
USA
1545 Posts |
Posted - Dec 03 2007 : 3:03:05 PM
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We have heated with wood for over 30 yrs. It is definitly warm and toasty. When you are used to wood heat you get a chill at other peoples houses. The heat from the wood is a constant and the furnaces cool down before coming back on. We used to cut down our own, now we buy it split. My husband still uses the log splitter quite a bit and makes the logs our size. We really love it. It is dirtier and dustier than other heats. There is more cleaning, due to emptying the ashes and sweeping up the wood chips and ashes that come out when we add wood. I have to get up a couple times a night and add wood.But,I am usually up a couple times a night anyway! I still honestly wouldn't trade it. I love seeing the wood burning and the cozy feeling it gives our home. We have a furnace too, but only use it until the weather is cold enough for the wood stove and then in the spring when the temps start rising again. We get 9 face cord a year and always have quite a bit left. My husband uses that in his garage woodstove. Our house is a ranch very well insulated with an open floor plan which is perfect for the stove.It's about 1200 sq. feet. I bring the wood in the everyday and put it in the back porch. I enjoy it actually. I feed the birds and then get the wood. A winter ritual I guess. Good luck with your research!
MJ
There can be no happiness if the things we believe in are different from the things we do. Freya Stark |
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kitchensqueen
True Blue Farmgirl
521 Posts
521 Posts |
Posted - Dec 03 2007 : 5:38:08 PM
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Thanks for all the input ladies! I knew I'd find some good info here. We're not sure what type of property we'll end up being able to get, and if it will have a good woodlot or not. Our house will be in the 1000 square foot range, so I guess we can expect to use 4-5 cords per year. If we have to purchase it, how much would it cost? I know price will vary, but a rough estimate to give us an idea would be helpful.
http://apartmentfarm.wordpress.com
http://shadetreestudios.etsy.com
New Rt 66 blog: http://historyinthemaking.wordpress.com |
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levisgrammy
True Blue Farmgirl
9353 Posts
Denise
Beavercreek
Ohio
USA
9353 Posts |
Posted - Dec 04 2007 : 06:23:27 AM
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Amanda,
I think the cost depends on the area you are in but we have been paying 125. a cord for oak.
Happy househunting!
Denise
"She seeketh wool, and flax, and worketh willingly with her hands."
www.torismimi.blogspot.com
www.torisgram.etsy.com |
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Canadian farmgirl
True Blue Farmgirl
482 Posts
Lori
Ontario
Canada
482 Posts |
Posted - Dec 04 2007 : 06:58:22 AM
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We use one of those outdoor wood burning furnaces. It's a bit of an investment at first, but pays for itself in about 4-5 years. It also heats our hot water tank! We don't have to carry wood inside, it's all kept outdoors, you just knock the snow off it! You can put much larger pieces of wood in it, so you don't have to be so picky when it comes to splitting. My husband only tends it about 3 times a day. You do have to empty ashes out of it, from a long tray that slides out at the bottom. It has piping full of water that runs from the furnace through the backyard, to the house, and inside to the heat exchanger on the inside furnace and the hot water tank. One disadvantage about power outages, though, is although there's lot of heat there, you need the electricity to run your thermostat/fan to blow it through the ductwork in the house! We still have our old woodstove in the basement for times like this. I believe we use about 5-6 cords of wood a season, from our own woodlot. (Winter in Canada!)
These furnaces do give off smoke, so you have to check with bylaws in your area and make sure you place the unit so it doesn't blow right across to your neighbour's house!
We still have a backup oil furnace hooked up, in case we ever wanted to go away for a few days.
Our furnace was a real topic of conversation when we first got it, strangers would drop in to check it out! Others thought we had a smoke house or outdoor pizza oven!
Lori |
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bboopster
True Blue Farmgirl
1140 Posts
Betty Jo
West Bend
Wisconsin
USA
1140 Posts |
Posted - Dec 05 2007 : 04:47:33 AM
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Hello Amanda
As Lori does my DH and I heat our house with an outdoor wood burner boiler. Our house (About 2200sq. ft.) is 2 years old and we heat not only the basement floor but also the first floor and loft to a toasty 70 most of the time, we also heat our hot water and soon our hot tub. We also put in a high efficiency back up boiler inside. The outdoor boiler was a bit of an investment and I know they are more now but we only used two tanks of propane last year and most of that was during the summer months when the outdoor boiler was not running. My DH gets all of our wood free either from pallet companies in the area or construction sites and road tree trimming crews. He tends it twice a day during the heating season. And of course there is the ash dumping and yearly maintenance that is very easy. Check with your local area about their requirements for such an outdoor stove as right after we set ours and had it hooked up the town put some addition regulations on it because of the smoke it puts out. Some transplants from the city complained to the town, they also complained about the buffalo farm smell too.
In our old house we put in a very efficient (90%) closed sealed system fireplace insert into our fireplace. It too was quite an investment but saved on fuel bills and then there was no free standing stove to take up extra space. This we also fed pallets cut off that we got free from the companies. If you would like the name of the burners we used let me know and I will get them for you. 
3 Blue Star Mother and Proud of it!
Pray for our troops to come home safe and soon.
Enjoying the road to the simple life :>) |
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Phils Ann
True Blue Farmgirl
1095 Posts
Ann
Parsonsburg
Maryland
USA
1095 Posts |
Posted - Dec 05 2007 : 1:18:49 PM
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Amanda, we've heated with wood for 30 years, until this year in a free-standing stove. We never used the fireplace next to it because the heat did go up the chimney. My DH built an insert for the fireplace this fall which we're using. It has kept a fire for 24 hours without being fed, but normally is fed every 12 hours. He made a woodbox which sits under a low window on the same wall, and opens the window from outside to load the box, twice a week in really cold weather. Otherwise, the wood is inside and very accessable. Our bedrooms are upstairs, the staircase being nearly in front of the woodstove, and we have to keep the doors shut all winter or it's too warm to sleep. I love the warmth that woodheat gives and it is wonderful when the power goes out to be able to heat a kettle on the stove or even cook on it.
Ann
Sairy Hill Thicket
There is a Redeemer. |
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A Farm of My Own: Wood Heat Information |
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Wood Heat Information
