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One idea that runs through most of these responses is that a person's free time is worth zero. Usually it has to be valued at about that to make any labor intensive alternative to conventional heating cost effective. If the time you cut, haul, stack, and burn the firewood is time that you would be watching TV, then putting a low value on it might seem reasonable, but it's not that simple. The cost of the gas or diesel it takes to cut and/or haul firewood is an obvious expense that has to be added to the wood heating bill (or subtracted from the savings, if you want to look at it that way) but the wear on the equipment is a real, but harder to measure, cost, too. There's one cost that almost never gets taken into account, and in some ways it's the most important one: the cost to your body. When it comes to doing physical work, your body is a piece of machinery that wears out a little (or a lot) faster than it can repair itself. If you are physically inactive most of the workday, then the activity required to get the wood and fire a boiler might be good for you---extend you life, even. But many, if not most of us who participate in this forum already do hard physical work, and then do more of it in our free time. I'll bet I'm not the only one here who has to use painkillers to get to sleep after a hard day (only aspirin or ibuprofen so far, though I've got prescriptions for the industrial duty stuff,) but can't stand the idea of having to work behind a desk. If you wear out your parts, you can't just wish yourself better, or keep working by sheer will power. If you think the rising cost of oil/natural gas/propane/electricity is scary try pricing the cost of a hip replacement without medical insurance. You might not end up thinking that your labor intensive alternative to adjust-the-thermostat/write-the-check heating was such a good idea if you end up crippled at 65 and you've still got 15 years of things to do that you promised the wife you'd get around to later. Stan
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