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Heating with wood ?

Bruce from Can.

Bruce from Can.

Well-known Member
Location
Woodville, Ontario, Canada
Funny how our perspective changes over time. I used to burn a lot of wood, because I thought that the price of heating oil was too high. While I had a lot of regular farm work to do, I did have wood on the farm, and I was still in my early 40s. Doing a bit of extra work seemed worth the $$ savings.
But as I aged, that extra work became a drag, and my kids had grew up and were not living with me to enjoy the benefits of the wood heat, and didnt want to come help old dad put up winter wood.
I put new windows in the house, and a new furnace, the savings made a noticeable difference, so I only cut a fraction of the wood I used to, and only light the stove up when the temperature drops near 0F.
Well time marches on, and I am crowding 61, the price of heating the house hasnt gone up much over the past 5-6 years, but the number of trees dead and dying around the farm are adding up, and need to be cleaned up. So I guess I will be back out cutting more firewood this year than in years past, just to keep the trees from falling into the field. Who knows, maybe I can save a buck or two on the cost of heating this winter. Not fooling myself though, I have cut wood all my life, and there is a price to be paid in labour. Firewood isnt free heat, but if you have the trees, no money leaves your pocket.
 
I like the physical work and cleaning up the woods especially if I have time. Scabbing firewood is one my my favorite tasks. I've got a ways to go to get to 61 though....
 
Years ago, in a different house, we had a wood furnace that worked in conjunction with our propane furnace. We could do at least 80% of our heating with wood.

I did a study on it, and found by considering the time spent cutting firewood compared to what we saved on propane, I was working for about $3 per hour when I cut firewood.

I decided if I want to make an extra $3 per hour there are more pleasant things to do than cut firewood.
 
As I got older, now 72, I just work smarter and for less time at a time. I still cut and split (hydraulically) my about 3 cords a year. Also split a lot with a friend. I try and spread the work out over the year and that way never HAVE to get out and do it.
 
I turned 65 this year and have been using outdoor woodburner for 20 years now. If and when the burner has to be replaced I will go a different route. Not sure what. I have all the equipment to cut wood 3 good saws skidsteer with grapple skidsteer splitter 16 foot dump trailer I saw most of my wood 12- 14 ft long haul home in dump trailer and cut up and split right in front of wood shed. the majority of my wood i do not handle by hand until I put it in burner. Can stack pretty good with skid steer splitter which my wife runs quite often.
 
I'm 66 and I always have to cut down enough dead trees to keep the wood stove going during the winter. The only extra work is splitting the wood but that was made a lot easier since I bought a log splitter. I built racks on pallets to hold the firewood and can put the pallet on my porch with the tractor.
 
Twas interesting back in the 70's when fuel went up, lots of people put in wood burners of various sorts. Some were good, many were bad. They made heat, but did not burn the wood, nor capture the heat, efficiently. As time went on, folks started to wise up, and work to keep the heat in the house (insulation, windows, sealing, etc), and burn fossil fuels more efficently (gas furnaces were hardly 70% efficient in that era). Wood stoves available today with the catalyst are amazingly efficient. I am considering one for my new house.

Still amazes me the wood boilers that folks have at the edge of their yard. They are neat, in that the wood and all the dirt that comes with it stay out of the house, but efficiency, from what I gather, is poor. My dad heated our 1900 sq ft tri-level house in the early 80's with a nice wood stove using 10-11 face cords (16x4'x8'). People I know with these boilers, heat the same size house for 2-3X that amount of wood.

Stay warm this winter......how ever you choose !
 
69 and still cutting wood,last few years just keeping the fallen trees out of the roads up on the mountain has supplied me with enough wood to heat the house plus a guy that does tree work drops me off some good wood sometimes.Good way to keep active in the Winter when the farm work slows down plus I just enjoy having the stove when I come in from outside.
 
My dad is 75 and still cuts wood. We have a good 250+ Rick of wood stacked up. I heat my water and my pool with my outdoor stove so I burn year around.
 

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when I had my house built in the 70's, I was around 35, and thought I could some money by not putting in a gas furnace. I did have a fire place. All I was doing was burning up wood, with little heat gained. At the time ceiling heat was the thing to do, that's what I did also. Not a good idea most the heat stays in the ceiling. Then the electric bills came in. I decided tp put in a wood stove. For the last 45 or so years I have been burning wood for heat. I still have heaters in the bathrooms. In California I don't use wood like some of you do. Maybe a core or so. At 79 it is getting to be a chore to cut, and split wood then bring it in every evening. Like my weed mowing business, as long as I can still do it, I will continue doing it. Stan
 
I'm with you Bruce, heated with wood 35-40 years ago, but I hated it back then when I was that much younger and have no desire at all to ever do it again. We logged a few years ago and I sold the tops. Some of the hills that family was carrying wood up, I didn't envy them. Inflation has made writing a check for fuel oil pretty painless again compared to all the work of cutting wood and maintaining a stove.

I remember back in the late 70, early 80s a guy had some joke thing printed out showing the true cost of heating with wood, including the new carpet after you burned a hole in it, a new rear window for your pickup, and on and on it went.
 
Burning wood is green.
Will someone reinvent a car that burns wood?
A Stanley steamer?

No burning wood at my place.
 
Wouldn't it be easier to heat water with solar panels? You just have to run an antifreeze in the panels and run it through coils in a tank. If it doesn't heat enough in winter, switch over to the outdoor stove.
 
I hear you Bruce. When I was farming it always seemed that we were cutting firewood the day we needed it. I had a combination furnace at the time. Sometimes it seemed like it took more fuel oil to get the green wood to burn than if we just used fuel oil Those were the days. Up to ten years ago (I'm 71 now), we tried to burn as much wood as possible and as little fuel oil as possible. With my wife fully retired now, cutting wood doesn't go too bad, but we find ourselves using a bit less wood and more fuel oil and NG. We use a combination of a oil furnace, a wood furnace piped into the air duct system, and a NG fire place in the living room. Had the house weatherized a couple of years ago and the reduction in wood and other heating sources required was noticeible. Used to get up every night to fire up the furnace. Now unless it's really cold, we fire it up at sack time, forget about it, and let the oil furnace take over.
 
If I ever went back to heating with wood, it'd be with this set up. Common in Sweden. Small wood gasification boiler, solar panels on the roof. Thogar is in the same latitude as Fairbanks Alaska, uses less than two cords a year to heat his house and domestic hot water. He has to start building a fire by late October, burns full time from November to late April, then the solar panels do the job the rest of the year. Hot water is stored in insulated tanks.

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I am now 67 and have an OWB soon to start my sixteenth season. The clock has been ticking louder each year on the boiler's longevity and I know soon I will be faced with a decision, invest in another OWB or quit burning wood, not looking forward to that day. Lately we have been wintering (for 3 months) in the south which makes the future for burning wood more uncertain.


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Can not wait for some snow.
 
Having lived in several older farm homes over a span of some fifty or so years, Ive had the fortune or MIS fortune lol of heating with: Wood,,,,,,Wood Chips,,,,Corn,,,,,,,,Coal,,,,,,LP Gas,,,,,,,Natural Gas,,,,,,, Electric Resistance (really made my meter spin wore out the bearings lol very expensive) ,,,,,,,Heat Pumps,,,,,,,and can say coal was the warmest, followed by wood, followed by wood chips HOWEVER Heat Pump heat is coldddddddd heat brrrrrrrrrrrr like to froze to death.

Now I have Dual Fuel consisting of a Heat Pump (also AC) when its above 45 Degrees but below a High Efficiency Natural Gas Furnace which (until price rises grrrrrrr thanks Joe) is very cost efficient. As my age increases Im NEVER going back to coal or wood or corn and am very warm n toasty and well satisfied with my Dual Fuel options. If I were much much younger just starting out Id invest in super insulated smart home technology and use a variety of Passive Solar, Earth Sheltering, Geo Thermal, Solar and Wind Energy to get far off of and less dependent on the grid as possible.

Have a nice day yall and for those so inclined please pray for our Country and the border crisis, Americans left behind and stranded in Afghanistan, the rising crime and murder in big cities and rising prices and inflation grrrrrrr

John T
 
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Last year by this time I was really well stocked. More than needed. Not so much yet this year. Hauled my first load a couple of days ago. This was split and left in the woods last year. I need about three cords which means I need about 6 loads like this one. I just scouted out some dead Ironwood, ash, white oak and a couple of elms so it's all out there just waitin' for me. At eighty I'm thankful I can still do it but I know there will come a time.

Last year:

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This year:

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So, with this load stacked and the 1/2 cord left from last year, I will need about 4 more loads like this one.

mvphoto82489.jpg
 
Never really thought of that, guess I should look into it. Over the summer I may burn half a truck load of wood. We have so many dead tress wood is easy to come by and gives dad something to do. In the winter my electric bill is under a 100 bucks a month.
 
What else do you have to do in the winter between morning and evening milking? I know, there are lots of other things to do, but if you sit in the house playing with your phone you will age faster than if you were out cutting wood! Like you said, there are dead and down trees to be cleaned up anyhow. I'm 70, and I keep busy in my spare time cutting dead and down trees, but as we spend most of the winter in Arizona I sell most of it, and it more than pays for the natural gas to heat our house when we are gone.
 
We heated our home - two wood stoves for a lot of years. My kids graduated high school and had other fish to fry and my Wife (who home-schooled all of our kids from kindergarten through 12th grade) took a day job outside the home. With no one to tend the fires, we had installed a new gas furnace with duct work to every room. Prior heat was baseboard and an old gas floor furnace - which we very seldom used. I don't think I burned a cord of wood last year and every year leading up to the new gas furnace, we cut, split and burned 7 cords of wood. Like you, we have dead trees all over the farm and the ash bore (sp?) has supplied us with even more wood. I'm going to burn at least one stove a fair amount this year, not because I have to, but because I want to - which is nice. I enjoy the wood heat and need the physical workout.

Best of luck!

Bill
 
In my previous house I used to supplement with wood (actually about 80%+ of the heat) and I figure I saved about $3k a year over oil. This was just with dead trees on the property. Never minded cutting or splitting it but HATED stacking it. Feeding the stove at night always coincided with getting up to use the bathroom. Doctor was always after me to get more exercise so that's what I did.
 
I burn 4-6 face cord of wood each year. Sometimes have my youngest son helping me. We both like splitting wood so its great exercise. I'm 67 so its more exercise for me than him. There are a lot of dead ash trees around here lots of stuff to cut. Burning wood is a lot of work so its easy to see where our parents got off wood and coal and went to fuel oil when they had the chance. There is something about wood heat on a cold damp day you can't match with oil heat. We burned wood in a coal furnace growing up in an old farm house and every Saturday it was a trip to the woods, regardless of weather to get enough wood to get to the next weekend. We never had seasoned wood. Dad had a night job and I remember one Friday night him coming home at 1 in the morning and cutting a limb off an apple tree in the yard to get through until morning chores were done and we could get to the woods.
 
Probably more like 5 times if you split and stack it. The good thing about the outdoor burners is very little ash.
 
AZ, same as you I think. This will be our third winter out there after going out for for two years in VROB houses and only staying for a month.
 
I used to cut haul and block close to 20 cord a year alone for 2 houses for quite a few years plus barn chores, its a lot of work.
 
I really hate it not doing anything with all the Ash. Got real nice cherry logs I brought home from Ripley co. need to do something with them also. Got a large Ash I need to get down before the dead limbs start dropping and hit barn roof edge.
 
In 1984 we bought our current land with plans to build a new house. We talked about a wood fired boiler with natural bas as backup.
I had watched 2 friends spend a good part of their summers, after work and week-ends, cutting, splitting and hauling wood. That did not appeal to me. We had natural gas at our house and the new property had access to natural gas. 17 years at our first house and 36 years here, I have never regretted the decision (may change my mind with projected 15% increase).
My parents grew up with firewood for heat. Dad used to say wood offered the most warmth. Cut it, warm. Split it, warm. Stack it, warm. Carry it to the house, warm. Burn it, warm. Carry out ashes, warm.
 
Me and my neighbor went togather and built a wood furnace to heat hot water. We ran water lines to his house and my house. Put the furnace in my barn. Heated his house (3000 square feet) and my house (2500 square feet)and kept my barn (750 square feet) 55 degree all winter long. The whole thing paid for it's self in saving about the middle of February the first season. We used it nine years and burnt about 28 cords (4x4x8 ft.) a year. Got to old to do that much work but not sorry we did it. We also built your own log splitter that we called the Awesome log splitter. It had 22hp electric start engine, 4 inch diameter x 30 inch stroke cylinder, Two stage hydraulic pump, could split 2 way or 4 way,
Hydraulic log lift (could pick up 500 pound log), The tongue Could be removed put on front or back. A new splitter with every features our splitter had would cost over 9000 dollars if you could find one.
cvphoto102796.jpg
 
It is all about the choices we make.
We are on natural gas. Not sure what it costs on the budget plan as my wife pays the utilities. I think it is about $55 a month.
There is NO Way I would cut wood to save $55 a month. A lot of folks spend that much or more on cable tv. We don't spend money on that.
 
This will be the 21st heating Season on my Central Boiler. I turned 65 in August. I still like cutting wood, but when boiler finally fails I will be done. Wont replace it at my age. Did run natural gas to house a few years ago, but only use gas furnace prior to lighting boiler for the season. And the last two years wood has been harder to come by. Typically I have found all I needed by word of mouth, or free wood on places like Craigslist. I bought a 10 standard cord load yesterday, so I got some cutting to do, not much splitting though. Driver said he is hearing the same all over, people cant find it. Their company stopped taking orders as they cant provide anymore this year. Wife has talked about a pellet stove in the future. Time will tell.
 
We were out one day cutting up a huge elm tree for my dad and a friend of ours and his friends were all helping load, split and stack the wood. It was a massive amount of work. I still remember one of the guys saying I'm still trying to figure out how anybody thinks they save money by burning wood. We all busted out laughing because he hit the nail right on the head. One of our favorite jokes between myself and some of my friends is how much we all need to start burning wood. We figure the outdoor burner for $10,000. Now you need a couple of new Stihl chainsaws for about $700 more. Add on a new logsplitter for about $1500 and a dump trailer for $7500 and a pickup to haul it with. Need to take off every saturday at work because you need to cut wood so they give up time and a half and double time to cut wood to save money. Not to mention the large share of people I know that have them have no place at all to cut free wood. After all that you can load it 2 or 3 times a day in freezing rainy snowy weather and have your yard and house smell like woodsmoke all winter. And all the while trying desperatly not to get injured cutting and stacking wood all year. NO thanks, I did enough of that when we burned wood when I was a kid.
 

We're looking at massive inflation and I guarantee the cost of NG, propane, fuel oil and electricity is going to go up, up, up! It IS political, so we need to deal with it.

I'm on 342 acres with nothing but a little brush between me and Lake Ontario. The heating season runs from mid September to mid May. Most of my place is either woods or rough pasture with trees. We have no access to NG, solar is a joke here, wind still gets you into $$$ and massive investments. No one outside of a couple of villages with their own hydro plants uses electric for heat. So wood is a viable option. I know they aren't terribly efficient, but I want an outside boiler. I despise forced hot air heat, which is what we suffer with now off the basement wood furnace. My old farm house lends itself rather well to radiant floor heating on most of the ground floor and baseboard hot water elsewhere. Plus, my power bill runs at least $300 a month year round because of hot water heating, so a boiler with a domestic coil helps there too. I already have over 30 saws, a buzz saw, tractors, splitters, etc. What I want is to get the smoke, dirt and risk of chimney fire outside of the house. A boiler makes sense.

I'm almost 62. The day I can't do wood will be the day I start the decline into my grave!
 
We heated with wood alone for about 5 years. Replaced the wood furnace with a corn furnace. Made a system to move the corn from the wagon to the bin using a shop vac. Best heat we ever had and not much work. Took 1 beer to get ready for a week. Sadly corn ash turns out to be very corrosive and the furnace was junk after just 6 years. Now a wood cook stove and a parlor stove are still set up in the basement just in case but LP does the bulk of the work.
 
(quoted from post at 23:12:51 09/29/21) Me and my neighbor went togather and built a wood furnace to heat hot water. We ran water lines to his house and my house. Put the furnace in my barn. Heated his house (3000 square feet) and my house (2500 square feet)and kept my barn (750 square feet) 55 degree all winter long. The whole thing paid for it's self in saving about the middle of February the first season. We used it nine years and burnt about 28 cords (4x4x8 ft.) a year. Got to old to do that much work but not sorry we did it. We also built your own log splitter that we called the Awesome log splitter. It had 22hp electric start engine, 4 inch diameter x 30 inch stroke cylinder, Two stage hydraulic pump, could split 2 way or 4 way,
Hydraulic log lift (could pick up 500 pound log), The tongue Could be removed put on front or back. A new splitter with every features our splitter had would cost over 9000 dollars if you could find one.
<img src=https://www.yesterdaystractors.com/cvphotos/cvphoto102796.jpg>
Click to expand...

That's a mighty fine looking wood splitter.
 
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