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A question for those who heat primarily with wood. I have a 3 bedroom home built in 1970 which means it doesn`t have a whole lot of insulation and I use 5-6 cords per year.This gives me about 70-80% of my heat,the remainder coming from fuel oil. Does this sound like an average amount of wood? An aquaintaince of mine makes the claim that he`s got a very efficient woodstove and he`s burning only 2 cords a season for all of his heating needs. I have a hard time believing that.Any opinions? I should mention that I live in southwestern Pa. where the winters are generally not extreme with the exception of this year.
When we did all of our heating with the woodstove, with no other backup heat, we used about two cords a year. You all probably have a bit more cold than us but we're in zone 6, in the mountains. This is a pretty wheezy 150 year old farmhouse.
What kind of wood are you burning? Some woods burn a lot hotter than others and maybe that's the problem. You also need to make sure your wood is seasoned but I assume you already know that.
Hi Gerard, we have a three bedroom cabin that's 1,440sq.ft. that we heat with a the Blaze King wood stove and we live at 7,000' in northern Arizona. We usually burn about 2 and at most 3 cords a year. We heat completely with wood. The only time we turn on the furnace is when we're going into town and we are cat sitting our Grand Kitty. Our temps have dropped to 7° and at Christmas, we had 71.5mph wind gusts!
Hi, we have an 1800 sq foot home with an equally large basement with the woodstove. We have the woodstove in the basement and use it for about 80% of our heat.
We go through about 8-10 face cord a season. (season starting in Oct and ending May) We get very cold here. When it gets under 20' cloudy windy or under 10' in sunshine, our furnace will run. We burn about 1/2 hardwood and 1/2 poplar which we harvest on our own property.
I think it depends on the type of woodstove, and the way the wood is cut. Wood cut into smaller pieces (slabwood, or spit into smaller chunks) of course will burn faster than larger pieces.
We have found large poplar burns well split just once (dried well) hardwoods as large as they will fit in the stove hold well. Of course we always burn less when we are gone all day to work and the fire burns down to coals by the time we get home.
We have been very happy with our woodstove. Not only have we saved many many dollars in natural gas heat, our basement is nice and toasty with the floors of the upstairs nice and warm. We often sit by the fire in the evening to go upstairs to bed in a cooler setting making it easier to sleep.
We cut vents through the floor to the upstairs for heat to come up through the floor. This also helped with heating the upstairs.
this is an interesting question. we have a medium sized woodstove, we paid $400 for it used, from
tractor supply. our house is 1800 sf and was built as a modular construction home. we also have
a full basement but no attic, it is a ranch.
firstly, with our stove, I fill it maybe, 2 1/2 times per day. once in the morning, I sift for ash/good coals,
and then fill with wood. I might put in some logs about 3-4pm. then, at night, we put in more logs, I
like all nightters, one or two big honkin ones, but my husband with his bad back can't do it anymore.
ok, these fills last and warm our house to the point where we need to open a door to let some heat
out.
we go through exactly 3 cords a winter, from october to end of march. some wood is left over, and
its never too much.
this little stove is expected to heat an addition of about 20 by 30 two levels also we are going to
build and I don't think it will have a problem it heating it.
by the way, I do use a window fan to push the heat if I am feeling a chill in one room or another, but
that is rare.
We live in midcoastal Maine on a small farm near the top of a mountian. Most of my wood comes from fruit tree pruning and blowdowns. At any given time I probably have about 12 cords in piles, another cord cut, split and stored along one wall of the garage going into its third year of drying and a cord in the bustle in its second year of drying.
I keep about 6 trash cans full of kindling for the stoves and an equal number of boxes
sized to feed a stove. I put the cubit long stove lengths in trash cans to season and then break them down to cardboard boxes. I figure about 1 box per day per stove.
I have one wood stove in the upper shop, a double barrel stove in the barn and a sauna stove. There is a home clarion in the kitchen and a fireplace in the living room. We begin using them about the first of October and continue through May.
The home clarion is used for heating, baking and cooking so its going more or less constantly. The fireplace gets used if its cold or if we are entertaining and the shop stove when I'm in there working on the weekends. When my wife is baking she prefers alder which burns like gasoline to get the stove going and then some cherry, oak or maple to heat finishing off with apple, pear or plum to bake and warm
Most of my apple wood gets sorted out according to whether I can saw it, plane it, turn it or burn it with only the twigs getting burned most of the time.
I use the branches of prunings and blowdowns for kindling, delimbing them first and drying them for a year or two, then cutting the poles to managable length with a chain saw and stove length with a radial arm or table saw.
Most of the oak, ash, beech, birch, maple and pine gets sorted according to whether I can use it for a post, beam, pole, rail or board first and then what remains becomes firewood.
