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Heating With Wood ?

Started by logbutcher, November 09, 2006, 08:58:08 AM

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logbutcher

Are you heating your house with wood ?
We're trying for legislation for tax credits for wood heat here in Maine, and need some info on how and why people use wood for heating, or not.

1. What % of your heat is with any kind of wood fuel - stoves, outdoor boilers, furnace ?
   ( Note: if your gas/oil/electric thermostat is kept open, that's not  "heating with wood " 24/7)

2. Where do get wood ?  Cut it. Buy it. Harvest your own from woodlots.

3. Wood species used and %'s of each kind.

4. Kind of wood heater--likes and dislikes.

5. If you don't heat using wood 100%, or for entertainment or supplement, then why ?
   For example: wood is polluting, dirty, too much work, don't have the time, etc....

Thanks. 8)


SwampDonkey

1. 90 % by wood with a wood burning furnace, 10 % with stove oil in an oil furnace. Thermostat on the oil furnace kept on 60 F when away.

2. Buy it cut, split and delivered. I rank it up to dry until September.

3. rock maple (60 %), beech (30 %), yellow birch (10 %), sometimes less than 1% white ash mixed in. Depends on the run of wood from supplier.

4. wood furnace by Enterprice/Fawcett in Sackville, NB. They make great stoves, can't complain.

5. Got all the time in the world. Only takes 3 or 4 part days to stow away my winter's wood. Can't beat wood heat. ;D
"No amount of belief makes something a fact." James Randi

1 Thessalonians 5:21

2020 Polaris Ranger 570 to forward firewood, Husqvarna 555 XT Pro, Stihl FS560 clearing saw and continuously thinning my ground, on the side. Grow them trees. (((o)))

OneWithWood

1. 95+% wood.  Less than 5% LPG.  In the transition months where we only need a little   heat early morning we use the LPG and save the wood for the colder days.

2.  The wood is predominantly from our woodlot.  Occasionally someone close by will have a harvest and want tops removed which I will do for the firewood if I do not have wood to work up from our property.

3.  White oak, red oak, hard maple, beech, hickory.  The percentage depends on what I am working with.

4.  Outdoor wood boiler by Central Boiler.  Just installed a larger unit to replace a CB we had for ten years.  We heat our house, domestic H2O and two greenhouses.  We have been very happy with Central Boiler.

5.  We use wood because we do not like to waste anything and we believe it is environmentaly more friendly than commercial power.
One With Wood
LT40HDG25, Woodmizer DH4000 Kiln

sawguy21

OWW, wood burning appliances are banned in homes in many areas here because of smoke particulate in the air. Older ones are grandfathered but they cannot be replaced with another.
old age and treachery will always overcome youth and enthusiasm

OneWithWood

They have floated that same idea here but hopefully it won't fly.  I can see restrictions in towns and additions but I live in the sticks with no one to bother.  If you fire the stove properly there is very little particulate and a good deal less pollution than from oil or gas.  The difference is that wood smoke is often more visable, especially when the fire is not maintained properly.  When our stove is up to temp there is no smoke, just a waviness to the air above the stack.
One With Wood
LT40HDG25, Woodmizer DH4000 Kiln

ohsoloco

1. I heat 100% with a wood stove.  House is fitted with electric baseboards, but I'm too stubborn to use them, even if it's just to take the chill off.  Never been away from the house long enough to use them.

2. I harvest all of the dead wood out of my woodlot that I can.  There's only about 3-3.5 acres of woods, so in the two years I've been there I have that pretty well cleaned up.  The rest comes from slabs from the sawmill, as well as friends that do tree removals. 

3. A little over half of the wood I burn is oak, and the rest is typically ash, cherry, walnut, and maple. 

4.  Kodiak wood stove.  The only thing I don't care for about my stove is that the wood gets put in the stove sideways.  If the stove is up to temp I usually have to use welding gloves to load wood.  I'm heating an 816 sq. ft. house and full basement....stove is in the basement. 


KENROD

1 100% wood heat
2 cut my own wood usually tops or downed trees
3 oak, hickery, black locust, osage orange % varies
4 Outdoor boiler I really like it, fill it once or twice a day depending on temp.

crtreedude

Nope, don't heat with wood, don't heat with gas or oil. Don't heat with nothing.

Don't need heat. Just thought you all would like to know  ;D - but I am going to use wood in my smoker!

So, how did I end up here anyway?

thurlow

Quote from: crtreedude on November 09, 2006, 12:48:15 PM
Nope, don't heat with wood, don't heat with gas or oil. Don't heat with nothing.
Don't need heat. 

Go ahead and rub it in; that's alright. 8)  Won't be long 'til we'll be just as warm..........if you can believe the former "next president of the United States". ;D
Here's to us and those like us; DanG few of us left!

RSteiner

We have been heating our house with only wood for the past 32 winters.  We currently do not have any other heating system which has created some problem getting house insurance.  Most insurance companys want to know that your pipes are not going to freeze should the fire go out.

I gather my fire wood from a number of different places.  In the past 5 years 75% is from tops and other stems left from a logging operation on my neighbors land.  The other 25% came from thinning and culling some tof the same neighbors 350 acres.  I do have a 20 acre woodlot that I have not cut on for a while.

We use three wood stoves.  There is an older box type stove in the basement which burns most of the time, a Consolidated Duchwest in the mudroom for when the weather gets real cold, and an old Glenwood Model K kitchen stove that warms us and cooks our food durning the cold months.  I like the stoves we have.

60% of the wood we burn is maple, mostly soft, 30% is red oak, and the rest is a mixture of ash, birch both white and black, a little cherry and some beach.  I like burning wood it has a special warmth and I like cuting and splitting it too.

Randy
Randy

crtreedude

Now, no one would think that I would be smug down here about our lack of snow - surely not!  ::)
So, how did I end up here anyway?

SwampDonkey

Maybe when one of them volcanoes starts grow'n down there for a few thousand years you'll have some snow. After all, Africa has snow and a glacier.  ;D
"No amount of belief makes something a fact." James Randi

1 Thessalonians 5:21

2020 Polaris Ranger 570 to forward firewood, Husqvarna 555 XT Pro, Stihl FS560 clearing saw and continuously thinning my ground, on the side. Grow them trees. (((o)))

OneWithWood

Keep it up Fred and you may find yourself dodging lava and red hot boulders  :D
One With Wood
LT40HDG25, Woodmizer DH4000 Kiln

crtreedude

Arenal Volcano will get Harold before it gets me...

Give ole Arenal another hundred years and it just might have snow!

So, how did I end up here anyway?

rebocardo

1. 100% with wood heat. I do turn on a fan to circulate it in the house.
2. tree jobs - I cut it.
3. 80% oak, sweetgum, cedar, pretty much anything other then pine.
4. wood stove - all likes

breederman

100% with wood,cut from thinnings,tops, and stuff from our 20 acre lot.type varies but probably about equal amounts of soft maple, hard[sugar] maple,cherry,and oak[mostly white but some red] also some thorn apple and other junk in the fall and spring when all we need is a little warm up.
  It is all burned in a Kalamazoo forced hot air wood/oil/coal furnace in the basement. I like the feel of wood heat and I like to cut firewood so it kind of works out! ;D  The furnace may not be as efficiant as some of the fancier ones, but then there has been no maintanence costs in 20 years other than new stove pipes every 2 or 3 years. No heat exchanger to rot etc.
  The only real disadvantage is that if we do need to be away we have to get someone to fix the fire if there is a danger of pipes freezing.  Now that the kids are all out of the house we may need to get the oil burner serviced to give us more flexability in going away but it has not been a problem yet.
Together we got this !

logbutcher

Quote from: RSteiner on November 09, 2006, 01:22:35 PM
We have been heating our house with only wood for the past 32 winters.  We currently do not have any other heating system which has created some problem getting house insurance.  Most insurance companys want to know that your pipes are not going to freeze should the fire go out.
60% of the wood we burn is maple, mostly soft, 30% is red oak, and the rest is a mixture of ash, birch both white and black, a little cherry and some beach.  I like burning wood it has a special warmth and I like cuting and splitting it too.
Randy
Randy:
We had the same problem in the early 80's doing a complete renovation from camp to home in northern Massachusetts. Solution: put in a simple thru-the-wall gas heater (call it your "furnace"). Empire brands are around $500. plus the LP tank. Or, what we did, install electric baseboard units around the house since you have power. That's the easiest and least expensive. Then you tell Mr. Insirance that you have "electric heating". We never used it.
Home insurance for us was a needed must: fire, theft, liability. Shop way around for the best deals.
Where are you ?

Engineer

Are you heating your house with wood ?
We're trying for legislation for tax credits for wood heat here in Maine, and need some info on how and why people use wood for heating, or not.

1. What % of your heat is with any kind of wood fuel - stoves, outdoor boilers, furnace ?

Current home - maybe 1% wood heat.  We rarely use the fireplace.
New home - 100% wood heat, plus hot water.

2. Where do get wood ?  Cut it. Buy it. Harvest your own from woodlots.

Have about 40 acres on three properties to cut from, plus slabs from sawmill. 

3. Wood species used and %'s of each kind.

Right now, 50% pine and 50% mixed hardwoods.  Likely to stay that way, most hardwoods will be maple, oak or cherry.

4. Kind of wood heater--likes and dislikes.

Central Boiler Dual-Fuel Classic 5648.   I haven't found anything yet that I dislike about it.

5. If you don't heat using wood 100%, or for entertainment or supplement, then why ?

Current house is oil fired, the fireplace is inefficient and dirty and only really gets used on a frosty winter weekend.

thecfarm

 
1.  I would guess at 80% of the time we burn wood.

2. I cut it off from my land.Right now I'm clearing an old pasture off.

3. About 80% white maple,rest is ash,oak.I try to leave the oak when I am clearing
    the pasture.The deer like them,but sometimes they are in the way or it's not a
    good one.

4.We have a old cook stove that we keep going all winter and a Asley stove in the
    basement.This is where I burn all my slabs.We only use this on really cold
    days.I've been sawing hemlock and that
    makes for some good coals.Much better than white pine.

5. We leave the house all day and will put the oil thomstat up a little.If we didn't have
    oil we would get by just fine with the cook stove.Just would be a little cool when
    we get home.

   
Model 6020-20hp Manual Thomas bandsaw,TC40A 4wd 40 hp New Holland tractor, 450 Norse Winch, Heatmor 400 OWB,YCC 1978-79

Paul_H

1. We burn wood for 70-80% of our heat but get lazy in late Spring and don't use it as much.

2. We cut firewood from mill slabs and pulp logs and other logging waste.I still have about 40 m3 of logs left out back that will get cut and split this winter and burned next Fall.

3. 95% Douglas Fir with a bit of Birch,Alder and Red Cedar thrown in the mix but I'd burn DanG near anything if I had to.

4. We have a Valley Comfort wood/electric forced air.The first one I had bought was an add on to a oil furnace back in 1984.They are efficient and pass BC's enviromental laws.
I wanted forced air so as to keep the mess out in the mud room just in the back door.We like ours.
Science isn't meant to be trusted it's to be tested

sharp edge

1) 99+%  25yrs. in this 2,000 sqft house. Heating with wood has been a family tradition for the last 10,000 years with us.
2) Woodlot- Been drying the wood standing up(taking a ring of bark off and cutting the center out) using a pickaruine and chainsawhorse to make wood cutting easier.
3)White pine slabs, Pople, White birch, Red maple, Iron wood,& Oak witch smokes the most.
4) Mendota fireplace & a big airduct under the slab of the house witch acts as a heat sink.

In the shop, I use a barrel wood stove.  I'm tring to get wood vingar off the chinmey.
That I will use in the garden next summer as a pesticide & fertilizer

To get wood vingar from China it would cost about $30 a quart.
The stroke of a pen is mighter than the stroke of a sword, but we like pictures.
91' escort powered A-14 belsaw, JD 350-c cat with jamer and dray, 12" powermatic planer

beenthere

"wood vinegar"   
Have not heard of making it off the chimney, but only from charcoal. Do you use the creosote that builds up in the chimney when burning green wood?  And didn't know it was a pesticide or fertilizer. Interesting.
south central Wisconsin
It may be that my sole purpose in life is simply to serve as a warning to others

Paul_H

What is wood vinegar? I've never heard of it smiley_headscratch
Science isn't meant to be trusted it's to be tested

sharp edge

Its new to me too. You would have to look it up with a search engine to fine more about it . Must people think that stuf running down the chimmy is some kind of poison, but the people in the far east realy like it.
The stroke of a pen is mighter than the stroke of a sword, but we like pictures.
91' escort powered A-14 belsaw, JD 350-c cat with jamer and dray, 12" powermatic planer

Paul_H

Pardon my manners,I see it's your 3rd post.

Welcome to the forum sharp edge! :)
Science isn't meant to be trusted it's to be tested

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