Worth it to burn wood?

On Sun, 26 Sep 2004 16:08:30 GMT, Lewis Hartswick
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Actually, no. Its the badge we wear proudly..that we are compassionate and civilized. And its a good one.
However..when the credo is "To each according to his needs, from those according to his abilities" and enforced by the end of a gun..thats where things go a bit astray....
Gunner
Confronting Liberals with the facts of reality is very much akin to clubbing baby seals. It gets boring after a while, but because Liberals are so stupid it is easy work." Steven M. Barry

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being one
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Allergy or no, its still unhealthy, especially in fairly densely populated areas when everybody and his brother decides to burn wood during a cold air temperature inversion, regulations be damned.......
Its particularily bad when these are basically city folks on less than 1/2 acre lots that either dont know or dont damned about the importance of getting a hot fire going, keeping it stoked, using dry cured wood and all of the other things those of us grew up in the sticks around here take for granted as being simply common sense.
And with the ready availability of logging debris for wood fuel in our region, this has become quite a problem in the last couple decades all around the outskirts of any of the medium and larger cities.

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Can you say "Hello, PRC??"
Jim

On 22 Sep 2004 05:54:54 -0700, snipped-for-privacy@hotmail.com (Don) wrote:
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I have heated with wood for over 30 years now and would heat my house no other way permitting I have the health and capability to cut and split my own wood. I have total electric, so its used only if necessary, which probably has not been but a few hours in years and years. I turn on the electric once each season just to burn off accumulated oint etc and make sure its working, and thats it until the next year. I have my own woodsplitter, adn obtaiing wood certainly is not an issue, I try to keep as much wood cut split and stacked as possible (3 or 4 years worth on average) at all times, for those times that you just run into things you did ot expect and it hinders you from getting wood. I am now looking at probably having a few extra years woprth of wood once I get all the trees cut uip that old Ivan either took allthe way down or forced me to finish taking down.....27 at last count of oak in the 18 to 30 inch diameter most of them 26 or so inches in diameter and huge........I have a heap of pines to cut up and remove as well but it will nbot be used for firewood.
You would be better off with a free standing wood stove as they are much more efficient than any insert. You can but a chimney liner made of titanium and stainless that is one piece corrugated that is easily snaked down an existing chimney. Its called homesaver II. Kind of pricey but it carries a lifetime warranty and is the only one that states no chimney fire is capable of hurting it. If you have a triple pipe system now or an old masonaryt chimney this stuff will work perfect to insert inthe old flue opening. Its important to match ytour stoves recomended flue size to the chimney. A large or even 8" sq     masonary chimeny is not is not as good as a sized insulated homesaverII system is.
Having your own wood splitter and chainsaw and also a good source for your wood is a big plus. I especially like the 4o or so dollar electric bills in the fall and winter and early spring.Hate to think what it would be if I had to use the total electric heat system....... Visit my website: http://www.frugalmachinist.com Opinions expressed are those of my wife, I had no input whatsoever. Remove "nospam" from email addy.

I have a Wood/Coal insert that works great. thats how I have heated my house for the last 3 years. Burning wood is work, cutting, splitting, stacking, than loading in stove, keeping the stove going, but I have a lot of wood that I clean off my land so it beats lookig at a rotting pile. MOST of my heat comes from coal, cheap, much less work than wood, will burn for 24 hours and has a steady heat.
(Don) wrote:
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my
chimney

snipped-for-privacy@hotmail.com says...
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Speaking of wood splitters, anyone interested in seeing the pics of one I built 30 years ago? Any interest I'll post them to the drop box, or give a link.

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YES. Please. Thanks, ERS

If you go with wood heat, I will GIVE you a limitless supply of kiln-dried hardwood. You only have to haul it home. Hope you're close to Cleveland!
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I live in a 2184' two-story (including basement) in SW PA which is an old farm house (walls not insulated too well) and the first year we lived here (1977) went through $1000 of heating oil.... oil fired hot-water heat. Installed wood burner and have since upgraded to a larger one and have been cutting/splitting/ stacking wood ever since. I have a shed built under my deck which holds about 13 cords of wood and admittedly, there are a few winters where we don't burn it all. We both work and the oil fired system will run a few times throughout the day and we fire up when we get home and burn it all night long. We won't burn the wood burner when we aren't here (safety concerns). Oil bill has dropped to about $300/year (but that's including the price increase over the years). Have a truck, trailer, good saw, 24T logsplitter and still good-enough health to keep doing it. I feel that it not only saves me money but that the house is considerably more comfortable burning the wood. I use a 30 gallon galvanized trash can for the ashes and only get about 1-1/2 trashcans throughout the winter - so the ashes aren't really a problem. I try to burn only oak, cherry, locust. The wood burner is piped into the brick chimney going up through the center of the house, brick stays warm, so creosote has not been a problem. Wood burner burns hot enough also to help eliminate the creosote problem. I also built a "heat-exchanger" of sorts from the hot water heating system by using a copper piping gridwork over top of the wood burner to capture some of the heat and use the circulator pump on the furnace to circulate the warmed water throughout the house.... also lets the oil-fired system work a little easier by "pre-warming" the water. Yeah... it's still work, but I've still got good enough health to gather the wood and let's face it - anything you want - ya gotta work for... Ken (nice and toasty in the winter) Sterling

If you want the pure economic calc it goes something like this: A full cord of dry hardwood runs around 3500 pounds and has 5300 Btu's per pound. Translate that to oil and you get 220 gallons of fuel oil = 1 dry cord. Propane has less Btu's per pound (forget the conversion) but it translates to something like 300 gallons of propane = 1 cord of wood.
Most newer oil/propane furnaces run in the 80% to 90% effiency range, you need to have a good wood furnace to get that high with wood.
So you need to ask yourself if you can cut, spit, haul, tend, sweep the floor, deal with smoke (ask the spouse on that one!),and dispose of the ashes for what you save in fuel. The answer tends to be yes but you have to value your time and convience fairly low. If you have some downtime between jobs, go for it. If that is your busy time of year, not a chance.
In northern Minnesota the rule of thumb is that you need 10 full cords of wood to heat a 3 bedroom house for the winter. That is 35,000 pounds dry, 60,000 pounds green EACH year. Only way to make that work is if you have equipment to move and cut it. A friend had a wood burning boiler to augment his oil fired unit. The local pulp wood cutters would deliver a full 7 cords of off cut hard wood to his back yard, right next to his wood shed for $35 to $50 a cord. (Green in 8' sticks) Make 4 cuts,split in half, stack for one year. About as easy as it gets. He did that for several years, finally quit, too much muss, fuss, and effort.
Don wrote:
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Don wrote:
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If you like cutting wood cut some and sell it to the neighbors with wood stoves. Spend the money on better insulation on your house. Wood stoves are nice for a while but in a couple of years the become a real pain with the dirt of the ashes and the extra dust in the house, as well as the extra worry about fires. A real cheap trick to save a lot of heat is to put a extra acrylic sheet in the windows and seal it, or you could go for a better insulated window and make sure it is installed properly with full caulking and insulation around the perimeter of it. Oh yes if you go with wood make sure you get a CO alarm system in addition to a smoke and heat alarm.
John