Maybe…the newer stoves seem to be more efficient. I wish the box on mine was taller (more glass). I bought it cheap on clearance many years ago and started saving firewood up at the same time///which i had to stop doing because the pile was getting too big. Now i’ve burnt thru a lot of that pile. I plan on using my shed to store wood in the future. Should be able to store enough to easily last a winter. They are messy, but i thought my house would smell like smoke (not sure why) and that has not been the case at all. Overnight burns are by far the hardest. I can keep the heat up for half the night, but unless i would wake up and fill it again, its nothing but a few embers and ash by morning (when loaded up before bed and cranking).
I really would not mind using wood. I have plenty of oak and gum and pine if needed. I just don’t even have a woodburner now. Maybe I’ll invest in one. I would.only use it a dozen or less times a year. Seems wood would be perfect for that little use. And I can use a little shake in the middle of the night any way. maybe someone can pass on a little advice on a good woodburner alternative to an electric stove with fan? I really do love doing a wood fire a dozen or two times a year. Chopping some wood would do me.some.good as well.
Never had to do that. Seems it’s a great way to heat and builds character. I’m convinced it was good thing. Not some horrible inconvenience. But a great way to build character and respect for life and mother nature’s ways.
I once had my chest freezer in the garage. I don’t think it ever ran in the winter…i might have even unplugged it for Jan/Feb. I moved it back downstairs because in the summer it would run constantly in the summer heat.
got about 10in. but with the wind blowing the drifts were bad. went to start the tractor yesterday and nada. lights al work so it must be a bad starter or solenoid. luckily i have my neighbor that i clean out sometimes that blew out the yard for me.
A good deal of how easy or hard it is to heat with wood depends on the air tightness and insulation your house has (or doesn’t have). A leaky uninsulated place is going to take a bunch of fuel to keep warm, no matter what you are heating it with. Modern wood stoves are much cleaner and more efficient too. It’s not that hard to get a modern home that can be heated with wood overnight, without having someone get up one or more times to keep the fire fed (which I used to nightly when I lived back east, even when burning all oak and maple).
Lots of stoves out there to choose from, to a degree your location/type of wood might make a difference as to which stove you’d pick (out west much more soft woods vs back east). If you can, try for one that allows you to plumb in an outside air intake (eg sealed combustion, except when the door is open). More efficient and keeps the inside air less smokey.
Personally when we need heat, we rely mostly on our wood stove. We have radiant floor heating, which works, but if we are around the wood stove just seems to keep you warmer.
A home with an indoor wood stove needs at least some “leakiness”, if as you say the stove is not plumbed for an outside air intake. The air consumed and going out the chimney has to have come from somewhere…We have one as a fireplace insert we primarily just use on the coldest of days or when we simply want to see it. There’s just a different “feel” to the air warmed that way it seems like…
We still primarily heat with wood, via an outdoor wood stove though. No carrying wood into the house, hibernating bugs in it waking up, no smoke in the house, etc… We load it twice a day and it keeps us good and warm. ~180F water is constantly circulating from it into the basement where a water-to-air heat exchanger (HX) and air air handler do their thing. As well as pre-heating water before it enters the hot water heater.
Main point though, burning efficiency. The outdoor stove has a damper and blower. When the water temp drops to ~150F or so it kicks on a fan blowing air up from beneath the wood. The fire will rage then… Once it satisfies, the fan shuts off and the damper kills the fresh air supply. The fire basically goes out and embers remain. Until heat is required again and there’s a sudden inrush of air…
Ours is fairly efficient but is is a pre-2015 model so no “wood gasification”. Newer ones are multi-stage and burn off much of what would have otherwise went out the stack…
An OWB (Outdoor Wood Boiler, which is a misnomer since if the water boiled you’ve got problems) is likely far more common north of where we are. Our winters are cold, but nothing like the COLD I see some folks on here talking about. We don’t see negative temps every winter for instance…
They keep revising the weekend forecast colder and colder. Currently looking at -8 which is pushing the zone limit. Going to have to heap up the snow on the zone pushing perennials and hope for the best I guess.
Drove from here to Madison and back today…temps ranged from 5F when i started to a high of 13F down there and then back to 10F when i got back. Stiff north wind was blowing semis around on the interstate. Lots of sunshine///it makes you think its warmer out then it is. I saw some guys on my street putting siding on a house when i got back. No way man. no way. -6F tonite and 6F tomorrow.
I’m torn…i think i prefer cold and sunny and single digits over cloudy and 20F.
Pretty much “normal” for this time of year. I did see that the Twin Cities are on pace for one of the coldest Januarys. Funny since they’ve only been as low -18. We’ve had plenty of -20+s and a few -30+s.
More fun in store for tonight. It was in the low 40s today, so that melted off most the snow. But, it’s been raining for the last 4 hours, and the temps are falling, 35 now. It’s supposed to get down into the 20s, so this mess will turn frozen later tonight/tomorrow morn. Looking at about 1-3" of snow before it moves out. Will be an interesting commute in the morning (if I go in).
It’s gonna get really cold (for us anyways), with a low around 5 Friday night. Looks like we’re in for a cold spell for the next week, with the next chance for snow next Tue I think.
maybe someone can pass on a little advice on a good woodburner alternative to an electric stove with fan? I really do love doing a wood fire a dozen or two times a year. Chopping some wood would do me.some.good as well.
