How do you heat?

[Dave]

We have plenty of junipar to cut for fire wood. We couldn't begin to burn it all in a life time. The problem is that it has limbs as big as my leg. Splitting by hand is out of the question. Renting a splitter cost a lot and it is an hour each way to get it and take it back. That 2 hours counts against the rent time. Neighbor has one he lets people use. But too many neighbors borrow it. It was December by the time we got it and I had to do repairs to it. It doesn't like to start when cold. It has been cold. I have decided that I need to go buy a splitter.

 

[1982vett]

I do have a fireplace as well as electric heat. Our first winter here and we've not used it. (We've not gotten any firewood either.) The only wood heat I ever had was an old box stove type heater one year that ate wood like a hungry swarm of ravenous termites..
Fireplace has some kind of fan...not sure what it does. The switch on the wall is labeled "flue fan" so I assumed it was to help draw of the chimney but when I turned it on, the air seems to be coming out a set of vents along the top of the fireplace. Is it to push warm air out into the room? edjumacate me.. Not mine but looks like this:
View attachment 24285

With a fire in it and the fan is on, it turns your fireplace into a forced air heater.

 

[alacowman1]

Majority is Wood..with some occasional electric added in like in the last few…but that wood heat warms all the way to the bones..

 

[snakegap1]

I have one as well. If you have a farm you might as well have wood heat.

What model, by who? I have propane central unit and a large fireplace and I have thought of putting in an insert but the idea of keeping most of the mess outside and still keeping an open fireplace when I want a fire sounds good. I live at the base of a mountain and I have plenty of woods. Also how long have you been running the unit? Thanks

 

[DNelson]

duel fuel. electric baseboard main heat, fuel oil back up. rarely use fuel oil. Electric is at a reduced rate for dual fuel. Minnesota winters cost me $250 to $300 per month from November to April for heat by electric.

 

[Silver]

Electricity is $.1132 per kw/h here so I try to stay away from it.

 

[Atimm693]

Electric mini split, my place is small. The A/C is killer but the heat is not that great once you get very far below freezing. I have an electric fireplace deal as a supplement.

Dad has always heated with wood and has an outdoor boiler now. You lose some efficiency, but the mess is left outside, you can burn much longer/bigger pieces of wood, it's safer to have the fire outside, and you have the options for in-floor heat and hot water.

Further north I think it's a good option, but I don't think it's really justifiable for the few weeks of really cold weather we get every year in Missouri.

 

[DNelson]

Electricity is $.1132 per kw/h here so I try to stay away from it.

Mine is .0788 per KWH combined basic and low cost dual fuel heat, however the basic rate is .1040 KWH. About 25% is basic and 75% is heat. 1400 sf home.

 

[Dave]

My electric is .0799 per KWH but I don't have electric heat. Propane was $2.54 plus a $70 annual tank rental. Firewood was 2 gallons of saw gas. Non ethanol gas in the saw was $6.00 a gallon. So not much money but some work involved.
I don't remember if I posted this picture here but that juniper was 44 inches on the stump. Two thirds of our winter wood came from that one tree.

 

[bbirder]

My electric is .0799 per KWH but I don't have electric heat. Propane was $2.54 plus a $70 annual tank rental. Firewood was 2 gallons of saw gas. Non ethanol gas in the saw was $6.00 a gallon. So not much money but some work involved.
I don't remember if I posted this picture here but that juniper was 44 inches on the stump. Two thirds of our winter wood came from that one tree.View attachment 24302

Dave, Is Juniper not like Pine with a lot of sap. We don't burn pine in our fireplaces down south due to the sap causing a lot of smoke and smell when the fire gets to it.

 

[shaz]

It's made by Hardy Manufacturing. Very common around here . They went out of business a while ago

 

[Named'em Tamed'em]

Dave, Is Juniper not like Pine with a lot of sap. We don't burn pine in our fireplaces down south due to the sap causing a lot of smoke and smell when the fire gets to it.

Juniper in eastern Oregon is a giant water gobbling weed for the most part.

 

[Dave]

Dave, Is Juniper not like Pine with a lot of sap. We don't burn pine in our fireplaces down south due to the sap causing a lot of smoke and smell when the fire gets to it.

No sap to speak of. Certainly not like pine. The tree in that picture I had cut off 4 or 5 rounds when I took that picture. The next step one had better be wearing rubber boots. There is water on the surface and very sticky mud. The reason that one grew so big is there are a couple of huge roots headed straight toward that water. The experts (?) claim that a big juniper will drink 100 gallons of water a day which is a lot of water here in the desert.

 

[Lee VanRoss]

Is there any one on here who has a tulikivi (sp) or familiar with them? I hear they are good.

 

[Big Creek]

i built my house in 1988 and installed a central wood heat system at the same time. The wood furnace heats my house and hot water ( year round). Have a homemade wood stove that keeps my shop warm in the winter. My utility bills run about $80/ month in the winter. Use about 6-8 cords of wood per year but I can always find tops from logging or blow down for free. Yep, it is some work but I feel like moving helps to keep me young. I will continue to burn wood as long as my body allows me too.

 

[bigbluegrass]

I mainly use wood to heat with an outdoor wood boiler/furnace. I have back-up propane heat and an air to air heat pump. I do use the heat pump in the fall and spring so I can shut the outdoor wood boiler off. Wood is mainly used for the coldest part of winter.

We have plenty of trees here and even if I wasn't burning wood I would be running a chainsaw just to keep trees off the fences and keep the place cleaned up. Might as well get some use of the wood. I can usually heat my house with the wood cut from 2 gallons of chainsaw gas.

 

[Ouachita]

Now that my firewood splitters are grown up and married off, I'm looking for something easier, even if it cost more. Up until the last couple years, we've always cut our own on the place. I can buy it locally, but it's $70-80 per rick when split and delivered. I stack it myself.

Hot August, 17 years ago. We had a large red oak blow down in a recently cleared area.

 

[greybeard]

exploitation of child labor!!!!!
No wonder they r-u-n-n-o-f-t and found someone to marry.

 

[Lucky_P]

Ground-source heatpump in the main home, built in 1994.
In-floor hot water radiant heat in the big sunroom (added in 2003) where we spend 90% of our time.
Put in a Buck Stove 91 Catalytic insert in the fireplace in the main house, this summer... has been keeping the entire main floor(1200sqft) between 62 & 70... even when we had -3F the other night. It'll make you sweat if you're sitting in the room in front of the fireplace. Upstairs is staying above 60, just from hot air rising from downstairs.
Kicked the thermostats on the geo heatpump up to 65 when we were in that bad cold snap, and they kicked on from time to time, but nothing like before we put in the woodburner.

 

[Little Joe]

I heat the upper part of our home with a central Heat pump and have a blue flame propane heater in the basement to heat it, of course the heat from the basement rises to help heat upstairs. When we first bought this house it had a wood burning stove in the basement,11 electric baseboard heaters, 2 blueflame propane heaters and 2 small window units to cool with. As I've mentioned I'm head of maintenance at a school now but my background was HVAC, so the first year that I was doing HVAC work I installed central heat and air in my own house and got rid of the baseboard heaters and window units, and then later on during a remodel took out the wood heater and one of the blue flame stoves. Taking out the wood heat made my insurance drop considerably. If it's ging to be below freezing several days I always recommend turning a heat pump to Auxillary/Emergency heat on the thermostat. Heat pump is not efficient below freezing and ice building on the coils outside will cause major problems.
When I had my HVAC business, I installed several of what we call dual fuel systems. You pair a heat pump with a gas furnace ( I installed 90% furnace instead of traditional 80%), install a thermostat outside so that if it gets below freezing it kicks on the gas heat. Basically replaces the electric backup strips with propane heat. A little more pricey up front but everyone I installed them for loved them. Those electric strips will eat into your pocketbook if you use them much and gas heat is much warmer.