The Forestry Forum

It's dat time of year again, time ta make da firewood.  :)

 You missed my option.   I like to cook on it.  :D  Slabs make good steaks. ;D

Start a thread about keepin' warm and we are already on ta food.  :D  But I gotta admitt a good meal in da belly does give ya dat warm feelin'.   :)

I'm with Tom!

     I put in a furnace last year after heating totally with wood for 28 years.When it got down to 10 degees I built a fire in the stove and never let it go out till april.You just can,t beat a good wood fire for heat.I imagine with fuel prices goin crazy,a lota people might be lookin into wood heat this year.           

Well, you kind of left me out too.  We heat with wood at the camp.  We cook with wood at the camp and the trailer.  :D  Right now we heat with propane at the trailer, but are seriously thinking of putting in a wood heater.  The price of propane is getting out of hand during the winter. >:(

I heat my house, my shop and the kids house next door ;)  I burn LOTSof wood :o

No choice for me either.  I used to heat entirely with wood.  Now, I never heat with wood.  In the next couple years, I plan on heating with wood again.  Seems to be a love hate thing :D

I voted 'totally' with wood, but I do have a gas backup that I can switch to if away for more than 8-10 hours.  I heat water and pump the water in three zones in a closed system. Worked well for going on 30 years (where did that time go  ::) ).
There is also wood heat pre-warming cold water in a 30 gal tank on its way to the domestic hot water heater (gas) but with two of us, it handles most of the hot water demand.

Heating with wood has worked out very well for me, and we really miss the wood heat warmth in the house when for some reason the gas system is heating. We can maintain a even 72° F through the winter, which can be -25° F.

Handling split wood on pallets has eliminated a lot of handling of the wood, when stacked on the pallets green from the splitter and dried min. of two years.

I heat w/ wood and have an oil backup. Forced hot water. also have a fireplace. The shop is heated w/a large wood stove. thinking of adding some thermal storage. for the over nights. also may add some solar.
looking into bio fuels to replace #2 oil.

I have a fireplace in the living room, woodstoves in the great room and basement. The main heat has always been oil but I hope to burn much more wood this year. Oh yea, wood stove in the shop.

Jon

Current house has a fireplace that we use two or three times a winter, otherwise it's oil all the way, and I hate it.

New house has a Central Boiler unit with propane backup, heating 4300 sf house and hot water, also will be heating a shop and garage with it.  I have too much wood, so it's a logical use.

I'm with Tom.... My BBQ gives my that warm feeling every time I eat some meat of'n it.

QuoteSlabs make good steaks.  ;D

I dunno 'bout dat.......

It sounds like ya' would git too much fiber in yer diet eatin' slabs disguised as steaks.  :D

An dey gots to be tough ta' chaw on .......  ::)

I am thinking about starting to heat with wood also.  I priced propane in our area (Central Okla) and it was 2.07 a gallon, no telling what its going to be this winter. 

DISCRIMINATION AGAINST TROPICAL PEOPLE!

Where is the option for "We don't need no stinking heat!"  :D

However, for a few years in Ithaca NY, we heated only with wood - we had backup, but we never used it. 8 cords a year if I remember correctly.

Guess what I did on weekends.

We use wood for cooking on the fincas at times and we are looking into using it for a few kilns.

 Forced air unit in the house and one in the shop ....   Aint noting like wood heat , I do have electric unit on top of house furnace for back up when we go away .

We have geothermal heat but have a woodburner for when there is a power outage.  When It gets in the the teens and lower the geo won't keep up so we used to burn Kero.  When we bought the sawmill figured might as well quite buying the kero and use wood.  Neither of us had used wood heat before.  we like it a lot.

I heat entirely with wood.  When I bought my house last summer it only had electric heat, but was set up in the basement for a wood or coal stove  :)  Maybe I am a little stubborn  ::) but I didn't use the electric heat at all last year, even if I just needed to take the chill out of the house.  I burned about five cords last year, and have 4-5 cords ready to burn for this winter. 

My parents always used electric heat.  I gotta say I don't miss being cold one minute, then sweating ten minutes later before the thermostat kicks off  :D 

Been burning wood since the seventies. In the first home I had a fireplace with a Heatlator. Wasn't very efficient.
Next home had a homemade woodstove in the basement.
Where I am now I built a stone enclosure beside the fireplace for a woodstove. We ran duct work from the hot air system to distribute the heat. When it is cold I put the furnace fan control in continues mode and it circulates the heat. 
We leave the furnace on so that when the wood fire goes out the pipes don't freeze.

Voted for heat totally with wood.

Couldn't check the "other uses for wood in the house" box but it also is the heat source for my hot water.

This gas/oil spike will only impact the chain saw and splitter costs  8)

We began burning wood in the 70's. We have propane back-up, but 99% of our heat comes from wood.  We also preheat our hot water with wood furnace. The increasing propane prices make the stack or firewood from our TSI work look reallly good.  :)

Received a question about stacking split wood on pallets to dry and to move to the house.
I don't go far and I don't go fast, and so far its worked not to tie it down someway.
(https://forestryforum.com/gallery/albums/userpics/10180/PalletWooda.jpg)

This is how I palletize the junk wood and limbwood, using three pallets to corral the wood. ¼"threaded rod to hold the two lightweight pallets together seems to do the trick.
(https://forestryforum.com/gallery/albums/userpics/10180/Pallet_smallwooda.JPG)

The wood boiler I have used for almost 30 years, with the 30 gal hotwater pre-heat tank behind it, and the gas boiler behind in the background.
(https://forestryforum.com/gallery/albums/userpics/10180/WoodboilerbaFF.jpg)

Nice rig beenthere 8)
Recon your winter utility is about 50 buck for electric? :o

Buzz
I wish it were  :)
I think that $50 just covers the computer use.  ::) :)

We heat with wood but do have a back up of a propane furnce  use about 80 gallons a year to heat and cook with
Dave

Heat with oil furnace, forced air, plus a small basement woodstove.

Lately have been seriously looking into dual fuel furnace (oil/wood) from yukon-eage.

Anyone got one?

Greg

Greg, about 10 years ago I took the wood stove out upstairs & bought a Harmon wood/coal  boiler - best move ever.  It's plumbed into the oil boiler, if the wood fire gets too low the oil comes on & I just cringe -  >:(  All the mess is in the basement now, no more carring wood through the house, and best of all - "free" hot water from Oct - April.   

crtreedude,
Where were you in Ithaca? I live about 12 miles south of the city, near Arnot Forest.  My shop is 3 miles south of town on rt 13. When were you here? My dad was a IPD officer from '65 to '87 or '88. Seems like he knows everyone!

We started burning wood last year. Only used about 75 gal. of fuel as back up, mostly when we were in Canada snowmobiling.
mh

1oo% wood. Our furnace is a combo wood, coal, oil.The oil burner hasn't had four full tanks through it in almost twenty years,none in the last ten or so.Never could sleep with it running because the sound of money burning would wake me up out of a sound sleep! :D Tried burning coal once I ain't smart enough to make that work. :( 
  We may burn a little oil now as we leave for Lynchburg Va.In the morning to take the last of the girls to college,so mom and I might have some time to get away this winter.With all three in collage now it is going to get mighty quiet around here!

We only use wood for heating during winter only and normally only at night or first thing in the morning.

Current temps are 0c to 10c at night and 25c plus daytime.  Kids complain that their rooms are cold in the morning at at bed time so we are looking at a woodburn oven with back boilder so we can heat our water and central heating by wood.  Normal hot water is solar with electric backup but with a back boilder we should not need any electric except pumps.

We have so many heads on the ground (about 500 tons) not being used I feel its criminal but we cant give the wood away.  Firewood is only AUD$60 per ton here so its not worth doing.

Im contemplating a woodburn steam generator to supply us with all our electric but cant find one good enough at the moment.

arthur

Hey Tom, You might like this-un.                     (https://forestryforum.com/gallery/albums/userpics/12224/BRATSb%7E0.jpg)


It's bratwurst cooking in Old Smokey.  Fixin to start the 16th season with it.  The heat goes thru water pipes to baseboard heaters with an exchanger ahead of the electric hot water heater.  Fuel is primarily blackjack oak but yard trash, junk mail and even dead cats ain't out of the question.  It's in an underground room built alongside the house that also serves as an inclement weather entrance and storm shelter.


Later note:

For you guys talking about the different heating systems, especially wood, I wanted to note that my rig is homebuilt.  An old Federal Boiler bought at Air Force surplus yard and modified for wood is the heart and copper/aluminum baseboard radiators bought from the heat place.  Had a heating engineer figure out the heat loads/radiator lengths  from my (home drawn) plans when "I" built the house.  Use old salvaged water heater thermostats glued to the boiler for control and safety.  1/12 hp circulator but 1/25 might work even up to the third floor.  Can control the circulator by air thermostat or remotely from the bedside.  Timer likely to follow.  The hot-water exchanger is also homebuilt from copper pipe.  Had to machine out the reducers to make the co-axial fittings.

The sausages on wood sounds good.  I'm not so sure about the yard trash and dead cats though.  Would the cat hair impart a peculiar flavor? :-\

Dead cats are only a heating option.  Cooking fuel is limited to green water oak.  Maybe charcoal of mesquite chips on rainy summer days such as the ones we were almost scheduled for next week.

OH!   ........whew!  :D

Thants where the dead mice out of traps go here! Lots of BTU's in that mousey fur!!!!! :D

Sorry Y'all

I should have made a new reply to get this thread bumped up to a "today" response instead of modifying the one above.

Forgot to mention that I also made a "wet" grate to hold the wood.  That's what the pipes are for in the lower left of the brat-cookin picture.  Water circulation in the grate strips off a few more BTU's and keeps the temp of the grate down so it doesn't burn out.  I'm running about 10 psi static on the system and it goes up to about 17 at 200 degrees.  At 15 psi the boiling point of water is up about 250 degrees.  Keeps it from thumping like an old still.

The only heating we have so far.

(https://forestryforum.com/gallery/albums/userpics/11684/fire%20place.jpg)

arthur

My fall and winter electric bills went from $200+ to $30 a month when I started using wood alone.

So needless to say, I burn wood.

Jeff

Have heated with wood only for over 20 years tried propane for two years darn thats cold a friend said its the same just set the thermostate at 90 degrees and it feels like wood heat????
Around here I have heard people afraid of using tamarack as they say it burns out the grates in a stove? I  burn it no problem but have brick linned stove. I have been selling firewood last 4 or 5 years and run accross this complaint anyone else ever hear of it?

no but when i was selling wood done here people wanted all hickory after the first yr they decided mixed was fine after they burnt their stoves out .  :D :D

If my memorey serves me I did some research on ashing carbon for  precious metal recovery and wood burns at 800F and the coals to 1600F seems to me unless you force air into the coals should not be a problem for cast iron???

Anyone ever burn Horse Chestnut?  I can get a large tree dropped off here if it's something worth while.

Dale

I use to use an inside wood burner. Built a new home and started using gas for about 6 years.  Last year a put in a Hardy outside unit and heat my place and my folks.  I have not looked back.  Love the outside unit.