Calculating btu's for heating a shop

[red oaks lumber]

randy
i'm not sure i would buy the answer, nobodys system is keeping up this year. we arent excatly located in the banana belt up here but, besides using more wood our systems are keeping up no problems. infloor or forced air. like i said before my shop space is about the same sq.f.t plus i'm heating my 15,000 b.f. kiln all with one stove.
its very possilbe your stove /design just isnt good enough for your application.

[LittleJohn]

While it is true that this winter has been "WORSE THAN NORMAL", wood (aka fuel) consumption for residental heating has gone up this year. 

According to weather man out of St. Paul/Minneapolis - 5th coldest winter all time; 50 days with below ZERO temperature.

Everyone is feeling the hurt this year

[DeepCreek]

I haven't been around long enough to follow the entire thread, but I thought maybe you could use this link to some free heating and cooling design tools. In particular, follow their link to HEED. We used this tool to confirm the heating and cooling requirements for our home when it was being built. It turned out to be spot on, much to the chagrin of the HVAC guys who didn't believe it.

Although it is primarily aimed at houses, there should be no reason it won't work just as well for a shop building.

http://www.energy-design-tools.aud.ucla.edu/

[Don_Papenburg]

I was just thinking , But if you live in a rural area you might have a free fuel source laying in your road ditches , used tires . I usually get ten to twenty of them a year.  One of them things will bring up the BTUs of a fire right quick. Might only need one or two a day to spike the water temp .  ADM uses tires in the Decator Ill.plant .  Might want to make sure your warrantee has run out on your furnace .

[Shotgun]

I was just thinking , But if you live in a rural area you might have a free fuel source laying in your road ditches , used tires . I usually get ten to twenty of them a year.  One of them things will bring up the BTUs of a fire right quick. Might only need one or two a day to spike the water temp .  ADM uses tires in the Decator Ill.plant .  Might want to make sure your warrantee has run out on your furnace .

How does this go over with the EPA, or the state equivalent?  Or don't they care in IL?

[Don_Papenburg]

They grumble about everything .  Tires are mostly petroleum .  If you can clean burn them ,that is with other things, lots of wood for instance the smoke is only lightly darkened. If we pick up the tires the gov. wants us to pay to dispose of them . then they get sold to ADM or some other big industrial plant so that they can burn them.    I guess I should have added ;) ;D