Speaking of expensive Gasoline, does anyone here heat their house with wood?
. Unregistered
Posted 2/5/2012 4:48 pm
I go through about 5 cord a year depending on how cold it is. I live on 3 acres of woods and just cutting up and splitting the trees which are dead and get blown over is enough to keep the wood pile stocked.
Remember wood heats you three times: When you cut it, when you split it, and when you burn it!
Posted 2/5/2012 4:57 pm
Are you one of those idiots that doesn't know how to make a fire,and smoke pours out your chimney polluting the countryside all winter long? on these anti-social people.
Not as much smoke as you would think. I have a wood stove, not much to do but get a good hot fire going and then feed in a few pieces every hour. I tend to keep the surface of the stove about 500 degrees.
I do get some smoke when I start burning plastic milk and OJ jugs though. (a joke)
Posted 2/5/2012 5:00 pm : Edited 2/5/2012 5:05 pm
You cannot heat a house with a wood-burning fireplace. You can heat the room that the hearth is in (via the direct IR from the fire) - but the rest of the house will be cold as hell from all of the warmed air that is being drawn out of the house through the chimney.
I clean the flue every year, hate that job. I have the brush with the handle extensions. I do it from the roof, the crap falls down and then I use the shop vac to get it out.
I'm always surprised at how little residue there is, I burn mostly oak and maple.
If you have dry wood and know what you are doing, you should have no smoke coming out of your chimney after the first few minutes of starting it. Just heat waves. I am in the Seattle area, they have burn ban days, with inspectors going around looking for smoke coming out of chimneys.Not supposed to be using a woodstove unless it's your only heat source. They never do anything to me, no smoke coming out of my chimney.
Correct if you are referring to a fireplace. With a wood stove much heat is transfered to the room and the burn rate is controlled so the hot air of the house is not sucked out.
I actually did. Chimney fire distracted me. (again, a joke). There was a crash in the house upstairs. Cat knocked a glass pitcher off the counter as a gift to the dog. Had to clean it up.
Posted 2/5/2012 6:28 pm
Used to be that you could get some pretty cheap BTUs from corn-burning stoves. Corn has a shitload of heat potential in it, and it used to be dirt-cheap.
Not so much today.
Wonder what those people that actually bought those things are doing with them today.
Posted 2/5/2012 6:53 pm : Edited 2/5/2012 6:53 pm
House was originally equipped with a coal fired boiler in the basement and baseboard water heat. Thank god that got converted at some point to gas. The coal chute in the garage dumps into a bin that is now our "wine cellar".
The PO has a Ben Franklin stove set in a brick facade to mimick a fireplace. There's steel ducting with a 90 degree elbow that connects it to a chimney. It's no wonder, then, that they had a chimney fire. The ash and soot from the fireplace couldn't clear the ducting because of the bend and it just accumulated there.
One of the first things we did after closing was to have the chimney swept. That steel ducting had, no lie, 3 trash bags of creosote inside. It was ripe for another fire.
So even though we can heat the house with wood, we never will. I might install a set of gas logs, though.
Posted 2/5/2012 7:00 pm
All wood heat here. I've been burning a lot of manufactured pressed wood logs lately, and am very pleased with the results. Stove is ancient and cracked. Heats the entire house to about 75F on the coldest nights.
on these anti-social people.
