what about wood?

[nakman]

so now that natural gas costs almost double what it did a year ago... why not revert back to the olden days and just add a wood stove insert for heating? I presume these are still allowed in the city right? So long as they are EPA rated, etc... seems like just as I thought I had the Xcel bill under control I'm now getting hammered from the other side.

This is the only home I own or have ever owned that doesn't have a wood stove. I'm really thinking about it... particularly since I essentially work from home most of the time. Or maybe it's because I still don't understand heat pumps enough to know if they're worth it. I understand wood though!

 

[Stuckinthe80s]

Tim, do you mind me asking what your monthly bill is? I was reviewing you data on the other thread and I used more power than you and my bill never went above $280. My bill drops to around $100 in the winter time, some months less than that, and as a result, I switched over to the budget pay which put my monthly bill at $180/month all year long. Of course I suspect it will go up in time, but it is an average of the last 12 months of billing so it will take a long time for it to go up significantly. ( I hope )

I'm not trying to hijack your thread, just trying to think about the same things moving forward. A really nice, efficient, wood burning stove is going to cost $2k - $3k to install, and I would never realize the return on that investment.

Just adding to the discussion, hope it doesn't derail it.

 

[nakman]

Not at all, Nick. We've been over $300/month now for 3 months in a row, and basically half of that is natural gas. Here's last month:

You can see my natural gas usage is correlated with temperature... 4 weeks from now we're basically out of it. but what's just alarming to me is look at their cost figures- Electricity went from $2.99 to $5.71? And natural gas went from $2.58 to $4.42. If I wouldn't have added the solar these would be $500 bills, easily..

Yes the ROI is probably not attainable on adding a wood stove, it's likely more like $6k all in if you bought a new one and paid someone to install it, get permits, etc. But to me that's the only way to do it as I have this odd worry that if the house burns down from an unapproved stove install my insurance may not wish to cover that.

 

[nakman]

Oh and in case you were wondering here's my thermostat:

We are locked in at 62F most of the time, except for 2 hours between 5:00 and 7:00 pm when we allow it to crank up to 65. Then it's back to 62 for the rest of the night and next day...

We wear hoodies pretty much constantly. I got a pair of lined pants from Costco for Christmas and they are literally my new favorite thing to wear. today is a socks & slippers day also.

 

[Notyourmomslx450]

Oh and in case you were wondering here's my thermostat:
View attachment 111824

We are locked in at 62F most of the time, except for 2 hours between 5:00 and 7:00 pm when we allow it to crank up to 65. Then it's back to 62 for the rest of the night and next day...

We wear hoodies pretty much constantly. I got a pair of lined pants from Costco for Christmas and they are literally my new favorite thing to wear. today is a socks & slippers day also.

Ours has been the same.
We have a Nest and it never goes over 68. It's usually around 62 in the middle of the day, 68 in the evening, and down to 59 when we sleep.
This crap is out of hand!

 

[Stuckinthe80s]

Here's my bill for reference:

My thermostat is set at 60 most of the time but ever-so-often the girls talk me into running it higher. It's usually only for brief sessions though.

I do have a pretty small house, ~1700 sq ft, so that is probably a factor. Either way, you're right, energy costs are definitely much higher than last year.

 

[Romer]

Is your Solar System not producing enough electricity? Looks like no Net Credits. I know, off topic. The good news is Xcel said Gas rates are coming down 30%

 

[rushthezeppelin]

Is your Solar System not producing enough electricity? Looks like no Net Credits. I know, off topic. The good news is Xcel said Gas rates are coming down 30%

Yay, just in time for winter to be over >< In all seriousness I'm amazed at y'alls thermostat settings. I though my place was cool at a constant 68 lol (it's also a very poorly balanced system which probably means the room I work in is probably closer to 64-65ish). There's almost always somebody working from home at my place at any given time though.

 

[Coyote]

I run a wood stove in my home and use approx.6-7 cords per season. This season a little more because it's been very cold where I live in Steamboat. I work from home. In the morning our inside temps range usually from 56-62 degrees before I light the fire. I don't do all night burns and sometimes have the bedroom window cracked for sleeping unless its subzero. By mid day when the sun is high and the fire has been cooking for awhile we get to the mid 60's. By evening we hover in the mid- high 60's sometimes low 70's depending on how warm it is outside and what month of the year we're in ( sunny all day means I burn less wood ). There was a large expense up front for installation, the unit is a Pacific Energy Ardelea T6. I harvest my own fuel wood ( yes it takes time ) but I look at it as mental and physical exercise and I usually do it over a few weekends in the fall when the weather is best. This year I had to make a trip out to the forest for another truck load. All in the cost for fuel wood is a couple nice saws, fuel, a truck, NFS permits at $5 per cord and my time. Honestly with the price of Propane where I live, this decision made itself about 8 years ago when propane was near $4 gallon. My setup has paid for itself so now its all good with chimney sweep maintenance and saw maintenance but I wouldn't have it any other way.

 

[nakman]

Is your Solar System not producing enough electricity? Looks like no Net Credits. I know, off topic. The good news is Xcel said Gas rates are coming down 30%

Correct. No net credits https://risingsun4x4club.org/xf/threads/2022-solar-summary.33651/

 

[Corbet]

We run two wood inserts, basically wood stoves stuffed into zero clearance fireplaces. Both have blowers to circulate air around them. 7 cords per winter on average. I still have a $200-300 gas bill per month. They have paid for themselves but only because we are on propane which is more expensive. Our first December in this house netted a $900 gas bill. I get my own wood but if I had to buy it around here I'd just buy gas. Firewood can be expensive also. But so was my Stihl saw.... Maybe I just like to play in the woods doing hard labor.

 

[J1000]

I've been using my stove this winter on the coldest of days. Our Xcel bill is pretty low compared to our neighbors. I also shut all the ducts for the HVAC in my basement so it only heats the first floor.

I'm most of the way through all the branches and trees that fell down in the wind storms last year.

Luckily we can still do this. In the UK they are handing out fines to anyone who burns wood to stay warm.

 

[Corbet]

I've got neighbors with coal stoves. Those things stink. I'm lucky the predominate wind patterns don't carry it my way. Nearly everyone in our mountain subdivision has a stove of some kind. Wood, pellet, coal and its obvious which burn clean in the morning when looking down valley. Our stoves are modern and burn clean but if I had a natural gas line that would be my primary heat hands down. Harvesting wood is hard work and time consuming. I enjoy the time on the mountain but the splitting and stacking sucks. More so with every passing year. Not sure what I'll do when the boy goes off to college.

 

[rover67]

We heat with wood (1 50k BTU Chinook blaze king) , electricity (cadet softheat baseboard heaters), and propane (Jotul direct Vent stoves x 2). 7500 solar watts and 2300 sq ft house 1600 sq ft of which is an uninsulated log cabin. We also daily our model Y which we put 16k miles on last year. We also have a hot tub which we turn down on long trips. Everything except the wood stove is controlled by smart wifi thermostats I manage remotely when gone.

We go through 2.5 - 3 cords a year and for the cold span of months the fire never goes out in the stove, we stoke it at night and reload in the morning on top of coals.

If I lived in town I feel like it'd suck to manage 3 cords of wood. It'd also be expensive ($250-300/cord?) to have delivered. Being where we are in the foothills It's not a huge deal but I'm with Corbet, not suuuuper fun and it is time consuming. That being said with the wood working for us we buy our fill of propane every 12 months (250-300 gallons) and our elecrtic bill is usually 40-100$ a month. We only use baseboards when we have to (out of town to keep from freezing) and the direct vent stoves for a bump on cold mornings. The house typically stays at 62-70 upstairs and 70- 75 downstairs where the stove is which is nice. You need a design that allows the heat from the stove to move throughout the house for them to work well. It kinda sucks to have it be 85 where the stove is and 55 in the bed rooms.

Also the Blaze King (and the Jotuls for that matter) was expensive AF. I did the install but I want to say it was close to 4k. I love how efficient it is (we halved our wood consumption) but it ain't cheap. Halving wood consumption meant we dont have to collect an extra 2-3 cords a year though and that is awesome. as is it's 3 days collecting near the house, a gallon of gas for the saw, and 2-3 days/evening splitting, then more time stacking. I do it by myself mainly but sometimes have help from a friend.

As Corbet has mentioned, It's A LOT of work to save the $$ on propane and electricity tho.

My vote would be to try and do other efficiency measures and see if you can lower consumption other ways. Maybe you can work on air sealing or something. I spent months doing that in our house and it helped a lot. Our heat pump style hot water heater also helped but we have a warm basement with the wood stove for it to run in. If you had to say heat with electric baseboards in the same area you were running one in that'd be silly.

Lastly, it seems like there isn't a single person who understands what a cord is. It seems like everybody thinks its a much smaller volume of wood than it really is. Its a NEATLY STACKED 8x4x4 volume. It's a lot of wood. If you just dump a load into a trailer without stacking it's like twice the volume.

 

[Corbet]

Lastly, it seems like there isn't a single person who understands what a cord is. It seems like everybody thinks its a much smaller volume of wood than it really is. Its a NEATLY STACKED 8x4x4 volume. It's a lot of wood. If you just dump a load into a trailer without stacking it's like twice the volume.

Exactly, the firewood sellers know what it is and often just pile it in their truck. I've also had wood delivered where the guy has a spare tire and other crap against the cab buried in the wood. Asshats. The only thing I ever buy is hardwood I can't just go cut. That and compressed scrap wood products like these: https://www.muscanell.com/woodchucks-fire-logs/ Both are idea for that overnight burn.

 

[MDH33]

Interesting thread. I heated with supplemental wood up in Evergreen, and now as well over in Iowa. I will just say straight away that all of you who posted up costs are paying less than I am. Coldest months here are dec-jan and I'm paying about $265 mo for nat gas to heat while running the wood stove a lot, plus 140 MO for electric. Big difference is we have a 90 year old house with 2 furnaces. So, not very efficient. The wood stove helps, and I love it, but the cost for a few cords of hardwood per season (no collecting softwood wood free like I did in Colorado here) is a wash, it's spendy. So, for me I'm just offsetting the extra utility cost of gas and electric with nice hardwood for fire that heats and I enjoy. Solar not possible here. Big tree canopy.

 

[On the RX]

I grew up with a wood burner attached to our fuel oil furnace. It ran off of the furnace fan and heated the entire house through the duct work. I recall the vent covers being pretty hot to the touch, not enough to burn you but you wouldn't want to stand on it too long. We could load up the wood burner at night and have it last into the mid morning if we vented it just so. Now, this was back in Ohio where hard woods were plenty and people that burned pine would end up homeless due to structure fires! Hard wood burns cleaner, hotel and longer from my research.
I can not imagine heating a house with an evergreen.How often are you cleaning the flue and chimney? I imagine the creosote really stacks up in there!

 

[nuclearlemon]

interesting thread. thankfully, my electric isn't too bad (avg $65/mo) since i have a turbine (this month was expensive because the neighbor was watering his cows on my property so the well pump got a lot of use), but propane has gotten stupid expensive and dropping $2500+/year is getting painful. got me thinking a bit more about a woodburner, especially when power is out. i have a propane fireplace, but it's a huge pita and neighbor said it has never worked right since it was installed years ago.

 

[Stuckinthe80s]

This thread is kind of depressing. I can only imagine what everything is going to cost 20 years from now when I'm ready to retire. I guess that's why there are so many retirees in Florida and Arizona.

 

[J1000]

I got a notice from Xcel that I was being opted in to "Time of Use" automatically. I tried that out a few years ago when I daily drove a Nissan LEAF but it wasn't worth the inconvenience and no matter what I did my bill was higher. They hide it in small print but if you are opted-in you have 30 days to opt-out. If anyone out there also received this letter I strongly urge you to opt-out. The price per kwh from 11am-7pm is drastically higher, and from 1-7pm it's nearly double. If you run your AC at all during the day it's going to cause huge increases on your bill. The outrage will be insane when people start realizing they've been opted in and there's no going back.