Firewood up, oil down, where is the line?

I have natural gas for heat and still go out and get my firewood but Im also surrounded by forests and have somewhat cheap heating fuel. We have what I would call a modest amount of wood burners here with most of them doing it recreationaly. Its funny, I was driving through town noticing who was burning today (it was -16 c at the time) and thought, I bet more homes here would heat with wood if natural gas wasn't the price it is or we had to use heating oil. This wood business is hard on the body, can be dangerous, puts dents in my truck (honestly its the stumps fault) and I wouldn't have it any other way. If I was to break it down in to the cost of my labour and all the tools, the numbers wouldn't make sense. I enjoy myself most of the time and wood heat is sooooo much better than natural gas heat so its worth it for me.

Poindexter, ouch 3.43 gal. I can get it now for about 2.00 gal. That is downright cheap. Has anyone ever put old cooking oil in with their fuel oil? Seems to make sense to me but would never do it unlsess someone on the internet said it works.

ihookem said:

Seems to make sense to me but would never do it unlsess someone on the internet said it works.

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Well, I haven't laughed like that in a while. Thank you sir.

From a purely financial standpoint . . .

Right now the price of oil is down . . . but since most of the wood I have on hand and continue to scrounge is relatively low cost (i.e. fuel for the truck, saw, splitter) and I have the time continuing to heat mostly with wood is the right answer for me.

For other folks who might be paying more or do not have as much time to process wood . . . stocking up on oil might be the right answer financially, getting a load of cheaper, unseasoned wood delivered or even getting tree length wood might be the right answer.

I don't think there is any answer that is right for everyone . . . it's what works for you and your own situation.

Is buying the wood in rounds and splitting it yourself an option? Can probably save hundreds of dollars that way. In my area, you can find a cord of rounds for around $75-125 usually. Or if you've got a truck, can maybe find someone giving away free rounds on Craigslist.

Oil is going to be cheap for a while. Hopefully that pushes down the price of propane and nat gas. If I was a gambler, I would watch propane and buy one of those gigantic tanks for the home and fill 'er up if the price gets in the right range. I plan on getting natural gas installed as well. Right now my furnace is a heat pump with an electric furnace backup, but if I do my part with the wood stove the electric heat never comes on. I'm happy with the heat pump for the milder parts of the season for now.

ihookem said:

Poindexter, ouch 3.43 gal. I can get it now for about 2.00 gal. That is downright cheap. Has anyone ever put old cooking oil in with their fuel oil? Seems to make sense to me but would never do it unlsess someone on the internet said it works.

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Ibelieve that's $3.43 per Gallon with a service contract?

I set up my boiler to run straight B100.. Biodiesel I made from cooking oil. Essentially, the chemical change takes the 'thick' out of the used cooking oil.

If you wanted to just 'run some' You could likely get away with put to about 10 percent with no real ill effects. Same with used motor oil.

It would work best if you pump was looped back to the tank.. so it kept stirring. that's how mine was setup. Even with a line heater, a clean cut timer.. I'd still have to clean the burner after about 600 gallons or so. That was using very refined, filtered B100.

JP

truck load of logs ends up being about $100/cord........something to think about

tinman1 said:

Ibelieve that's $3.43 per Gallon with a service contract?

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Nope, "autofill" at market price. They keep track of how cold it is every day, estimate my fuel usage and send a truck to refill my tank when I ought to be getting down kinda low. No contract, no nothing, I could change suppliers today with nothing more than a phone call.

My October 2014 fill was $3.84/ gallon, that 3.43 number I keep seeing was last winter's price.

Poindexter said:

Nope, "autofill" at market price. They keep track of how cold it is every day, estimate my fuel usage and send a truck to refill my tank when I ought to be getting down kinda low. No contract, no nothing, I could change suppliers today with nothing more than a phone call.

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I have the same deal. Last week I got 60 gallons at $2.35. I haven't had a fill of more than 100 gallons in over six years. My personal best was during an extremely cold winter when I was home a lot and had a surplus of firewood. Only 25 gallons! The delivery guy was concerned and told his boss when he got back-he thought that I may have had a clog in the line that caused the whistle to go off prematurely. They called me up to make sure the tank was actually full and not poised to run dry at 2:00 a.m. in single digit temperatures. I just told them I was burning a lot of wood to which they said "sounds good!" It's a small family owned company, and it shows.

Personally: I find this spreadsheet from the EIA to be very helpful.
http://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/heatcalc.xls

That and the State of NH publishes average heating fuel costs here (weekly):
http://www.nh.gov/oep/energy/energy-nh/fuel-prices/index.htm

Poindexter said:

Nope, "autofill" at market price. They keep track of how cold it is every day, estimate my fuel usage and send a truck to refill my tank when I ought to be getting down kinda low. No contract, no nothing, I could change suppliers today with nothing more than a phone call.

My October 2014 fill was $3.84/ gallon, that 3.43 number I keep seeing was last winter's price.

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Ouch
Last year my capping was $3.79 & they covered my repairs here. Auto fill also. I did pay market value price which was lower than that. Now I'm at $3.25.capping But burning wood this season part time & on weekends. Hoping that will keep my oil consumption down.

I bought a stove to burn all the trees I have on my property. The wood is free because I would of had to pay to get it off my property.


But with oil dropping I am using the two systems in concert with each other...oil heating second floor less heat from stove moving to second floor...it's 76 on my first floor..loving it

Oil below $50 yesterday.

Unless you are paying $300 a cord for firewood, HHO prices still have a way to drop a bit more even if you have a newer 90% oil burner.
Plug in your own numbers and hit recalculate:
http://nepacrossroads.com/fuel-comparison-calculator.php

If you consider those cords of wood in your yard an investment it makes more sense to cash out that investment when the price of a bbl of west texas crude goes back up again. If you can afford to.

billb3 said:

Unless you are paying $300 a cord for firewood, HHO prices still have a way to drop a bit more even if you have a newer 90% oil burner. Plug in your own numbers and hit recalculate: http://nepacrossroads.com/fuel-comparison-calculator.php

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That's the best calculator I've seen posted in a long time. At my current oil price/efficiency ($2.65/gallon - 83%), $300 a cord would be the break even point for me. I figure I'm paying about $50 a cord.

Badfish740 said:

That's the best calculator I've seen posted in a long time. At my current oil price/efficiency ($2.65/gallon - 83%), $300 a cord would be the break even point for me. I figure I'm paying about $50 a cord.

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That is a good one, even at $250 cord you paying half to heat your home compared to oil and the heat is a much nicer, warmer heat. Every year someone says if they had to pay for wood they would burn oil/propane etc.. but you almost always come out way ahead burning wood even if you have to pay a decent amount for a cord of wood. I save 3 tanks of oil per year on average, so that's 750 X current oil price = saving $$$$, most of my wood is free but even paying $250 cord I'd come out way ahead and wood around here is $160-180 cord.

I don't know anybody with the ability to heat with either oil or wood, that keeps their house as warm with oil as they do with wood.

I like burning wood. I like the cutting, bucking and splitting, not so much the stacking or moving parts. I'd probably hate it after a while if I had to do it for a living, but it hasn't lost its appeal yet.

I burn 12+ cords a year. Have done so for 7 years. I have not yet paid a dime for a stick of firewood, it has all been from scrounging or my own property. I would consider supplementing my firewood supply with a log-truck load of tree-length sticks, if I ever got to the point where I just couldn't find or make the time to go cut wood. Around here, 10 cords of mixed hardwood delivered to my yard is about $800. I can easily find another couple of cords of junk wood (pine, poplar, etc.) or random dead stuff to supplement that load - but I'm not there yet. Maybe when I get older and weaker and just tire of it. I'm going to put in a propane backup system in my basement (right now I have a dual-fuel wood boiler) so that I can at least cut back on mid-summer burning and "take a vacation" from the OWB.

clr8ter said:

From everything I've read, straight bio diesel will not congeal any worse that #2, and once some is run through the system, it'll be fine. At first, they say cleaning may be necessary, because the bio diesel will eat away all the built-up "gunk" in the system, and clog filters. After that, no issue.

I've also read that Bio is a direct 1 for 1 replacement for dino diesel in motors.

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What you've read is wrong. Straight bio will congeal anywhere from 26 to 50 degrees F. Depends on what oil it's made from. Corn oil being the best for cold temps, and soy bean oil the worst.

It won't clog filters, but it WILL clog your burner. It's thin, and it will dribble out the end of the nozzle and make the boiler dirty. I had better luck using the 'clean cut' solenoid. Even then it would never run as clean as straight #2. There's less Btus per gallon, and I had mine dialed in pretty well, but on a cold night like tonight, it would run 24/7.
If you just throw b100 in an old tank.. you're right.. it's one hell of a solvent and will clean tanks, and plug the filters. It also eats natural rubber, so the oil pump on your burner would last about a year. I replaced mine with a B100 compatible pump. Viton seals instead of rubber.

Again.. it is a 1/1 replacement in motors.... FOR SOME. Newer diesels with high pressure pumps, the varying viscosity is ASKING for a injector pump failure. B100 in a car with a trap oxidizer for emissions.. you're gonna throw a check engine light when it tries to clean the trap out. Not enough heat in the fuel.

Now.. in my old Mercedes.. Yeah, it loves it. I rank 100k on in with the 1985.. And since I found a 1991 with 27k on it.. i'll be running that one on it for a long time.

JP