My insane way of calculating firewood needs.

I will chime in with zero personal experience. I think that Squirrel has it right. You know what it took to heat your home in terms of KW so convert that to BTUs and look at the BTU contents of various woods. If you find a stove that can burn that fast and have enough wood to feed it for your worst month this year you will basically be able to go off grid for heat. Don't forget that the stove will only be about 75% efficient so whatever you spent on electricity BTUs will be about 25% less than you need to burn in wood. I have done this calculation for my well insulated and air tight home and came to the conclusion that my stove will never pay for itself. That brings me to my second point. You will get back more per dollar spent making that house tight and well insulated than you ever will by installing a wood burner. I held an average 40F delta temp on my unfinished new build for just over $100 per month average. What would it cost to add insulation and air flow barriers compared to your extra $1000 per month. The upgrade would easily pay for itself the first year. After that, if you like a wood fire, get a wood burner. I do like a wood burner so I am installing one for "emergency" power failures and general ambiance. I look at that as a nice enhancement that may pay off in a crisis but I am not dollars ahead doing it.

Kingdoc said:

Me - 1850, 2 story, 2800 square foot, poorly insulated civil war era house in central NY. because this was a summer rental for the past 10 years before I bought it and never heated in the winter the previous owners installed electric heat. My electric bill has been around 1100$ for the past 5 months. Please keep in mind until I got the crawl space spray foamed 2 weeks ago I could only keep my first floor at 30 - 40 degrees above outside temperature. The average temperature in my town in January was 8 degrees.

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OK, I'm in mid-Vermont in a house the same era with a southern exposure, but a small farmhouse. It sounds like it's somewhat better insulated than yours, particularly in the attic. The 2nd floor has always been unheated because with the bathroom on first floor, there are no pipes up there, and I like sleeping in the cold, so I have it closed off except for the heat that rises through the (unvented) floor from the woodstove underneath. Bottom line, I'm only even trying to heat less than 1,000 square feet.

I burned 5 cords this horrible winter. More ordinary years, 4 will do it. In other words, you're gonna need a bigger woodpile.

If it were me, I'd close off as much of that house as possible during the winter. Otherwise, you're absolutely going to need two very large stoves and you're going to spend half your free time just lugging wood into the house.

This being my first year burning, and switching to a more efficient and larger stove in late Jan. I have burned about 4.5-5 cords so far, expect to finish off at around 5.5. One of those cords was very punky and sub par though. I also run a pellet stove in my basement for when the kids are down there and was supplementing with t with my old stove, have gone through almost 3 tons of pellets.

I am heating a poorly insulated leaky house, 2200sqft main floor and about 800sqft basement. In NW CT.

My wood consumption dropped significantly with my new stove, and that was even heating through one of the coldest Februarys on record. I am going to be planing on at least 6 cords a winter for now until i grt more experience under my belt.

omg that is double my mortgage.

Kingdoc said:

we are going to buy a PE T6

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Nice stove, I am sure you will be happy although it may not be enough to heat everything. PE Summit/T6 owners may correct me but 6 to 7 cords is probably about the max that you can run through the stove in one season without overfiring it.

4 - 6 cords, 6 to be safe. Alternatively, go by estimates of BTUs if you want. For instance, i did a calc a couple weeks ago to see what it would cost if i switched to pellets (dont worry i came to my senses). I burn about 4 cords of oak a year, looked up btus per cord of oak, and then looked up BTU values of pellets. Quick search on here for others pellet usage per house size and it was fairly accurate.