Still going to burn like oil is $4+/gallon. But wow $1.61 heating oil

We are on NG here. Its at $.69 so With taxes and fees and purchased gas adjustments, etc its about $1 a therm. Only used 17 therms for the month of Oct with hot water and the furnace running a bit in the mornings. Its tough to decide what to do..... If I have time to play with the stove I will but if not I have no problem letting the furnace take over with weather like we are having.

Heating oil was .77/liter a week or so back (1 liter x 4.5=$3.46/gallon before tax), which is cheap up here, but I burn wood every chance I can. We have above normal temps this year, so it's hard to keep the stove lit. One in the morning, and start back up from cold in the evening. Even then I bounce off 80 F indoor temp.

Brian26 said:

Stove is lit right now despite cheap oil. Debating if it makes sense to hedge my 2 cords of well seasoned red oak for when oil prices go back up.

Heating oil prices are so low. I live right near the main entry port (New Haven, CT) and the current prices are crazy low. At these prices turning up the t-stat for the whole house to get nice and warm is cheap . I'm still going to burn but turning up the t-stat for the oil burner is hard to resist with current prices.

These are wholesale prices coming in.

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Now this makes no sense to me, especially since a lot of folks here began burning in response to high oil prices. I read someone on here say they could put a roaring fire loop from YouTube on the TV for ambiance.

I burn because I enjoy it but not really for savings as I don't have my own woodlot and a cord of hardwood is $250+

That being said, if I had an oil burning appliance and oil was that cheap, I'd likely still burn SOME wood but not nearly as much.

Andrew

I just got an oil fill, lowest price I have seen in a few years.

What I don't see is the price of cord wood coming down proportionately, at least locally.

I fell some trees, buy some logs, buy some rounds, buy some splits, scrounge a few cords a year. I have a pretty good idea what is involved. As low as oil is right now it isn't worth it to me to work part time at selling green wood.

As a homeowner I see one 20MBTU seasoned cord (assuming it's an honest cord), as replacing 144 gallons of #2 oil, if I am willing to work for free moving the wood around. If #2 oil is $1.50, a 20MBTU cord is worth $216 me, maximum. Oil at $2.50/ gallon, $360 per cord, max. At 3.50/ gallon a 20M BTU cord replaces $504 worth of #2 oil.

A year ago, 10-30-2014 I was paying $3.70/ gallon for #2 and that was the lowest price I had seen in years, green wood was $250/ cord delivered as splits. No brainer, I paid $165/ cord for green logs.

On the other hand, green cords delivered as rounds are currently $250/ cord delivered to my house, but I got a fill this week at $2.35/ gallon, so that green cord is only going to be worth $338 after I split, season and carry to the stove.

I am switching to buying spruce only, lower BTU, less desirable, less expensive. The trick is local woodcutters have to fell some spruce to keep producing the birch people want to buy. I am going to put up every stick of spruce I can season since my stove runs fine on it.

As an oil producing state, when I look at oil prices I see the Saudis sticking it to Iran. Iran is/was only allowed to sell X many gallons of oil annually under the old sanctions. By producing lots of oil and keeping the price down, the Saudis were seeing to it that Iran got as little money as possible for the oil they could sell. The Saudis are going to be running low on cash in about 5 years at current spending levels. If Alaska returns to 2007 spending levels we'll still have cash in the bank when the Saudis go broke. If we stay at 2008 spending we'll be broke before the Saudis.

I don't see the Saudis blowing three generations of excess oil income in five years. They like having money in the bank, and they like having lots of money in the bank. All of us can look back over our own lifetimes at the price we pay at the pump for automotive gasoline and know the price of oil is going to go back up, probably higher than it has ever been before, again. Probably sooner rather than later.

If you have room on your property, you could season as usual, burn minimal wood, burn cheap oil and build up a stock of seasoned wood for when oil goes back up...

Poindexter - I agree, good perspective, I myself can not ever see no fire in my stove during a snowstorm.

A cord of wood sitting in my back yard is like having $250 in the bank Everyone wants it come winter time!

Andrew

I did a little more thinking, I spent close to 3G on the bk, another thousand on chimney pipe, 2400 hundred on the splitter then prob another couple hundred on miscellaneous wood stuff, so I have a little deficit to make up. I only bought one load of log lengths to get myself a head and now I'm into my "free wood" for heat. I
I wouldn't say I'm doing all this for free heat, but i come from the perspective of I can save some money by burning rather than heating with fossil fuels and that's what I'm doing, is it worth it? Don't know yet from a money perspective but I'm having a good time doing this

Plenty of intangibles to be sure. I can pull 1200 gallons off my oil usage by burning ~9 cords per year, so my savings add up quick.

But if it was more expensive than oil I would probably be tempted to keep heating with wood because I like the way wood heat feels.

$2.27 for oil here last week.

Just saw a sign advertising $150/face cord of mixed hardwoods wood.

Shari said:

$2.27 for oil here last week.

Just saw a sign advertising $150/face cord of mixed hardwoods wood.

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FACE CORD!? So $350 for a real cord? Eeeeee. I'd be burning oil with a BIT of wood...

Andrew

Poindexter said:

Plenty of intangibles to be sure. I can pull 1200 gallons off my oil usage by burning ~9 cords per year, so my savings add up quick.

But if it was more expensive than oil I would probably be tempted to keep heating with wood because I like the way wood heat feels.

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Intangibles? Feel of heat? Whether you paid for them or not, the cords of wood you burn have value at the going rate in your area. It's easy: oil<wood, burn oil.

mass_burner said:

Intangibles? Feel of heat? Whether you paid for them or not, the cords of wood you burn have value at the going rate in your area. It's easy: oil<wood, burn oil.

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Right, but if I stop processing a cord a month, can I keep eating chocolate chip cookies like they are going out of style, or get fat, or start spending X dollars month on a gym membership, or drop a few hundred on equipment and take up cross country skiing... I like the metabolic rate that comes with being a wood burner. Especially dark thick sweet stouts with a head on them the color of well seasoned mesquite.

Poindexter said:

Right, but if I stop processing a cord a month, can I keep eating chocolate chip cookies like they are going out of style, or get fat, or start spending X dollars month on a gym membership, or drop a few hundred on equipment and take up cross country skiing... I like the metabolic rate that comes with being a wood burner. Especially dark thick sweet stouts with a head on them the color of well seasoned mesquite.

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Keep choppin', stop burning.

yea - propane is on the cheap this year too. I had my tank topped off at $1.19gal. That is low, low vs. the past few seasons so the furnace may see some more use this winter but I will still be burning the wood - I love it.

Total cost to top off my tank tax, deliver, bla, bla included - $220.00 - So for the past year running my stove, dryer, hot water heater and furnace 100% when I am out of town the cost was 220 - I cannot complain. I have friends that consistently pay more than that per month all winter.

I turned off the pellet boiler yesterday and burning oil now. Might flip flop over time.

I may burn a little more propane this year, but having that nice, dry wood in the basement when the storms take out the electricity is priceless...

Brian: I presume you'd burn about 3 gallons a day in these temps? No way a furnace could run for 1 hr straight, you'd be melting away in your house. lol

Andrew

Brian26 said:

3 gallons a day.. I used 3 for the whole last 7 days. Its been mild here but its in the 40s now and I got the stove going.

Oil furnace burns at .68 gallons an hour. Here is my last 7 days of use. My Venstar T-stat tracks run times.

About 5 hours of run time at .68 a gallon is 3.4 gallons total use. Total cost $5.37 for the whole week.

I tune my own oil burner and my cousin is a HVAC tech so the burn rate is pretty dead on.

I got a full tank of 300 gallons of cheap oil. I know it will go back up but in the meantime I am running the furnace much more and letting that oak season a bit more outside for when oil is $4 a gallon.

I work a lot and with these prices I find it much easier to just come home and turn up the t-stat.

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WOW. If these temps keep up, that's about $25 for a month. I can tell you that I would be burning nearly 1/2 a cord of wood at $250/cord...$125 is a lot more than $25.

Wood and oil seems to be a good combo this year.

Andrew

Just filled at 1.90. Couldn't wait anymore, running just above E.

Don't know how in CNY we are still at $2.199 delivered.

Glad I didn't fill up this summer like everyone told me to! I have a 500 gallon tank...so I like to really 'snipe' the best deal.