Ahhhh...The Warmth & Feel of Wood Heat

Is it the radiant aspect of the stove? Also, it's usually warmer near the stove.

There is no better heat then that of a wood stove. ..

I just moved from a place that had natural gas forced air heat.

As compared to my woodstove, the head is more consistent, and it's generally warmer. I don't have a thermometer in my house at present, but my downstairs usually runs (I'd estimate) about 75 degrees. Warmer than the 68 I set my thermostat at to save money on natural gas. It's also a consistent output. Forced air will heat, stop, the house will cool, and then kick on again. It could be that this cycling doesn't heat the objects as well.

Of course, I don't really have an apples to apples comparison. While it's not as well insulated, my current house has better windows than did the house that I had forced air in, so I'm not, for instance, feeling a breeze in my living room. I remember though, feeling a similar feeling to the woodstove I grew up with in places that had hot water radiators.

When the house is 70 from the furnace, heat pump, etc, the only thing that is 70 degrees is the air itself, which begins to cool the moment the furnace shuts down. When it is 70 degrees from the wood stove, everything is warm. Not just the air. I have no idea if that's right, but it sounds logical. Lol

BrotherBart said:

TMI

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Unlike most times when people type lol, I actually did laugh out loud on this one.

That's heat, in case anyone was confused.

The difference is the infrared heat. It transfers energy to a lower temperature object through electromagnetic radiation. Your furnace heats the air.

^^^^ Ha ha ha

Constant heat is lovely.....

It's different in that hot air isn't blasting out of a vent at me.

jscs.moore said:

Hmmm still don't have an answer for the skeptics who say heat is heat and there is NO measurable difference between 70 degrees from a gas furnace and 70 degrees from a woodstove. I get the radiant heat thing, but not clear on how the interior of the house absorbs the heat. I'm waiting for the egg head with a Ph.D. in Thermodynamics to weigh in give us the real answer

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Maybe you should just give up on trying to explain it to your friend and invite him/her over on a cold day.

I think the overall warmth of the house isn't that much different with a woodstove compared to a forced air furnace. I think the main advantage of the woodstove is that there is always something to go close to and warm you up when you feel a little chilly, which can happen even when the thermostat is saying the house is quite comfortable. However, compared to a heat pump (at least the old one I remember from when I was growing up), the difference is huge. As a child I could never understand how that cold air blowing out of the vent was supposed to warm me or the house. I do not have fond memories of the heat pump. Hopefully my children will have fond memories of the woodstove.

A forced air furnace heats air and blows it through the house to keep the rest of the air warm. This leaves the walls and other objects in the house cold and your body can feel the heat leaving because there is no radiant heat for your body to feel, which is what makes standing in the sun warmer than the shade.

A wood stove uses fire to make lots of radiant heat which warms the air and everything else in the home and acts like the sun. I like to tell people that a wood stove heats a house with stored solar fire. The light from the sun makes wood and is stored in that form until you burn it in your house. So really, having a wood stove is the most efficient and technological way of heating a home, because you are using the electromagnetic spectrum to the fullest. It is like having a mini sun in your house.

Every person who comes over to our house immediately comments on how warm it feels, even at the end of the house away from the stove. People sit on the couch and fall asleep because they are finally warm. It is that comfy.
We feel cold when we go somewhere that does not have wood heat because there is no radiation keeping our bodies warm.

A fire can warm you even when the air temp is below zero because the heat travels as light waves or electromagnetic radiation and heats you directly without having to heat the air around you. This is how the sun heats the earth. You can reflect and direct this radiation and focus it. This is how the heat tubes above walmart entrances work.

Heating the air to heat you is not efficient because air is an insulator, not a conductor. The most effective way to insulate a home heated with radiant heat is to make it air tight and reflect the heat back in. You cannot reflect warm air at all, so this does almost nothing in a home heated with forced air. A reflective barrier in a home heated with wood will do wonders.

I insulated my ice house with reflectix bubble insulation and can keep it above 70 with a single lantern on low along with my body heat becuase all the heat gets reflected back in and concentrated.

I hope this helps.

I'll be a contrarian and say that with radiant hot water heating I was always quite warm . . . and the temp was consistent throughout the house so that no one room ever felt much cooler than others (which is the case with my woodstove.)

That said, I have saved and continue to save a chunk of change heating with wood and it's a lot more interesting to look at the wood burning than to stare at my oil boiler . . . and it keeps the house plenty warm.

Isaac Carlson said:

A forced air furnace heats air and blows it through the house to keep the rest of the air warm. This leaves the walls and other objects in the house cold and your body can feel the heat leaving because there is no radiant heat for your body to feel, which is what makes standing in the sun warmer than the shade

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That's a good way to describe it. When your in the sun the air temperature is the same as in the shade but you feel the radiant heat of the sun. Also the 400 to 700 degree temperatures coming off your stove are much much warmer then what's coming out of your furnace by the time it travels through your vents and reaches each room.

70 degrees is 70 degrees. If you leave your furnace thermostat on 70 everything in your house will be 70 - furniture, walls, etc. The only difference with wood is that people generally keep their house a lot warmer than with oil, gas or electric because it's cheaper. The theory that furnace only heats the air and not the physical stuff in the house is wrong. A woodstove is heating the air around it, it's just usually a lot warmer.

We shut down the woodstove this past weekend and burned Oil to keep the pipes warm.....Thermostats were set at 70*F, and the house still felt cold. Well, the frigid temps are gone, and the woodstove fired back up....definitely a huge difference

Yes, a much hotter heat source to stand around, and if its well located, the immediatel area around it too. This makes it seem warmer overall. Go stand in the furthest area from the stove and see if you feel the same. The temp maybe comparable to where the stove is, but it won't feel the same.

A few people have touched on it but I think the biggest difference is the heat source and the heat output. If a wood stove cycled like a furnace, there would be no discernable difference between the two. The stove is sending out heat as long as there is a fire in it. More warmth. If you could set your furnace to constantly output heat as a wood stove does, and have it be cost efficient, most of us probably would not have a wood stove...or everyone probably would.

Having winter camped in snow many times in the past, there is no substitute for the radiant heat from a fire. I have been out in conditions where the front of my clothes were smoking and my backside was freezing until we built a wall out of snow behind us to reflect the heat. In a year with deep snow we would start the fire on top of the snow and it would slowly sink down to ground level and melt out a 20' radius after a few days. The various critters like mice and voles who live under the snow didn't know what do they would scamper on by across the ground and then go back into their tunnels.

If someone wants to get technical ASHRAE has done a lot of research on comfort zones. There is a fundamental problem that men have a different comfort zone than woman which leads to all sort of arguments.

1) It's great to be cold and sit in front of a cranking stove.
2) I love free food, free beer, and free heat.
3) Wood heat feels better because I have the satisfaction of having found, cut, split, stacked, and dried that heat. I'll grant you that this isn't for everyone!
4) 70 degrees is 70 degrees- if you subtract the joy of watching the flames, cooking until your pants are 250 degrees, and knowing that you paid $10 in chainsaw gas and wear and tear for this month's heat. I don't subtract that from the equasion though, so my wood 70 degrees IS better!