Ahhhh...The Warmth & Feel of Wood Heat

Most important argument of why the heat is different IMHO is the radiant heat argument. My heat pump does not radiate heat. It creates heat but in a drafty way which is not warming. The ability to stand next to a 600 degree stove is like nothing else. As someone earlier said, it warms you to your bones. Otherwise, 70 degrees is 70 degrees.

My grandmother always used to say, "Wood head will ruin you!" It's true. Once you are used to the thorough, radiant heat of a woodstove, no other heat compares.

I also have fond memories of my grandfather musing about gathering wood in the dead of winter, "Wood heat warms you twice!" (If you own a woodstove, you know what this means). If you don't, it means that in the work it takes to cut split stack wood, you get outside, get moving and get warm. That's also another way wood heat is warmer, but I digress...

The body is a radiator and radiates heat to colder objects. Air temperature has less of an effect on comfort than being near a warm object. Dan Holohan in his book Pumping Away describes how this phenomenon works and feels. Go to your local supermarket with a thermometer. Walk down the cereal aisle feel the comfort and check the temp. Then walk down the freezer aisle. Check the temp. It's the same. But you feel colder. Because your body is radiating heat toward a cold object. Heat goes to cold, the colder object temp is sucking the heat out of you.

Yeps.
Been reading this thread and both main transfer systems come into play.
Hot air is coming off the unit which can get blown around the house to
reach further corners of the place.

On the other, radiant heat is alive, well, and hard at work. When we
put white sneakers and black ones a few feet from the stove the dark
shoes heat much faster while the light color reflects heat.

Same as the mention of sunlight traveling thru absolute zero temps only to
strike our face and warm us and the earth up. Also the comparo of a campfire
warming the fire facing side of a person even when back quite a few feet
from the flame.

Cool (warm) thread!,,,,
Cheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeap

Forced hot air comes out of teeny vents in the floor at the edge of the room but there is a lot of surface between the stove and the pipe all sending out heat in every direction and every height. You can control your thermostat so it continues to run and doesn't cycle on and off, but the stove is more centrally located and distributes the heat directly. And it is not blowing like the hot air does.

begreen said:

That's the problem. It's not the heat pump, it's wallet worry. Set it to 72 if you're uncomfortable and let the house temps equalize.

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So I tried this. It's pretty mild here and I was in my shop for a number of hours and had a fire going in there so I decided to just set the forced air natural gas furnace to 72 and see how it went. Shortly after dinner I checked the thermostat and it was turned down to 70.?. When I asked my wife about this she said she had felt hot so turned it down. I was kind of wondering what that was about because my wife is like a human cat and just loves to curl up in a warm spot. Well as the evening has progressed it's been turned back up to 72 and my wife has complained a few times about how she's chilled to the bone and why didn't I light the fire?

So what this proves is the heating value of wood is far greater than all other forms of heat because if it makes the wife happy than there is no comparable heating fuel(we don't have coal here so just shhhhhhshsh).

Squisher said:

In the same regards I find your comment interesting. I would never live in a house that cool. If you're working towards 68-70 I imagine you dip down a bit cooler now and then and wow my wife would be pissed at 68 degrees. Different strokes for different folks. We cruised around 75 last night, perfect for us. To me one of the luxuries of wood heat is to have a warm house. 68 isn't warm to me.

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Hmm, 75! That's too warm for us, 72 for the wife and daughter, 66 if I'm home alone. But if you like 75, would you settle for 70 if using the furnace?

I have cast iron base ray registers everywhere, no blowing air. But I do have a new toe kick register at the base of our sink cabinet, but it never blows cold air. Like folks have said, many ways to do this.

Rearscreen said:

The body is a radiator and radiates heat to colder objects. Air temperature has less of an effect on comfort than being near a warm object. Dan Holohan in his book Pumping Away describes how this phenomenon works and feels. Go to your local supermarket with a thermometer. Walk down the cereal aisle feel the comfort and check the temp. Then walk down the freezer aisle. Check the temp. It's the same. But you feel colder. Because your body is radiating heat toward a cold object. Heat goes to cold, the colder object temp is sucking the heat out of you.

Click to expand...

I thought cold was drawn to heat, isn't this why folks point a fan towards their stoves?

mass_burner said:

Hmm, 75! That's too warm for us, 72 for the wife and daughter, 66 if I'm home alone. But if you like 75, would you settle for 70 if using the furnace?

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No if I'm running the furnace like I did overnight last night it's 72 minimum for me. And it still feels chilly!

72 for us is too chilly. After a cold day of work I love seeing the stove room at 82 plus. The boiler is even set at 72 73 still feels chilly sometimes. I'll have rooms two three rooms away from the stove at 75 and that can still feel cold. Everyone is different but after working 100 feet in the air with temps in the teens or low twenties, and as soon as your above the tree line the wind cuts right through you I don't care what you wear. A hot stove has no equal. Last winter me and a buddy spent about seven hours over 150 feet on a cold steel pole repairing a couple lines, the temps went below zero that night. Long story short when I got home I slept all night in front of the stove cranking at about 450 degrees. I do believe heat is heat but the heat from a stove feels great that dry intense heat is very hard to replicate.

mass_burner said:

I thought cold was drawn to heat, isn't this why folks point a fan towards their stoves?

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"Cold" is not a physical object or even a real attribute; it's a relative, often subjective, judgement of how much heat energy something is storing. If someone says that X is cold, it could mean that X has a temperature lower than body temp or that it has a lower temperature than expected, but it doesn't mean that X has 'coldness' inside of it- it just means that X's atoms are buzzing more slowly than the speaker expects or desires.

People put fans on their stoves to move cool room air across the hot surface of the stove. This warms the air, resulting in more heat staying in the room and less going up the flue- probably a good thing, unless flue temperatures are already too low.

If it was up to me there would be no AC I hate it but the wife doesn't feel that way. When she turns it down below 74 I'm freezing. I can sleep in the sun when it's 90 plus. I was a bricklayer for twelve years so working in the heat was great plus when outside in the 85 plus heat all day then going inside to a 78 degree house it feels cool. The AC is the only thing we don't agree on. In the winter we both love the heat, but I ask why a 74 degree house in the winter is cold to her. Then in the summer why is a 73 degree house way too hot makes no sense.

You think that is funny, I can't make sense of it can you.

It is not uncommon for my wife to get the house to over 100 on cold days. I like 86-92 myself, but she is like a cat and will curl up next to the stove and stay there on cold days. Most people don't realize how warm it is in here because the humidity is 19%. We let the fire go out yesterday and it was 68-70 in here today. We had some friends over and they thought it was fine, but we were cold. Having a wood stove makes summer heat more bearable because you only have to adapt to the humidity, not the temp. This is just what we have found and may vary. I love my wood stove and enjoy watching the propane and oil trucks buzz right by on their routes.

I'm floored by these temps.

We need to organize some kind of target-temperature-based wife swap here.

Though I think my wife and I have broken each other in too well for me to be willing to swap anyway!

BrotherBart said:

I see a movie script in this somewhere.

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EARL: "Gal, you done broke my heart and I cain't see why you'd say you was a 85°F when yer really a 65°F ."

LUCILLE, sobbing: "Oh, Earl! I was a fool! I lied because I wanted you for your Blaze King..."

EARL: "Lordy, not again! How many times?!"