How much have I saved by adding a wood stove?

LLigetfa said:

If I had a do-over I wouldn't do it any different.

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I always knew I was born to heat with a stove of some sort. From the evening visits with Dad down in the scary basement of a three-story brownstone to fill the coal furnace, to my first look at a real wood stove when we visited friends at their summer camp, to pot belly stoves at deer camp as a teen, I have always been captivated by these things and all the rituals and tending behind them. I save a lot because I have electric resistance heat, but even if I had NG I'd still have a stove someplace. It's part of who I am, and I'm sure I'm not alone in that sentiment here on Hearth.com.

certified106 said:

LLigetfa said:

Sen. John Blutarsky said:

It was a rhetorical question.

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LOL
I don't think I saved any money. I have a natural gas furnace. I pay $100 for a cord of unprocessed wood.

Add to that the cost of:
Stove and chimney
Woodshed
Log splitter
Chainsaw
Gas, oil, gloves, etc.

Maybe I'll break even before I die. Maybe I'll live longer because of all the extra exercise and get to see a savings.

If I had a do-over I wouldn't do it any different.

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You don't know how many times I have wished I could get NG for those days I just don't feel like dealing with the wood (especially when the neighbors driveway 75 feet from mine has a NG meter right next to it). I can't really factor the cost of the chainsaw or tractor into the cost of my wood as I would own them to take care of the property, plow the drive etc....As it stands right now if I'm not feeding the stove the propane furnace is running at 2.69 a gallon and at that price I might as well feed the stove with $100 dollar bills. I figure if you don't bill the labor I put into 3 cords of wood a year I save myself roughly $2000 dollars a year. I enjoy the labor though and it keeps me from sitting on the couch every weekend so there is intrinsic value in it for me. Happy burning!

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contact your utility co.
if you pay the expenses, they can run a gas line to your home.
gas pipe is cheap.

Probably around 2,000 dollars a year- in number 2 fuel oil we no longer buy.

I only spent around 300 for a chainsaw plus various hand tools, new chains, etc.

I agree with everyone that the psychological and health benefits are beyond price.
It has quickly become a new, better lifestyle for me.

Sen. John Blutarsky said:

Dune said:

Sounds like a solar hot water panel would save you a lot of oil, Senator. Another thing to consider is http://www.hilkoil.com/ . The hilkoil could share a tank with the solar system, saving even more oil (and money).

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Funny that I was talking to someone who has solar heated hot water last night. It does a good job April thru October. I will eventually go to something high efficiency. I wonder what portion of the 500 gallons burned was for hot water? All four of us tend to take long showers. We do a lot of laundry and run the dishwasher often.

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I put an hour meter on my boiler to answer this question. With 2 adults (taking showers) + dshes + laundry, we use ~100 gal/yr for DHW. Standby on the boiler is another 150 gal/yr. Many boilers/furnaces have higher standby.

I am currently on all electric, including heat. I am paying $1,800 for a stove and OAK installed next week. I'll get a take credit of $600, wo the cost to me is about $1,200. We pay about $300 a month in electricity during winter. If I can reduce that by $50, which would put us at the summer usage, then I will save about $250 per winter, and it will take five years to pay off the stove. I am assuming the cost of wood is zero, which seems reasonable. I scrounge all the wood, so the wood is free, adn the labor is usually helping a friend take down a tree, clearing up fallen limbs, etc., so the labor is something I might have done anyway. I already had a saw, and the Fiskar's is a camp tool.

The big benefit, aside from the fun of it, will be a heat source in the house when the electricity goes out. If I figure the cost of replacing water pipes every few years when we get one of our semi-anual power outages, the payoff will be a lot sooner.

My stove cost $2000 .One of the reasons i went with a wood stove for a second home(vs pellet or corn) is cuz i get wood free. Before wood i was burning oil. Oil prices vary but it dont take long to buy $2000 worth of oil. 1 to 2 years max. If i did not have the stove i would actually have to pay to get rid of all the waste wood my business generates.
I also used to burn oil in my main home,as much as $4000 a year. I changed to a coal boiler and paid for that the first year. Over the last 8 years iv saved $20-$25000 NOT buying oil.

Sen. John Blutarsky said:

Funny that I was talking to someone who has solar heated hot water last night. It does a good job April thru October. I will eventually go to something high efficiency. I wonder what portion of the 500 gallons burned was for hot water? All four of us tend to take long showers. We do a lot of laundry and run the dishwasher often.

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i'm in the same situation. Heat the house and water with oil furnace. I found that throughout the warm months when the furnace is only heating our water, the oil goes down very slowly. We filled it at the end of June and we're now about 3/8 of the tank left. But last year in the winter we filled it in December and had to fill it again in February. It just gobbles up oil to heat the house.

Our woodstove is in the basement and while I haven't started burning 24/7 during the week I am on the weekends and will get a good fire going in the evening on those extra cold nights. I definitely think we'll see a considerable drop in oil consumption. The question will be how we will obtain wood in the long run and will it be worth it?

I think it will be.

Cost of heating oil currently: $2.78 per gallon x 580 gallons used in an average year = $1,612.40
Cost to have oil tech maintain oil boiler annually: $123
Cost to fuel generator to supply house with power to heat home in extended power loss: $14.96

Cost to heat with wood and come home to a toasty warm home, secondaries firing away and wife not bundled in three layers of sweat shirts and know I control the price of heating my house and never worrying about a power outage: Priceless . . . for everyone else there is Fuel #2 . . . or propane . . . or natural gas.

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When heating oil prices were north of $4 a few years back I figured out the cost to recoup the price of the stove, chimney, hearth, gas for the saw, etc. and figured it would be a few short years . . . prices dropped though . . . and of course I found new toys to buy such as my splitter and a wood hauling trailer . . . but I still figure I'll be ahead in a few years . . . and if nothing else I enjoy the work and independence . . . and of course the heat.

One thing you can say for oil or gas or electric resistance heat is you NEVER get back the cost of equipment as you do with wood or some of the other solid fuels.

Be glad you switched from oil to wood when you did. High oil prices are coming back soon. For some eye opening info google "Peak Oil".

I imagine I'll save little to nothing BUT..my area is prone to power outages, already had a 7 or 8 hr outage 2 weeks ago when temps were still nice. Will be happy to be able to stay home and still be warm and be able to cook. Wife called installer and was told the 9th of Dec our stove will be installed unless weather turns bad. Peace of Mind needs to count for something. Will get around $1,100 tax credit which will pay for the entire Pipes needed.

Sen. John Blutarsky said:

Dune said:

Sounds like a solar hot water panel would save you a lot of oil, Senator. Another thing to consider is http://www.hilkoil.com/ . The hilkoil could share a tank with the solar system, saving even more oil (and money).

Click to expand...

Funny that I was talking to someone who has solar heated hot water last night. It does a good job April thru October. I will eventually go to something high efficiency. I wonder what portion of the 500 gallons burned was for hot water? All four of us tend to take long showers. We do a lot of laundry and run the dishwasher often.

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A hilkoil would do a good job the other months. Your oil consumption could be eliminated, saving an aditional $1500 a year. System payback would be pretty quick.

The hilkoil is interesting, but I'm not sure about drilling the holes in my stove.

Before we upgraded to the Fireview we burned about 900 gallons of propane to make heat, hot water with the furnace, and cook per year. The first year with the Fireview we burned 460 gallons. At the current $4/gallon that is a savings of around $1800. I think that is just about what the new stove and pipe cost with the off season sale price and the tax credit. The wood was free scrounged. Not bad to have the stove pay for itself in one year. A better return that I could ever get on new windows or insulation. The next thing I want to do is solar water heating to hopefully eliminate summer water heating costs and perhaps off set the occasional winter heating expenses.

Last year I only filled my oil tank (275) gallons once, used for heating domestic hot water. The rockland was burning 24/7 and kept the house comfortable. That is in Schoharie, NY ; gets pretty cold up here. the insert really saved us when we lost power for three and ahalf days when we had a bad ice storm two years ago.

I just did some math.

Red Oak has 24,000,000 buts’ per chord.

1 gal of propane has 91,502 Btu

Doing that math, 24,000,000 / 91,502 means 262.289 gallons of propane for one chord.

Weekly Summary of Residential Propane Prices (12/1/10 EIA update):
The U.S. average residential propane price increased over $0.02 per gallon from last week to reach $2.58 per gallon. This was an increase of $0.29 per gallon compared to the $2.29 per gallon average from the same period last year. Wholesale propane prices increased by $0.04 per gallon from $1.27 per gallon to $1.31 per gallon. This was an increase of approximately $0.08 per gallon when compared to the November 30, 2009 price of $1.23 per gallon.


If propane is $2.58 a gallon, that 262.28 gallons is worth $676.71 (round up).

In Houston a chord is selling about $300.00 with deliver and stacked.

That that one chord is cost is $300.00, or HALF the price of propane.

I guess how well you can use the raw btu’s to heat you can use in your home is the key.

I have some land, a chainsaw, a log splitter and my labor, and I guess my fixed costs (gas, oil, a new chain from time and the repairs for the stuff) adds about $30.00 - $40.00 per chord.

Heating my home for about free and keeping my wife happy and my heart pumping - Priceless.

Robert

I haven't had to buy fuel oil in over two years and I still have plenty left. Another amazing savings the stove provides is all natural cat box litter! I know I've saved a bundle there and the cats love it. I also don't need to buy salt for my sidewalks and end of the driveway. I did, however, have to buy a high end door mat.

My house would go through about 650-750 gal of fuel oil.

I now go through 2 cords of wood, 30 gallons of fuel oil, and by power bill goes up $20-$40/month.

Between the wood stove and the heat pump the place is dirt cheap to heat! The heat pump probably saves almost as much money as the wood stove (since we cant burn 24/7 due to schedules). REALLY reccomend heat pumps and wood stoves.

THE INTANGIBLE BENEFITS:
1) I keep the house warmer with the woodstove than with the heater because its still cheaper
2) I am not paying some arab to pump oil out of the ground, ship it half way around the globe, and sell it to me.
3) I am burning trees that were cut for landscaping purposes, that would have been cut regardless. So heating my house adds no more CO2 to the atmosphere than just disposing of the trees would have cost anyways. So my heat is carbon neutral! Its also a short carbon cycle (the tree is 50 years old, not 500 million year old dino fuel).
4) its cozy
5) i get to burn my yard debris, so its easier to clean my yard.
6) I dont have a contract with the oil company (I have 150 gallons left and burn 30 a year). When I need more oil, I will just go and buy off road diesel. This way I dont have to keep a full tank of fuel

yay woodstoves!

Just got my tank filled...60 gallons for last year. Roughly the same for the past 10 years. Its really nice to spend under $200.00 for fuel oil for the season. I heat my water with electric but now that the kids are gone, its considerably cheaper. Spend about $150 per cord for 3 cords of mixed wood and can normally scrounge up a cord or so on my own cutting out back....got some down from last year i have to get up. Just started my Jutul last night......nice . First fire of the season. Must say I've missed my old friend.

cass

I've saved a lot. Details if the post makes it on...