At what outside temps to you start burning?

No. Not to soon. But what are you burning with? Size of boiler? Regular boiler or gassification? Storage tank or no? How much square feet are you heating? What is your insulation like? Just trying to get an idea of what you have. You can just burn small loads and add a little wood at a time if you can be around to attend to it. Then you can keep your idling to a minimum. Let us know what you have and you will get more peoples experience and suggestions. Good luck man and happy burning! :coolsmile:

I have been burnung since October 1, I am in central NH. Mostly to heat DHW, I burn every-other-day, 1/2 - 3/4 load to heat storage. On the colder nights I take the chill out of the house by turning on the thermostat. It is a good time to learn how to use your system in the shoulder season.

I say go by the fall colors. Best indication of when it's cold enough to burn.

I go by the WAF

For years, even down here in Tennessee, I lit our Hardy OWB by mid October. Now that I have a regular woodstove inside in addtition to the boiler I light the indoor stove when needed first and will wait til later in November to light the OWB. Its just too smoky and inefficient for the shoulder seasons.

Anybody could burn year round if they wanted to - just would need to change the way you burn and what you burn to suit. I've been lighting small fires every evening for a while now and letting them burn out - keeps the oil from cutting in for evening showers & laundry, and the latent heat just takes the chill off enough. The heating zones haven't called for heat yet, when it gets that cold the fire won't go out and what I put in it will be bigger.

Comes down to how much you don't want to spend on your back up heat source fuel. At least for me.