Yeah, I’ve always looked dubiously at these claims of “full-time” burners who claim only using three cords per year. They must only run their stove 9-12 weeks out of the year, to use such little wood on a “full-time” schedule.
WBIW’s quoted 4.5 cords in 6 mo’s is only 3 cu. ft. of wood per day, really not much to heat a house in WI weather, it could be as little as one load per day in that 3.2 cu.ft. firebox of the Ideal Steel.
I know a lot of people claim they’re “full-time burners”, and running only 3 cords per year. I’ve even repeated these reported averages to new burners, when they come here asking how much wood they will use, although I always round that up to “3-4 cords”.
But if you do the math on a real “full-time” assumption, it just doesn’t add up. Even in a modestly-sized stove, 3 loads per day means a third of a cord per week, and 2 loads per day means a quarter cord per week, in all but the smallest of stoves. In fact, if you read back thru some of those threads discussing wood usage, you’ll see some of the same folks claiming 3-4 cords per year also claiming they use 1/4 to 1/3 cord per week. Their year must be shorter than the rest of us,I guess.
String together 25-30 weeks of heating season for anyone north of the Mason-Dixon, and you’re using a lot more than 3 cords, to run “full time”. A lot closer to WBIW’s reported 4.5 cords, actually. I suspect 90% of these“full-time” burners are not nearly as full time as they report to be.
Looking at my own usage, I put 5 cords thru one stove in 7 months at a relatively low burn rate of 1-2 loads per day. I put an additional 2 cords thru the other stove in just three months at 1 load per day. These are medium 2.65 cu.ft. stoves, a whole heck of a lot smaller than the 3.2 cuft Ideal Steel.
This has nothing to do with heat demand or size of the house, it only depends on firebox volume, and loads per year. If you’re only burning 3 cords per year, you are just not running many loads per year, unless you’re running a very, very small stove.
