Wood Only

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Fins59

Member
Apr 11, 2009
76
Wisconsin - Wausau area
Was reading in paper today about contests in different parts of country to see who can go the longest without turning on their gas, oil or electric heating units/furnace. Fireplaces and space heaters are ok. Winner gets a trophy (and bragging rights:))

Anyone on here able to heat solely with wood so far this winter? Ideally someone in household would be home during day to keep fire stoked.

So far I have not turned on my natural gas furnace. Depending solely on my Johnson Wood Burner. Lowest temp in house in morning has been 58. Little chilly but wood burner quickly brings temp back up.

Maybe Moderator could start such a contest here?:)
 
Lots of wood only here on this site. I am one of them. :cheese: Our winter has been mild this year so no OIL yet. 120 liters was last years consumption. I am gonna try and pull through this year as all work is close to home, so far...Knock on wood...so to speak. :lol:
 
I could come really close. I'm almost always home but there are those times when I go offshore.
 
I heat only with wood. I'm home everyday (I have to be to milk the cows morning and night anyway).
 
We both work and haven't had a furnace for a few years now.
 
Middle of my second year 24/7. No oil, propane or NG at all. In two years the coolest the house has got is 66 degrees on New Years day this year, slept in a little later than usual.
 
When propane was pushing $3.50+ per gallon, I really tried not to burn anything but the wood burner.

This year, I'm a little more lax, since propane is under $2.00/gal now. The furnace kicks on at 62 degrees (I'm thinking about bumping that down some more)... In the event that I'm too lazy to get up in the morning to light the stove.

-SF
 
Had to use my heat about 3 days this year. That was only because I was out of town. I'm wondering if this stove will heat the whole house when the temp gets to single digits. That is yet to be seen.
 
I've only burned oil for heat twice this year - was out of town once and the second was to idle the stove for installing an additional piece of chimney pipe (just had to be done on the coldest day of the week of course). I believe that I could have coasted through the chimney install if we needed to as it would only have lost a few more degrees in the house. Can't do anything about being out of town - bit much to have a neighbor stop in and tend the stove 3x a day eh? But that is what backup heat is for.

If we stay around town I'm pretty sure we could live without our oil heat (although we use it for hot water). However, I feel no shame in using it once in a while and may well let it kick in sometime - I'm not going to plan our life entirely around the stove load schedule as would be required to completely avoid oil heat and keep the house at a minimum temperature.

The idea of that contest sounds interesting but whoever came up with it probably never considered the fact that there are folks (some of them here) who have been using nothing but wood as their primary heat for years so the contest will likely never end if two of those folks join in. If you don't have backup heat it sort of motivates you I'm sure!
 
We heat 100% with wood and no longer have a furnace for backup. The last time we purchased oil for heating was in March, 1979 when we bought 100 gallons.
 
Slow1 said:
If you don't have backup heat it sort of motivates you I'm sure!

That is an understatement. It is kind of cool though. We are in the middle of a major rebuild of the house and I can instantly feel the benefit of 2 hours and $50 of spray foam and insulation. That instant return would probably get lost in a fuel bill. With our old stove we were tied to the loading schedule, but now we have a lot more flexibility.
 
Can homeless people play ?

Would this have the potential for a lawsuit unlike the radio station that had a water drinking contest and some one died ?
 
I didn't want to be a slave to my stove . . . and so I have the thermostats set at 60 degrees . . . for those wicked cold nights when the woodstove just can't keep up and I don't want to wake up for a reload . . . and for those times when I want to go away on a vacation to somewhere warm and sunny.

That said, the boiler has only kicked on a few times . . . as my wife said just the other day she is so used to it being so quiet that when it kicks on she has to pause for a second or two before figuring out that the noise is the boiler turning on . . . usually followed a few minutes later by the smell of burning dust.
 
Burning wood only is a lot of work. I wouldn't want to do it. I have my whole house programmed for various temperatures and times when the NG burner kicks in. When I want to burn wood, I fire up the Jotul and get it hotter than my program and all is well and I don't get any frozen pipes.
 
We've only been running the supplemental oil furnace for the past 10 days now that hard winter's here.

Had the oil man top us off a week ago. Only used 100 gallons all last winter. Forget what we used the one non-woodheat winter. Suspect it was more. :)
 
I had to turn on the LP furnace today. First time since....since......I don't know.
Had to take a blower apart om my wood furnace. Can't get new bearings till tomorrow:(
 
I would really like to hear the detailed stories (truth) of the wood only from a woodstove only house with running water in a non-southern location.
Sorry, I can't believe until I truly understand how without one exception and alternative, including solar, geo thermal or any second source was not used once.
Oh ya, having your neighbors, employees or non-resident co-workers assistance is not permitted.
My guess is that there are some substantiated claims mainly from people with large families all of which are primary residents.

Blast away!
 
What details you looking for Ratman? My wife and I both work and have 4 and 9 year old girls. We haven't had a furnace in 4 years. No one has ever filled the stove while we weren't in the house anyway. Other than a bunch of south facing windows, the solar system is still in the planning phase. We just warped two stoves before finding one that was up to the job.

That said, when the bleeding stops from the rebuild of the house, we will do a wood boiler with storage and most likely electric back up.
 
Fins59 said:
Was reading in paper today about contests in different parts of country to see who can go the longest without turning on their gas, oil or electric heating units/furnace. Fireplaces and space heaters are ok. Winner gets a trophy (and bragging rights:))

Anyone on here able to heat solely with wood so far this winter? Ideally someone in household would be home during day to keep fire stoked.

So far I have not turned on my natural gas furnace. Depending solely on my Johnson Wood Burner. Lowest temp in house in morning has been 58. Little chilly but wood burner quickly brings temp back up.

Maybe Moderator could start such a contest here?:)

I heat solely with wood every year
 
We put in a stove 2 years ago in our big, old 2 story house. Added exterior insulation before stucco, put in new windows, and got the stove to supplement the gas/boiler when we bought the place. This year we have yet to turn on the boiler--other than using the pump to circulate some water a few weeks back when we had a few nights of -5F/-10F.

In NM (Gallup--6,500 elevation) we have some extremely cold nights, but often have winter days that climb back up towards 40 or so. Just checked our 10-day forecast and it shows nights ranging from -2 to +10, and days all in the 30's.

Now that I've mastered the all-night burn, our main floor stays at around 68/70 while the kids' rooms upstairs cool down to about 58/60 by morning. I've got insulation work to do up there still, but the kids haven't complained, yet...

I try to time things so my fire is burning down when I return from school in the afternoon and then can clean out ash and rebuild. Sometimes I restart right away, and sometimes wait until after supper. In the long run I'd like to get help from some kind of solar pre-heat for the gas boiler, but for now I'm liking my $25 gas bill (hot water, dryer, and cooking.)

Got to go put some wood in the stove...
 
Ratman said:
I would really like to hear the detailed stories (truth) of the wood only from a woodstove only house with running water in a non-southern location.
Sorry, I can't believe until I truly understand how without one exception and alternative, including solar, geo thermal or any second source was not used once.
Oh ya, having your neighbors, employees or non-resident co-workers assistance is not permitted.
My guess is that there are some substantiated claims mainly from people with large families all of which are primary residents.

Blast away!
What's not to believe? What details do you want?

I do have a forced air furnace in case of emergency, but other than an annual Fall 5 minute test run, it has not been used in a very long time.

I am the only one in my house that touches the woodstove (also the only one that makes the firewood). I have not been away from home overnight during heating season since ....... I can't remember. I had heart surgery several years ago in March, but I did not let them keep me overnight. I came home after surgery, in an icestorm, 70 miles, at 1:00am, and stoked the fire back up again. (It was not open heart surgery.)

Perhaps the reason you don't believe is you're not as dedicated to wood heat as some of the others here? It's not hard for me to understand at all. I'm just another generation in a long line of a wood heat only family.
 
Ratman said:
I would really like to hear the detailed stories (truth) of the wood only from a woodstove only house with running water in a non-southern location.
Sorry, I can't believe until I truly understand how without one exception and alternative, including solar, geo thermal or any second source was not used once.
Oh ya, having your neighbors, employees or non-resident co-workers assistance is not permitted.
My guess is that there are some substantiated claims mainly from people with large families all of which are primary residents.

Blast away!

I guess it depends on your situation. Here's mine:
Someone is always home day or night. Without this benefit it probably couldn't be done in cold climates. Like you say; running water issues.

If you have fairly good sized house it helps to have a forced air fan on your stove. I have a good sized fan motor and have 2 heat pipes pouring out the hot air. One is directed to lower level and the other one is directed to upper level. It took a few years to work this out so heat was distributed adequately. I also have flexible "duct" pipes attached to these 2 main pipes so I can direct heat in many directions. I have dampers (open & close) within these pipes to control heat flow. For example I can load a wood rack (1/2 face cord size) with wood wet from rain or snow and use that wood within an hour after having heat blowing on it. I also have casters on my wood racks so can move about easily.
I also have simplified starting of fire every morning. I have starting kit already made up. Just insert kit in stove, put a few pieces of wood on top, light it and forget about it for at least an hour. To our family that was a big obstacle - restarting that fire every morning. I have very little ash/coals in my stove so I don't burn out the grates. Learned that the hard way - accumulated hot ashes burn out grates = new grates (if you can find them) cost $100. A $100 can buy a cord of wood.

My recipe for starting kit:
Take a soda container, the long 12 pack type. Flatten it out and cut it in half and now you have 2 sleeves.
Now cut a brown grocery bag in half so you have 2 pieces. Staple the bottom of the top piece so now you have 2 smaller bags.
Fill one of bags with your "mix" of wood shavings, sawdust, chips, leave bits, etc. and staple top of bag shut.
Now tuck bag into "sleeve" along with 1 full size sheet of newspaper underneath bag.
Now tuck 5 or 6 pieces of small kindling into sleeve on top of bag.....and that's it. One neat little pack in a sleeve.
Leave a little bit of newspaper sticking out to act as a wick.
You can also use a cereal box for sleeve. Cut that in half also so you have proper size and can make 2 kits from one container.
I'll make up about a dozen of these kits at a time.

I told one of my friends about this procedure and he said - too much fuss. But he only has an occasional fire in fireplace about once a week. I just counted.....from now until April I'll (actually its so easy my wife starts them now) be starting a fire in my stove for the next approx 130 mornings. That's a lot of cereal and coke boxes:).
Sorry for lengthy post, but kind of hard to fully explain with short one.
 
Forgot to mention. My son-in-law owns a saw mill so wood is plentiful.
 
The only time my propane gas heater comes on is when I am on vacation now if i could just take care of the hot water and my dryer and cooking stove with wood I would be set. I told my wife if she ever turns on the heat we are getting a divorce lol.
 
Oh there are plenty of people out there burning exclusively wood. Look at the SolarAndWood from Syracuse burning a BK. I've been out that way and it gets damn cold in the winter, absolutely brutal sometimes. You just have to have the right piece of equipment to tackle the job - enter The King. Serious firepower.

Some friends of mine bought an old schoolhouse in Lilliesville, VT maybe 30 years ago. It had a hand pump well for water and a wood stove the size of a CAT diesel engine. They ran that way for about 10 years before they put on an addition w/ running water. They also had a sauna built from an old shack in the back yard, heated, of course, via another wood stove that barely fit inside. Now that was great provided you didn't graze up against the stove on the way out. Clearances? :ahhh: It also had an old claws foot bathtub on the deck that you could fill with water from the river. So then you could do that weird Norwegian sh!t where you go in the sauna to sweat it up and then jump in the ice cold bathtub. Since this is a heating forum, we won't get into that...
 
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