Advice on supplementing with oil heat

[chutes]

In anticipation of a very cold night last night, I set my thermostat just in the upstairs to kick on at 64F so kids would be warm when we got up this morning. As soon as I woke up, I turned thermostat off. Downstairs fire room had cooled to high-50s, far side of the house cooled to low 50's (upstairs was 64, obviously, thanks to furnace). I got fire going again by 7:00 AM. Now, at nearly 1:00 PM - 6 hours later - upstairs is 61F, fire room is 72F, and far side of house is 56F. I have a feeling that with these low temps, I'm getting myself into a vicious circle here, where it will take me most of the day to get the temps back up to comfortable levels, only to have them fall overnight to start all over again. I completely understand that these temp swings are normal, but I would like to limit the severity of the swings.

If I'm open to supplementing the insert, briefly, to get house up to temp, is there a good way to do this? In other words, am I better off just keeping thermostat on 62 or so throughout house so that furnace always kicks on when stove isn't cutting it? If I do that, will it help my stove? In other words, if I just rely on stove to bring everything back up, am I expecting more out of my stove than I should? Obviously, I prefer to never use oil to save money, but to do so in my house (about 2400 SF), I think I would need another stove at the far end of the house in the great room. Absent of that, I think I'm going to have to supplement or everyone is going to have to get used to this cold and then warm and then cold again cycle.

Any advice on how those that supplement - or used to supplement with oil heat - found their happy place is much appreciated.

 

[beau5278]

Depending on your house and your wife and kids reaction to cold,you may be best to set your oil to keep the house above a certain temperature.I have 2 wood burners but the house has no insulation,we're ok if the wind isn't blowing,we also have 10ft ceilings.We haven't had to run the oil in 3 years,we do have an electric heater that we use to heat just the bathroom,SO likes to shower in the morning,so we use that to heat the bathroom,other that that we just wait the couple hours that it takes to warm things up in the morning.

 

[Fod01]

I keep my thermostat at 65. Its in the hallway just off the stove room , so the heat doesn't generally come on. I am always first up between 5 and 6am, my teenage daughter second at 6:30. Its a judgement call: If the thermometer is reading 69 or above, and the insert is still warm with lots of coals, I've got some time to get the stove heating again. If the house or stove is colder, the oil is helping out. Our cape cod has cast iron baseboard on the main floor. They take a little while to heat up (like my insert), but once hot, the heat lasts a long time.

This morning was 24 outside/ 66 inside, and only a small handfull of coals left. Yes I turned on the heat, but that's going to be it for the day.

Regarding raising the house from 50's to 70's using only wood: mine's a medium sized insert... that would be heroic!

 

[savageactor7]

Sure... set the back up at whatever the family is comfortable at...if your running the wood stove the oil furnace is only heating a 5 or 10* difference and that's no big deal. Just because you burn wood there's no dishonor is firing up the oil plant...the object of our sacrifice is to keep the loved one's as warm as they like it.

 

[chutes]

Thanks to all for these responses. This helps a lot. I guess I'm wondering, if I start with temps in low 60s, do I have a better chance of the insert getting things up to toasty levels - thereby exceeding thermostat settings. I'm no physicist, but I guess it just seems like common sense that if I want my insert to get things to 70s early in the day, every day, I'd be better off starting the cool mornings in the low to mid-60s than in the low to mid-50s.

Just because you burn wood there's no dishonor is firing up the oil plant...the object of our sacrifice is to keep the loved one's as warm as they like it.

HAHA. You're so right. I think that I have this competitive thing in me that I'm trying to recover the costs of purchasing the insert as quickly as possible to justify the expense. Every time I look at that thermostat and think of turning it on, I feel like I'm surrendering a little bit.

 

[Fod01]

HAHA. You're so right. I think that I have this competitive thing in me that I'm trying to recover the costs of purchasing the insert as quickly as possible to justify the expense. Every time I look at that thermostat and think of turning it on, I feel like I'm surrendering a little bit.

I hear you... I buy an insert, and gas/oil prices plummet. You're welcome.

Now its going to take twice as long to recover the cost.

 

[burntime]

I do most of my heating with the insert but with as little as it is used I do not worry about running a cycle of heat now and again... Any way you look at it you are doing a good job burning and saving money!

 

[kenny chaos]

These last few cold nights I've been turning the thermostat to about 62 at night knowing the woodstove will keep it about 65 for at least a few hours. Then the temp will need to drop to about 57 degrees before the furnace actually kicks on. The furnace shuts off at a high temp of about 66. I'm up at six and turn the stat down right away. I throw a couple small splits on the coals and in less than a half hour, I'm keeping the place at 65 again with the woodstove. I'm pretty sure I'll go through close to one tank (200 gallons) of oil this winter compared to 1000 gallons without the woodstove.

 

[burntime]

Even at 2 bucks a gallon you are saving 1600 bucks? And I bet you are warmer

 

[kenny chaos]

I'm not complaining. I was just sharing with Mr. Chutes.
I dropped half the savings on a ms441. Merry Christmas to me, merry christmas to me,.........

 

[burntime]

Well, you MUST have the toys I am trying to get my wife to go for the diesel Kubota

 

[itworks]

We have a raised ranch. The main level is 1,136sf, the lower level , where the stove is located, is 568sf. We keep the stove set to 73, and the main level's tstat is set at 65. We use approximately 50-75 gals of HHO, and 217 40lb bags of pellets annually. Everyone claims to be comfy, and not to bad on the wallet. I heat my water by electricity so that's not a factor in the HHO usage. These are last years numbers.
Since I was able to fill my tank @$2 a gallon, I have given my stove a well deserved vacation.
Great to have choices.

 

[gyrfalcon]

Thanks to all for these responses. This helps a lot. I guess I'm wondering, if I start with temps in low 60s, do I have a better chance of the insert getting things up to toasty levels - thereby exceeding thermostat settings. I'm no physicist, but I guess it just seems like common sense that if I want my insert to get things to 70s early in the day, every day, I'd be better off starting the cool mornings in the low to mid-60s than in the low to mid-50s.

Just because you burn wood there's no dishonor is firing up the oil plant...the object of our sacrifice is to keep the loved one's as warm as they like it.

HAHA. You're so right. I think that I have this competitive thing in me that I'm trying to recover the costs of purchasing the insert as quickly as possible to justify the expense. Every time I look at that thermostat and think of turning it on, I feel like I'm surrendering a little bit.

Chutes, my situation is similar-- and so is my strong urge to defy the oil companies. But aftter trying various things, I've got my oil burner thermostate set to 62, which means it comes on at some point during the night when my tiny stove has quit producing significant heat. I tried to tough it out during a cold spell earlier, but found, like you, that it took the better part of the day to get the heat up from mid-50s to even high 60s with just the stove.

I had naive hopes of keeping the durn boiler switched off altogether, but it just made me miserable and chilly all day. One thing I'm going to try at some point on a cold night is putting the boiler on some degrees above the room temp from stove only an hour or so before I go to bed and seeing if the stove alone can maintain the temperature longer that way. Running at my normal 400-450 stovetop, I'm able to maintain a good temperature once I get it there, but it takes forever to actually increase it, wherever I'm starting from.

 

[lecomte38]

I have a programmable thermostat. I oil heat up to 66* at 6 am then let the pellet stove keep it warm the rest of the day. At 9* this morning I'd have to run the s#*% of of the pellet insert to have a warm house in the morning. Less the 1 gallon of oil heats up the house very nicely. As a bonus I have switched off the electric hot water and am back on oil hw

 

[RedRanger]

While I live in a considerably milder climate than yours-what works for us may also work for you. Let me state that we burn a max of 125 gallons of oil per season, and approx 100 gallons of propane. And 6 cords of softwood.

first floor is where the wood insert is located,along with the oil-fired boiler.
third floor is a propane insert. and bedrooms above that.

We crank the heat out of the wood insert till that level gets to about 86f before turning it down for the night. "heat has to rise".

If it is really cold outside, we use the boiler as a booster (to bring the whole house up to about 72f) at about 6 am, all the while restoking and reloading the wood insert. It is a good idea to use the oil to bring the temp up to a warmer temp so temperature takes longer to drop thus allowing the wood heat to rise and do a better job at attempting to maintain a decent comfort zone for you.

We supplement with the propane insert in much the same manner. Although it is really used mostly for ambience.

Sometimes we may also use this same procedure in the late afternoon. Another way of putting it is if you are comfortable with 70F, then run the furnace till the temp hits 76-78. Then your wood heat will do a better job of keeping that 70f for you.

Been experimenting and doing this routine for the past 4 years--and it seems cost effective-And Comfortable.

 

[chutes]

I do most of my heating with the insert but with as little as it is used I do not worry about running a cycle of heat now and again... Any way you look at it you are doing a good job burning and saving money!

These last few cold nights I've been turning the thermostat to about 62 at night knowing the woodstove will keep it about 65 for at least a few hours. Then the temp will need to drop to about 57 degrees before the furnace actually kicks on. The furnace shuts off at a high temp of about 66. I'm up at six and turn the stat down right away. I throw a couple small splits on the coals and in less than a half hour, I'm keeping the place at 65 again with the woodstove. I'm pretty sure I'll go through close to one tank (200 gallons) of oil this winter compared to 1000 gallons without the woodstove.

Thanks for the responses. I am saving money, for sure. I'm set up for automatic delivery for oil, so I called them last week to see when my next delivery was scheduled. They said "next week" which is this week. They are pretty good, and always bring me fuel when I'm at 1/4 tank or lower. I said to my oil company "I've got more than 3/4 of a tank left still." They cancelled my scheduled fill-up and said: "we'll call you in a few weeks." That was a great experience for me, because I at least know that - at current usage - I'm probably using 60-70% less than last year. And - even though I'm very happy for all the people that don't have a wood option that the price has gone down - I kind of wish it was where we had anticipated it (between $4 and $5) because I'd feel even better about my savings. Oh well, I heard opec was meeting again this week to talk about reducing supply. Better fill those tanks up now....

 

[kenny chaos]

Another way of putting it is if you are comfortable with 70F, then run the furnace till the temp hits 76-78.

Yes I'd be comfortable at 70 degrees but we have not been able to get this house above 68 degrees for over 15 years now, wood, oil fired baseboard and/or both!
Please, don't make it sound so easy and do appreciate what you have.

 

[chutes]

By the way - besides burntime and Kenny who I quoted in a post above - many thanks to everyone who responded in this thread. Lots of real great info and ideas here.

Even tonight, I took kids out to get the pics on Santa's lap at the local mall and then out to dinner, by the time I got home my fire was nearly gone and - with a high of 17F today - house was back in 50s again except the fire room. Turning the furnace on before I left would have been smart so I could have come home and rekindled and got the stove up to good temps again. I'm definitely going to try some of the ideas in this thread. Tomorrow, I think rather than shut down the thermostats upon waking, I'll keep them on until I get the fire room up to 80F (it is typically 84-86 in this room), then shut them down, and see if the fire maintains the heat through the day. Today, with the cold outside, it just seemed like my Pacific Insert was working so hard to get the house up from the 50s that it was an uphill, losing battle. Maybe, if I'm lucky, I'll find that I'm shutting down thermo's by 10:00 AM (if I re-stoke at 7:00 AM). If the furnace kicks on at 2:00 or 3:00 AM, then I'm still only running 3 zones for 7 or 8 hours per day vs. 4 zones for 24 hours per day (there's a zone in the fire room that I can't imagine ever using that therm since it gets warm so quick in here). Plus - maybe if I get into a good cycle I'll find that the temps are sinking below thermo settings until 4:00 AM. Even better. Those are still very reasonable savings.

 

[Dix]

Chutes, how big of a coal bed are you working with in that insert?

I'm heating a 2000 SF with one, and doing fairly well. I left at 8 AM this morning, and didn't get home until 7PM. A minimal amount of coals in the stove, but some smallis splits & 2 pieces of fatwood, and we're going over 70 here. It was 68 in the house when I got home.

 

[chutes]

Chutes, how big of a coal bed are you working with in that insert?
I'm heating a 2000 SF with one, and doing fairly well. I left at 8 AM this morning, and didn't get home until 7PM. A minimal amount of coals in the stove, but some smallis splits & 2 pieces of fatwood, and we're going over 70 here. It was 68 in the house when I got home.

Coal bed is typically 2" to 3". And what you describe in terms of re-lighting is much how it works for me - minus the sustained temps. I've never gone 11 hours like you describe, but have certainly gone 9 or 10 hours and restarting was no problem whatsoever (though by then we're talking smaller coals - ping pong ball size or smaller). Typically, after 7 hours sleep I have 2" of good sized coals. Handful of kindling, then I'm throwing on small splits.

PS - I continue to quote my SF wrong - which might add to confusion. My house is actually a little over 2700SF as opposed to 2400. I probably should be using the PE Summit Insert. And, I really haven't used oil other than a couple of hours - and only in 1 of the 2 upstairs zones and never in bottom 2 zones, so that Pacific Insert has been trying to heat the entire 2700SF on its own. I think that is about 700SF more than recommended for this insert. I think, next summer, I'll do a stand alone wood stove on the other end of the house, because I do love wood heat.

68F when you got home is fantastic, by the way. I assume it was just as cold on the Island as it was here in CT today? With wind chill, it was something like 5F for me today. I think that if I can supplement some - particularly the zones farthest from the stove, my Pacific Insert will do well to sustain those temps. What do you think?

 

[joustinghill]

I figure the whole point of a thermostat is to make the furnace kick in when the temperature is too low, so I keep the oil furnace thermostat set to 62 and burn merrily along to keep the main part of the house about 72. If the stove is really kicking, all the baseboards are cold and the furnace is off. If the stove isn't putting out enough BTUs to keep the house about 62, the furnace kicks in to make up the difference.

I honestly don't know if I'm really saving any oil by burning this year because I can't heat my whole house with the stove I have, plus the furnace has to supply hot water (with a teenager in the house that's a LOT of hot water). I was hoping to save about 30% of my oil usage versus last year, plus be able to keep the house warmer than I'm willing to set it when burning oil. In a month or so I should have enough data to be able to tell how much oil I'm saving. We're having fun running the stove and it's awfully nice to have the great room toasty warm all the time.

At current oil prices, though, when I run out of dry wood I'm just going back to burning oil. Cords are going for upwards of $300 around here which is much more expensive per BTU than $2/g oil.

 

[jpl1nh]

I think in most set ups, a wood stove or insert can take on a big chunk of the heating. In average temp winter weather, depending on your layout, perhaps it does all your heating or most of it, warmer than average, all of it. In colder than average, or bitter cold, and especially when wind is involved, unless you have an optimal set up and/or stove sized for those maximum conditions, it's reasonable that you might need some funace assist. Even so, looking at the bulk of the heating work through an entire heating season, a decent stove or insert set up is going to take over a huge portion of your fossil fuel heating load and congratulations for that accomplishment! For us, last night we had wind chills down to -29. todays wind chills averaged about 10, right now its just a light breeze and 11 and I know its going to cloud over and warm some by dawn. We have a slightly undersized stove but an optimal set up so the stove kept us 68+ the whole time and by morn we'll easily be back in the low 70's. If that cold persisted another day or two, the furnace would be on once or twice a day for a half hour or so to warm "the edges". The cold just presses in from the walls and windows and a little bit of help kicks the whole house up 2-3 degrees and evens out the cool spots around the perimeter. The stove does the rest which by far is the bulk of the heating. For us, that amounts to about 30 gals total for a whole season.

 

[CowboyAndy]

Chutes, I would suggest getting a 7 day programmable tstat for your oil. Program it to be at say 62 from 11pm to 6am, then spike up to 70 or whatever at 6am till 8am, then back down to 62.

 

[chutes]

I think in most set ups, a wood stove or insert can take on a big chunk of the heating. In average temp winter weather, depending on your layout, perhaps it does all your heating or most of it, warmer than average, all of it. In colder than average, or bitter cold, and especially when wind is involved, unless you have an optimal set up and/or stove sized for those maximum conditions, it's reasonable that you might need some funace assist. Even so, looking at the bulk of the heating work through an entire heating season, a decent stove or insert set up is going to take over a huge portion of your fossil fuel heating load and congratulations for that accomplishment!

At least in my situation, this is a wonderful summary. Yesterday, very cold, and needed that furnace to help my stove. Today, it is already 25F out there, about 10 degrees warmer than yesterday. I lit my stove at 7:00 and already the whole house is warmer than my current thermo settings of 62F. So, I'm sure they won't kick on at all today, as we're expecting it to get to 40F. Which means by bed time the house will probably be in mid-70s, so if furnace kicks on during overnight tonight, it would be for minimal periods. Amazing what an education this has become, but I think I'm figuring out how to control my heat situation - thanks to everyone's help on this forum.

Chutes, I would suggest getting a 7 day programmable tstat for your oil. Program it to be at say 62 from 11pm to 6am, then spike up to 70 or whatever at 6am till 8am, then back down to 62.

Good idea. I actually have one of those in 1 of my 4 zones, which is the one where the kids bedrooms are. I guess it is time to read that manual and figure out how to use it. Thanks!

 

[KateC]

We have a small underinsulated ranch over an unfinished basement and our little insert in the evil exterior chimney just can't keep up when it gets below 40 so we need to run the furnace and that's that. What we did was to move the thermostat into the basement---we have laundry and workshop space down there and come late winter I'll have the grow-lights going for the tomato plants. I keep the t-stat set at about 54, which keeps the basement tolerable as well as the floors and outer-reaches upstairs warmer which really helps the insert and saves me being a slave to it. Without the furnace it would be a constant battle. This way I can keep the upstairs at 74 with only small fluctuations. Yes we still use oil, but at least a third of what we used before and that gets better every year as we add insulation and find/seal cold spots.

Keeping the insert and chimney/masonry up to temp 24/7 also helps immensely, as opposed to letting it cool down and having to start over. I run mine on the hot side most all the time but I'm here to feed it every few hours.

You gotta do what you gotta do with what you have to work with and we can't all be lucky enough to keep our entire houses at 80 on 4 splits a day.