Am I burning a lot of wood?

[jkupcha]

I'm burning a Napoleon High Country zero clearance fireplace with a blower. It has a very large firebox. My house is 3000sf and I can keep it above 70 degrees with the temp in the 20's outside. Usually have to reload at the 4 hour mark and shove in 4 or 5 splits of hardwood each time. I don't burn at night and just allow the stove to burn out and I restart from coals in the morning. I'm just wondering if this amount of wood is excessive to heat a 3000sq house.

 

[webbie]

Does not sound like it - in this cold weather. That is quite a job.....doing 3000 sq ft with one fireplace.

One way of calculation would be to figure out the lbs of wood burned in that 15 hour or so period. Then figure about 5,000 BTU for each pound of wood.

So if you burned 90 lbs in 15 hours - that would be 6 lbs per hour which is 30,000 BTU out. That is a realistic amount.

 

[Henz]

I would say not too..how many average sized splits can you load? although you are loading say 5 splits every 4 hours, and we will say that you laod 4 times a day, thats 20 splits!

I can pack 8 decent splits in my stove and reload about every 7 hours when I am home. so in a day that I am home, I will load the stove three times. 8 x 3 -24 splits..I would say you are doing ok

 

[ansehnlich1]

yea it don't sound to me like you're burnin' too much. I got a Jotul Oslo and when it's cold I'm loadin' it as often as you, my place is 2100 sq. ft. or so, and we havn't burned any oil, the heat pump comes on a bit when it's like 10 or 15 degrees or so.

I got a good stack of wood and when I look out there at it I smile and think, sheesh, I'll burn it all up if I have to so as not to burn no $3.25 a gallon oil

 

[Rockey]

Sounds on par with what I burn. When it is in the 20's I can keep my 2700sf house in the low 70's with a med sized cat insert letting it burn out overnight and when we are gone at work.