Furnace firing countdown

[lowroadacres]

I think that this is the right place for placing this little fun post.

For many of us our wood heat is not our primary heat source. This is especially true when the temperatures plummet and the wind begins to blow.

We have not had terribly cold temps yet but in any other year (see other posts for long saga of getting even a small stove in our home) we would have flipped the switch already on our electric furnace to get us through a few nights and the odd day. As of today it is October 25th and we have not done anything but have the furnace fan running to circulate the air. We are keeping the main level of our home at 70 or higher and our basement where the stove is installed has been averaging 75-80. Of course there are corners of our home that are lower and that is what sweaters and slippers are for.

I must note as well that we have only been burning box elder and elm that is bordering on punky. We have not touched the good elm and we certainly have not brought in any very solid Ash wood. We are saving the good stuff for the colder temps. We also have not been running the stove hard at all as we have only really stuffed the stove once to get it really rolling. For Christmas I will ask for a stove top thermometer and a moisture meter .

So now we are counting the days as a bonus that will shorten our winter power bill. Every day we do not need the elements on our furnace is a one day less we are paying on our hydroelectric bill.

How is everyone else in the same situation as me doing on this?

 

[Backwoods Savage]

Methinks your counting of the warmer days is very close to ending. Cooler air is on the horizon. I see they are expecting some nasty snows in the mountain areas this week. For us, that usually means the daytime temperatures will begin dropping quite rapidly. Well, they need to. Hard to believe but we hit 70 yesterday and that had not happened for quite some time now. Once more they predict 70 today but then the wind starts blowing hard and that for sure will chill things.

 

[ikessky]

My "back-up" heat is a natural gas furnace. I've actually had it on for a couple weeks now, but with the daytime temps, it usually only kicks on a few times in the evenings to morings. However, my wife has been complaining about this and asking when I'm going to start building fires. Part of me thinks I should, but the other part thinks that NG use is pretty cheap in the shoulder season and if we have a winter like they are predicting, I'm going to need to conserve a little wood during the shoulder season.

 

[FixedGearFlyer]

My family is in a similar boat. We have our wood for the winter moved into the basement wood lockers and are ready to fire up our central wood furnace whenever the weather tells us to, but have only built a couple of fires so far this year. Between the new insulation and windows on the second floor and caulking and wind-proofing the first floor, we've been heating the house mostly with solar gain and the 'waste' heat from our electric clothes dryer, cook stove, and light bulbs. Most mornings, our second floor is in the high 60's or low 70's and the first floor is in the low 60's.

If we want to warm things up downstairs right away, we've been turning on the electric baseboard heaters to give the living areas a quick 5 degree boost. I think that's a lot more energy efficient (and cost effective) than building a fire in the shoulder seasons. No need to burn 3 or 4 splits and heat up the entire furnace, flue, and duct work system just to get a little temp bump in two or three rooms when we have a more efficient option.

Now, once we need whole house heat, that will be a different story!

 

[nate379]

I turned the heat on toward the end of July or beginning of August. Been heating the house close to 24/7 with wood for about a month now.

 

[azsteven]

We use both gas fired hot water radiators, and the fireplace insert. I don't remember which day we turned on the gas system last year, but we haven't turned it on yet this season. A couple of mornings last week when it's been about 30-35 outside, I've come downstairs to see that it's about 55-60 in the house, so I start a small fire, and then we've had a fire most evenings but not all.

It feels comfortable enough as it is, but my mother in law is visiting this weekend (she lives in Texas), and we know she'll be cold (and complaining about it. I think she's used to an inside temp in the 70s. We discussed turning on the main heating system for her visit, but decided it would make the upstairs too hot for us to sleep. So we decided to use an electric space heater in the guest room only. (we have 2 of these which we've used in our kids rooms.) We figured it's got to be more efficient/cheaper to heat one room with the electric space heater than to heat the whole house with the gas boiler -- and we can still enjoy the fire downstairs.

 

[lowroadacres]

So it is now November 11th, our Remembrance Day in Canada, and we have yet to flip the switch on our electric furnace elements.

We are still burning our weaker firewood such as Box Elder and Elm that has some punkiness to it.....

And we are still more than warm enough.

I am still kicking myself for buying as small a stove as we did but it is definitely making a difference.

We will still have relatively nasty hydro bills in December-February but our little Drolet is making the winter shorter.

 

[lowroadacres]

So we finally had to give in a bit today and flipped the switch on the elements in our furnace.

Because we were away much of the day I came home to a pretty chilly house and decided that I had proved the point.

We know that if we are at home we can get away without the furnace firing down to at least -10 celsius on a cloudy day.

If it is sunny that threshold drops dramatically due to our South windows.

If, and I say IF, we had an insert in our upstairs fireplace we would be good to a much lower temperature overall.

 

[Backwoods Savage]

Once again the forecasters are saying some serious cold is on the horizon. It is still unbelievably warm for this time of they year for us and we've not had snow on the ground yet. One day we had a few flurries and that is all so far. Mid 40's again today.