Traditional fuel usage

[Ashful]

I just got another oil delivery, but unlike the past where we were going thru a full tank every few weeks, it had been six weeks and he was only able to top off the tank with 84 gallons. So... out comes the tracking spreadsheet, and I find I'm down from our original 0.30 gallons per heating degree day to just 0.08 gallons per heating degree day! Woo hoo!

We use 0.11 gallon per day for hot water, regardless of heating load, but this new usage level puts our total oil usage below 500 gallons per year (if I don't run out of wood before the season is over)! We were previously at 1500 gallons per year.

I'd love to hear some similar success stories, particularly if you track your usage against a useful metric, like heating degree days. Even a yearly usage vs. yearly average heating degree days might be interesting.

 

[Slow1]

Are you sure you calculated/reported that .30gal/HDD correctly? Even at my worst (prior to the stove) I was running about .109gal/hdd (Jan-Feb 2008). Last calculation that I have for this puts my oil at about .04gal/hdd (including what is used for hot water) I'll be glad to share my data with you if you would like... PM me with email address to share google doc with.

I estimate our DHW is burning about .5 gal/day, much more than you are, I have a hard time with this estimate as it was based on summer oil burn before I got the stove (and now I only get filled once a year so hard to know what is burned in the summer - going with oil level seems too inaccurate). I estimate we're saving on the order of 5-600 gallons/year here (with 3 cords of wood burned). I wonder how much oil I'm burning each day just having the boiler sitting in waiting for DHW (we have an indirect tank storing about 50 gallons I believe).

 

[jatoxico]

The first year in our new house (2007) we used about 1000 g of oil. Most of the windows were already changed out but I replaced an additional 9 windows in our lower den which were jalousie's and very drafty and a large picture window. Added programmable thermostats and replaced a couple exterior doors and 2-3 smaller bathroom windows. Oil consumption was down to 800 g.

Added the stove burning mostly night and weekends and as an example we used 700g last year. So on one hand you could say we only saved 100g of fuel. But that's not the whole story. The stats are set to no more than 66-67 during times when we are home and 62 overnight and during the day so we were always chilly. Now with the stove running we are much warmer. I can't imagine what my fuel consumption would be if I tried to maintain similar temps on oil. So even though the stove is not my primary heat source it's a homerun. Now, I do have a second fireplace on the main level I've got my eye on . Something w/ a cat, some soapstone, loooong burns (making sound like Homer thinking of donuts).

 

[Charles1981]

400$ a month electric heating bill for winter months down to 90$ a month and markedly more warm all the time than electric heat could ever keep up for us.

 

[Ashful]

Are you sure you calculated/reported that .30gal/HDD correctly?

Actually, there may be an error in that. Looking at my first few winter-time points, I'm seeing 0.25 gal/HDD raw usage, not even accounting for DHW usage. I'm going to have to take a look at those numbers, again.

 

[dafattkidd]

Joful, glad to hear you're saving so much in oil.

We used to burn 1,300-1,500 gallons of oil/year. Some days we couldn't keep the house above 64* with the oil burner cranking constantly. We now use the stove to heat our house basically 90% of the time. My wife loads it when it's convenient for her during the day at home with two little kids. When I'm home it's basically 100%. BUT, we have a basement apartment that we rent out that is on an uninsulated slab so we still burn oil to heat that space. Our consumption is somewhere around 500 gallons/year. So we save 800-1,000 gallons of oil/year, and the house is MUCH warmer. Some crappy math assuming oil prices averaged $3.70/gallon and I save conservatively 800 gallons/year- tells me I've saved somewhere around $12,000 in oil (not including this year yet).

*In the 7 years I've owned this house I've gutted a few rooms, insulated everywhere I can get to, caulked everything, wrapped the house with 1/2 foam insulation and new vinyl siding, removed a window, removed a skylight, replaced the front and back doors, replaced the water heater, and replaced the roof among other things. So these actions alone would have helped significantly. But the best thing I've done as a homeowner is install an insert. The wood heat bought me time, saved me money so I could do the renovations, and kept me warm while we worked on these upgrades.

Not to mention I lost my job, was unemployed/under employed from the end of October 2010-early April 2011, and the savings on oil literally kept us out of foreclosure. What a serious blessing wood heat has been to our family.

 

[jharkin]

YOu know what happens when you ask a room full of engineers for numbers

Ive tracked my usage vs. degree days since we moved in. I cant really tell you how much wood has saved vs. natgas since we used wood every winter we have lived here. What I can report on with a lot of accuracy is that insulating the house with blown in cellulose in the roof and sidewalls reduced our overall heating load by almost 25%.

Here is my excel charting of energy use each winter. I remove hte average 20-30 therms per month we use for DHW, and then calculate vs. HDD Oct-April. I figure energy use vs degree days and square footage on both a gross and net basis efficiency basis here. Gross basis is using my boilers AFUE. Net basis is downgrading the boiler AFUE by 30% to account for pipe losses in the basement. Im using Vermont Castings published efficiency number for both gross and net on the woodstove.

In reality I should probably ignore the net net calculation since the steam plant pipe losses are still inside the building envelope... but then I would have to do my BTU/HDD/ft2 calculation including the square footage of the basement.. Hmm....


A few comments...

• We only supplement with wood, weekends mostly and only when its in the 30s or below - hence my fairly low wood usage.
• Even though consumption went up the second year our efficiency is probably better since when we first moved in we were both working full time and I had the gas setback to 60 during workdays. From year 2 on my wife is home wit the kids full time so the house is always maintained near 70.
• Year 3 wood consumption is very low due to mild weather and my wife's unease about wood heat around babies.
• With me working from home part time and colder weather we are on track to use closer to 2 full cord this year.

And then charted graphically. You can easily see the big drop when we had insulation done. the usage started to go up again last season because my wife decided she likes the house warm and started turning the thermostat up from 68 to 72 when the stove was not burning.

 

[Fort Wisers]

BRAVO jharkin, a link to your post should be included in the "You Know You Are a Real Wood Burner If_______" thread!


Our success story:
Before wood heat it cost about $400-$450 per month in the heating season (electric baseboard).
10-12 face a season and our average electricity bill are now $90-100 or so.
We've even had a couple of months where the winter electricity bills are cheaper than in the summer due to Air Conditioning!

 

[eclecticcottage]

No charts here. We began tracking when we filled the LP tanks as well as wood usage by the FC this year.

I can say this:
We have never heated with anything except wood here ourselves, HOWEVER the previous tenants used LP. When we got the LP company to remove their tank, the driver happened to be the same guy that used to fill it for the previous tenant. He said he filled it 2x per season. It was a 750ish gallon tank. LP runs the tankless hot water heater and cook stove, and at the time, an older boiler. We still use LP for HW and cooking, and last filled our 2 100lb tanks in June. We use the same HW tank, although the previous tenant was a single woman so we probably use more hot water since there are two of us. We use a different stove, the one that was here was a 1980's era hotpoint with electronic iginition, and we have a 1950's Floyd Wells Bengal with a standing pilot, so we probably use a bit more for that too. I'm not sure of conversion from gallons to pounds for LP, but I *think* each 100lb hold something like 35 gallons? I'm going to say that we use about 210 gallons, on the high side for HW and cooking, so I'm thinking the previous tenant used about 1300 gallons of LP for heat.

Now, for wood useage.

In year #1, we bought 8 FC and used about 40 packs of 8 ecobricks. Since this was bought wood, you can be assured it wasn't seasoned.

In year #2, we used about 3 FC hardwood that we bought the year before and stacked, about 15 left over packs of 8 ecobricks and we think about 5-6 FC of mixed misc wood like boxelder, willow and pine that was CSS the year before. MC was probably still above 20% because of where it had been stored but it was probably better than the wood in year #1.

Now we're into year #3. No left over ecobricks. Pretty much 80% Pine that was standing dead and CSS for a year. The other 20% is random mixed hardwood, box elder and willow. So far, we started burning shoulder season fires in October and regular fires in November. So far we've gone through 2 1/2 FC. We're figuring we'll burn about 7-9 FC a year of this type of wood.

The house hasn't changed too much since we bought it weather tightness wise. Windows and insulation are the same, except we removed two small casement windows and put in two 8' sliding glass doors. I'm going to say that's about even, the doors aren't triple pane but the windows weren't super either. We've reconfigured a laundry room this year so that is more part of the house than previously (it was just a little storage area that was closed off from the house by an exterior door), but it added only 50 sq ft max.

We now scrounge our wood, so the cost for the wood is in gas (vehicle/splitter/saws), upkeep on equipment, and depreciation on equipment. Kinda hard to figure.