What is life like with a modern wood burner?

[eladdvf]

Greetings,

I have a 100 year-old 2-story farm house. My primary goal is to reduce my propane costs. I have been considering adding either a wood burning add-on to our propane furnace or a traditional wood burner. Occasionally I have access to "free" wood (when my neighbor clears trees from farm's ditches), but normally I would need to purchase wood fuel.

I have been looking at various burners and so far I really like the larger PE Summit model. My question though relates to what life in general is like with a wood burner (neither my wife nor I have any experience with them).

My wife fears that anyone who walks in the house will immediately know we are heating with wood (smell) and fears it will make our house and clothes smell like we just came from a campfire. She also worries that in general the house will require more cleaning and fears that wood burners are just too dirty, etc. ...wondering if anyone can shed some light on the experience of owning a modern wood burner and could either dispel or confirm my wife's fears. This will help me decide between the traditional burner vs a furnace add-on, which would keep the mess in the basement.

Many Thanks!

 

[ewlsey]

A properly installed EPA stove will not smell or smoke up your house. Once it is up to temp, they barely smell outside. It's nothing like the old smokers.

Personally, I would not want an add on stove. Wood burners are space heaters. Put it in the room where you spend the most time. That room will always be warm. You can always go there to be comfortable.

My brother has an add on in his uninsulated basement. A lot of the heat from the stove gets wasted heating up that basement that they don't use. He pours a truckload of wood a week through that stove to keep his whole house warm. That's a staggering amount of wood.

If it was me, I'd spend money on insulation and windows as soon as possible. Every BTU you save is a BTU you don't have to make up with heat or a wood burner.

 

[Squirrel]

My stove smokes and smells a bit, but only when we make toast on it and drop crumbs! I do have to sweep round the stove after filling it but that's it until the chimney gets swept once a year.
Burn happy and clean!

 

[simple.serf]

Iirc, you were asking about the add on in the boiler/furnace section. As with furnaces and boilers, dry wood (as in 2 years css) is a must. We heat 24/7 with a modern woodstove. The house doesn't smell like smoke, and it isn't any dustier (though we do live on a farm, without air conditioning, so we are always a little dusty). Some bark and dirt come into the family room, but a good log carrier minimizes that. For us, wood heat is the cheapest, but I get my wood mostly for free. If I had to buy all of my wood in my area (everybody who doesn't have nat gas heats with wood or pellets in my town), i would consider slabwood from the Amish mill down the road, or a coal boiler.

 

[laynes69]

We have a modern wood furnace. Other than the rows of wood beside the house, many would never know we heat with wood. It's tucked away in the basement, tied into the ductwork in the home. The furnace has filters just like a central furnace, and the entire home stays warm. A proper chimney setup will ensure minimal smoke spillage when loading. This home has been heated with wood for decades, and it doesn't smell like a campfire, and there's no smell in our clothes.

 

[SteveKG]

We have three wood stoves in our house; well, one is in an attached greenhouse room. But no smell. As to the house cleaning, I've been heating with wood exclusively since the mid-70s so cannot say whether I have more dust due to wood stove use. I doubt it. Modern stoves are not putting out smoke and ash into the house. Stoves fifty yr. ago tended to, to some extent. In my experience, if one's house smells of smoke, something is not right with their wood-burning-appliance installation and that would be worrisome.

If you are going to be buying your wood for a wood furnace type appliance, I would doubt the savings on fuel would be huge. I haven't used a wood furnace, but from what I've read, you stuff them with lots of wood. You would need to discuss this with someone who is using one.

The main lifestyle differences in using a wood stove for heat is the routine of monitoring and tending them, cleaning out the ash, managing your wood supply. These become routine in short time. But there is some labor and attention involved. We are so accustomed to it, we barely notice.

 

[valuman]

I'm sure you'll get replies from folks who are much more experienced than I, but since we just started burning wood at home my input could be helpful as well.

We have no woodsmoke smell in our home and don't think we will as long as we run the stove properly. For the most part that means opening the bypass and the damper on our catalytic stove before opening the loading door. Assuming a well designed flue/chimney system, the smoke will go there, not in the house.

There definitely is a cleanup factor around storing, handling and moving firewood that's unavoidable. I've quickly gotten into the habit of sweeping up the hearth and surrounding area as a part of bringing in a cartload of wood and after loading the stove. With hardwood floors it's really not a big job and I don't mind it. It would also bug the crap out of me to leave the bark bits, pieces of chainsaw dust and dirt that comes in with the wood, so I get some odd satisfaction from cleaning it up and knowing I've got the next couple of days of wood in the house and ready to feed the stove.

Cleaning out the ash can be a bit dusty, but not if it's done carefully and slowly. I've been burning full time for four weeks now and have taken ash out of the stove twice so far. I used a covered ash can and the only spillage has been a small amount on the hearth at the loading door. Easy cleanup with the shovel and brush.

Lastly, the upsides are well worth the effort. Our home is warm, the LP boiler rarely comes on to provide space heat and when we come in from outside on a day like today, the radiant heat from the stove provides a wonderful, bone warming comfort that is immensely satisfying. Wood heat is hard to beat.

 

[mass_burner]

It depends on you. There will probably be a learning curve and some smoke will be released due to inexperience, but after that, the most potential for mess is in the handling around the stove location, but periodic sweeping up can handle that.

We had movie night last night and the stove was running 6 feet frin us from 4pn to midnight without one whiff of smoke.

 

[BobUrban]

Modern stoves, installed and run correctly, will not make your house smell any different than your furnace and the occasional wiff of wood smoke during load up or when walking outside is kind of nice.

As far as mess??? you learn ways to mitigate it and some(individuals) are more mess tolerant than others. This is all in how you store and move wood around the house to load into the stove. Reality is there will be some crumbs and scraps around the stove during reload that can be scooped with a little dust pan but there certainly will be some tertiary mess as it relates to heating with wood. Is this greater or lesser than the dust created from forced air heat in your home?? That will be up to you.

If you are comfortable with those two differences than you need to look at the commitment in labor and effort involved and really want to be sure that is something you want to deal with. For those of us obsessed with solid fuel heat it is a labor of love(mostly) that seriously wanes about early march and is strongly rekindled every year in September. Equate it to a grade school calendar. You were so ready for summer break but also wanted to go back in the fall.

Even if you have all your wood delivered "split" there is a lot of work to get it stacked, moved around, brought into the stove and loaded for heat. In the best of scenarios it is likely in the 1000x more effort range as compared to moving the dial on the thermostat hooked to the wall.

If you are procuring your own fuel this "effort curve comparison" goes up exponentially. Again, many of us find it very satisfying to be warm w/o running our furnace and get rather prideful of our wood stacks. Others think we are nutty.

There is also the time management of wood fuel that uses a multi year calendar as a clock. Regardless of your method of wood acquisition - be it delivered and purchased or self obtained - you will want to be minimally 3yrs ahead so that it is ready to burn. If you plan to just have a load of split wood dumped at your home in September for THIS years heat each fall you will be deeply disappointed in your stove and eventually frustrated to all He!! W/O dry fuel you are also exponentially adding to the safety and risk factor of the process. Most important of all is safe burning practices as we are starting fires in our home!!

This brings up a space issue: Do you have enough space to stack 12-15 cord of fire wood in your yard?
Cord = 4x4x8

If not - or you do not wish to commit to utilizing yard space for wood you will again likely run into wood quality issues that eventually will lead to the above mentioned frustration.

By no means is any of this written to dissuade you from solid fuel heat - it is just a reality check as to the endeavor so as to not have you get in over your head financially only to be deeply disappointed.

Again, for those of us that love it - this all is part of the fun - but I would assume, w/o any data to back it up, that more people get to the point of having a stove installed and find it too much work than the opposite.

Mess and smell are two of the easiest issues to circumvent in the process. If you get past all the others we can certainly help talk momma off the ledge on those with some simple tips and tricks.

Welcome to the obsession

 

[Mainely Saws]

We heat a 120 year old house 24/7 with a six year old wood stove .The stove is in the living room in the middle of the house which is much better for heat distribution & ease of operating the stove in my opinion . A basement install requires trips up & down the stairs . In the beginning my wife also had concerns about dirt , smell , safety , etc , but after having it for a short while she wouldn't be without it . Yes , there is dirt( tree bark , wood chips , etc ) involved but the advantages way outweigh the disadvantages for us . Even setting the possible savings in fuel bills aside , you will be warmer & more independent ...............

 

[eladdvf]

Thanks. I replaced the original windows many years ago with triple-glass. I also had insulation blown in the walls (there was no insulation in the walls at all originally, except for some insulation built into the aluminum siding). I also blew insulation beneath the attic floor. Even with those efforts propane was insane (about $3K per year)... its still a leaky old farm house by nature.

Since those early efforts I just updated my propane furnace a couple of years ago and started keeping my thermostat set at 65-66. My propane bill dropped closer to $2K now, but my family is not happy wearing sweaters and no one is really comfortable except when using a portable radiant heater.

I like the idea of a wood burner also for use when the power goes out. We have a nearly perfect central location to use one right next to the chimney wall and next to the open staircase (If I power-vent the propane furnace out the side of the house, I think we could we could use our chimney for the wood burner). One of our fears is that this 'perfect room' is also the main room where everyone tends to hang out. This sounds like a plus but since I hope to heat my home with this, couldn't that room become too hot? (i.e. I remember somewhere on this forum reading about a guy who heated his house by getting the temp in the room with the burner up to 80, while then using fans to distribute the heat so that most his other rooms were near 70). Anyway...having no experience with this stuff myself I fear that I might cook us out of the room where they currently like to hang out. Many thanks for your input

 

[eladdvf]

Thanks Bob...great comments on the realities that come along with operating a wood burner.

We have plenty of space for wood storage and the work would be well worth it to (so long as I have my health I dont mind the work). The hard part about starting out is not having seasoned wood to start with (might need to wait out a season to even use it... my understanding is that no one delivers seasoned wood no matter what they claim). Thanks again

 

[fishinpa]

Bob Urban just above has covered just about every base in a very well thought out manner and adds a few hurdles most don’t think of initially when wanting to go to a solid fuel heat source. (Note: I do not personally know that person.)


I did want to add that if your propane heat is forced air, a wood stove (or even pellet stove) is probably your best option.


If you have radiant heat (heat storage boiler) driven by the propane, you may want to add a wood furnace in-line, in front of the propane heater, therefore the propane would automatically cover you if you were not able to stoke/load the wood furnace.


I have a friend that does this: Wood furnace primary / oil furnace in the same boiler loop. He is now adding in a propane heater (lower fuel cost than oil, less cleaning maintenance than oil) in place of the oil heater, but is not removing the oil heater, just moving it to the #2 backup position if there is an issue with the propane heater.

Note that he burns 10-12cords a year because wood is free to him and he can drive bobcat's full of wood right up to his furnace area in the basement.


** Consider a coal burner as someone mentioned above if coal is available in your area. Stove cost is more initially due to the temperatures that coal burns at, but I have a friend that swears he loads his coal stove every few days.

 

[laynes69]

Did you airseal before insulating the attic? The amount of leakage between the living space and attic can be astronomical. If not, you can pull back insulation in the areas of interior walls, top plates and electrical, plumbing, etc and seal. Then place the insulation back. We have an old mid 19th century victorian.

 

[Woody Stover]

I'll echo much of what's been said already. No smell in the house, especially with two stories, where you'll have great draft and smoke will probably never get out of the stove. The mess is manageable. I would add, get a stove with a grated ash pan system. If you have to shovel 'em out, you can minimize escaping ash dust with good technique, but not eliminate it totally. Plus, you always end up shoveling a bunch of hot coals out, especially when it's cold out and you are loading on a coal bed without letting it burn all the way down to ash. The grated ash-handling system is one of the must-have features of any stove I buy. Start sealing all your air leaks around doors and windows, plastic film if the windows are bad. Get a big free-standing stove which will heat in a power outage. You can put the word out that you will take wood to friends, get wood off craigslist, have a tree guy drop off free wood. There are a lot of trees out there. Start stacking faster-drying wood NOW; Dead White Ash, soft Maple, Cherry, etc. Oak is great wood but takes 2-3 yrs. split and stacked to dry, if not split too big. Most of all, have fun and stay warm. You won't be the first one who has gotten hooked on the wood-burning lifestyle...

 

[laynes69]

These comments about wood usage with a woodfurnace is true if your not using a modern unit. I have a 2500 sqft 2 story victorian (10' ceilings) plus a 1200 sqft basement. I've used around 3 cords of wood. My LP furnace has been off the entire season, and in weather with almost 40 below chills, our home was 70-72 overnight. We have good insulation, but still some room for improvement in other areas.

 

[eladdvf]

So many great comments. Laynes9: The attic is huge (fully floored) and you can stand in the center of it and not be able to reach the peak without a ladder. All I did was blow insulation beneath the attic floor boards many years ago... I am/was not familiar with the need to 'air-seal'. Looks like I made a big mistake there. I'll need to research exactly what you mean by air-seal and understand the remedy you described - many thanks for that comment (maybe I could find a reputable place in my area to assess my home for energy loss in general). Also, thanks for the comment on the 'grated ash-handling system' Woody Stover. I'm not sure if the PE Summit (or which stove has that) but I will ask.

 

[Andy S.]

For me, there is no odor issue at all. The cleaning concern is a legitimate one, IMO. I got around that by making sure I keep everything (relatively) neat. The biggest source of mess is the staging of wood on the hearth for me. The splits will leave dirt behind. I have a stone hearth with a rough finish and it doesn't lend itself to easy clean-up. A lesser (but real) cleaning issue is the dust from ash when you clean out the stove. When I shovel out ash there is almost always very small coals still left. No matter how careful I am with the shovel I create dust. You can actually see the dust rising out of the ash bucket along with the heat of the fine coals. That dust travels.

At the end of the day I enjoy the processing part of wood burning and definitely enjoy the free heat. Those things make the added cleaning tolerable.

 

[RickBlaine]

Excellent advice! I enjoy this forum so much.

My $.02: A wood burning stove tends to collect family and pets, relaxing them, warming them, and bringing people together. Conversations and book reading instead of just television. Your bones and your soul will be warmed.

And wood heat warms you several times. You sweat splitting logs, then again when you stack your splits, when you burn the wood, and when you see your propane bills are 1/4 of what they used to be. No smoke, no smell, no dust.

If I were to build a new home I would create it around a modern wood-burner. And I live in Chicago- when I installed a wood burning stove in my inefficient fireplace the city had to send 3 inspectors out because they had no idea what I was talking about. Now, they suggest to people to convert their masonry fireplaces to include a wood burning insert/stove.

 

[valuman]

My $.02: A wood burning stove tends to collect family and pets, relaxing them, warming them, and bringing people together. Conversations and book reading instead of just television. Your bones and your soul will be warmed.

This is dead on accurate. last night and again this morning my wife, the dog, the cat and I were all sitting in front of the stove. It's way better than TV!

 

[Woody Stover]

wife, the dog, the cat and I were all sitting in front of the stove. It's way better than TV!

I never get tired of looking at the Fv.

 

[Toploader]

Burning wood is a life affirming way to participate in providing one of the necessities of life and it offers many positive less tangible benefits beyond just heat. Definitely no smokey smell, maybe a little more dust in the form debris around the stove and wood box but sweeping that is just part of the rhythm of the whole process. Get a wood stove not a furnace if you want the full warmth of wood heat, there is nothing like enjoying the warmth as you watch the fire burn. A furnace blows warm dry air around and makes a lot of noise, whether it's fuelled by oil, gas or wood hot air is my least favourite type of heat.

 

[bholler]

So many great comments. Laynes9: The attic is huge (fully floored) and you can stand in the center of it and not be able to reach the peak without a ladder. All I did was blow insulation beneath the attic floor boards many years ago... I am/was not familiar with the need to 'air-seal'. Looks like I made a big mistake there. I'll need to research exactly what you mean by air-seal and understand the remedy you described - many thanks for that comment (maybe I could find a reputable place in my area to assess my home for energy loss in general). Also, thanks for the comment on the 'grated ash-handling system' Woody Stover. I'm not sure if the PE Summit (or which stove has that) but I will ask.

Properly installed cellulose insulation seals against air leaks it is not a vapor barrier but dose seal against the movement or air

 

[gyrfalcon]

Thanks Bob...great comments on the realities that come along with operating a wood burner.

We have plenty of space for wood storage and the work would be well worth it to (so long as I have my health I dont mind the work). The hard part about starting out is not having seasoned wood to start with (might need to wait out a season to even use it... my understanding is that no one delivers seasoned wood no matter what they claim). Thanks again

Check around and see if there's a kiln-drying wood supplier in your area to get you through the first year or so until you've got your wood seasoned. There are in some areas an increasing number of these.

My state now has about half a dozen. I have the choice of two locally-- a big lumbering operation that makes gourmet-quality kiln-dried firewood in mostly gigantic "splits" that they sell for a small fortune, and a small outfit a few towns over from me that gets stuff dried to 20 to 22 moisture content on splits only up to about 4 or 5 inches, but costs about half of what the guys at the lumber mill charge. It's not very much more per cord than what green wood goes for hereabouts, so I go with them. (My property is on the side of a ridge and sloped, so I've had to give up on trying to stack a couple years' worth myself.)

"Seasoned" around here and most places just means it was cut down in the spring and left in the woods, then pulled out and cut to length and split to order in the fall. That's not a cheat, it's the longstanding definition of the term where people have been heating their homes for generations with big old smoke dragons that burn just about anything.

 

[ewlsey]

Yes. Every seller I know that has "seasoned" wood just means it was dead when they cut it up and split it, or it was cut down and left to sit for a few months before cutting and splitting.