# When is the 1/2 point of this heating season?



## chuck172 (Dec 19, 2008)

At what point should we be about 1/2 done with wood. I'd say January 15. That would mean heating would begin in Nov. and end in March.


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## Nofossil (Dec 19, 2008)

chuck172 said:
			
		

> At what point should we be about 1/2 done with wood. I'd say January 15. That would mean heating would begin in Nov. and end in March.



Around here, the heating season is more like Oct 1 to May 1, but the midpoint in degree days is right around January 15 or 16. The midpoint in wood consumption is a bit earlier since the sun angles are much better for solar gain in the second half of the winter, at least for houses with any southern exposure.


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## ISeeDeadBTUs (Dec 19, 2008)

I thought half-way was when you start nerously wondering if that little bit of wood you have left is going to get you there.

But so far this winter, I've been fortunate to be able to get into the woods most every week, so I haven't started on the 10 cord pile that barely got me from Dec 1 to mid-March last year.


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## jebatty (Dec 19, 2008)

1/2 done with wood is when your wood supply is 1/2 of what you started with.


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## chuck172 (Dec 19, 2008)

Got me there- jebatty!


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## Jim Post (Dec 19, 2008)

When I've burned 50 ft.   

This year I stacked all my wood 4 ft high on pallets laid end to end.  It stretches nearly 100 ft or about 4 cords worth.

I still have some wood I can work up if things get close.  But I'm hoping 4 cords will do it this year.

I'm gonna mark the midpoint of my stack and see how close to January 15th I get there.

jp


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## rcollman (Dec 19, 2008)

I discovered this site  http://www.degreedays.net/# which will output data to a spreadsheet, monthly, daily etc for up to 36 months from "local" weather stations.    But you will have to do it in Heating Degree Days and you define the season 



> We have a bicycle wheel wood cart, that I beefed up a bit.  It will hold 3.5 cubic feet of 16 inch wood at my marks, which I estimate at about 350k BTUs.   After 6 loads over 9 days, I am starting to predict how much wood we will be using with our new Solo40, looks like it will be between 2.8 and 3.1 cords at 8700 HHD. That is Spring and summer too.



Sigh, when a number looks too good to be true....garbage in garbage out with above quote.  I made a rare keyboarding error.  My formula said 4*8*8 (=256) cubic feet in a cord.  BLUSH, NOT 4*4*8=128 cubic feet in a cord.   So it is about a month later and it looks like I will be using 4.5 to 4.75 of a cord for 8700 HHDs.  Sure glad I discovered this before I placed my order for next years wood in a couple of weeks.



> Just a bit different from the old non-air tight SunRay which would be a tad more than 2 times that, with about 200 gals of propane backup!    But the heating season is young an d I figure by Feb I should have a good set of data.



Now I am going to dig into my records to see if I can figure out the last season we really tried to heat with wood, how much did we use and how much propane did we burn?    

Best  Chris


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## InTheRockies (Dec 19, 2008)

I hate to tell you this, but the only one who knows (and she's not talking) is Mother Nature.  Last year, our temps remained abnormally low through early June (had to heat the house every morning the first two weeks in June).  In fact we had a short summer since cold temps returned in mid-August (no one was happy to give up shorts and t-shirts so early for jackets and sweaters, believe me).  This winter is starting to look like it may be as brutal as last year's--we're getting back-to-back storms that are dumping a minimum of a foot of snow in sub-zero weather (have to clean up the 2 feet dumped through this morning and then prepare for one moving in on Sunday that's supposed to be worse).  I'm hoping this trend doesn't continue all winter and rob us of another spring and summer.  (I really miss my apples--it was so cold this past spring that none of the apple trees bloomed so no fruit.)


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## DaveBP (Dec 19, 2008)

"Half your wood and half your hay
      must remain on candlemas day"

Old european saying with lots of variants. Candlemas day was renamed groundhog day here in the states.


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## smokinj (Dec 19, 2008)

winter starts dec. 21st


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## chuck172 (Dec 19, 2008)

DaveBP said:
			
		

> "Half your wood and half your hay
> must remain on candlemas day"
> 
> Old european saying with lots of variants. Candlemas day was renamed groundhog day here in the states.



That's a nice saying, groundhog day is Feb.2


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## DaveBP (Dec 19, 2008)

It's nice to have a holiday to pin a landmark to. Groundhog day may be a little late here in N. America. I don't think europe warms up in the spring as quickly as we do here. But I like to see half my wood ( and with 60 to 80 sheep, half my hay also ) remaining then because I'm sure I have it made for the season.


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## WoodNotOil (Dec 20, 2008)

DaveBP said:
			
		

> "Half your wood and half your hay
> must remain on candlemas day"
> 
> Old european saying with lots of variants. Candlemas day was renamed groundhog day here in the states.



I love how poetic the forum has become lately.  Really classes things up!   ;-)


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## heaterman (Dec 20, 2008)

chuck172 said:
			
		

> At what point should we be about 1/2 done with wood. I'd say January 15. That would mean heating would begin in Nov. and end in March.



As cold and snowy as it has been here this year that would be about mid June.


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## Duetech (Dec 21, 2008)

Four seasons equally divided from a 52 week year equals 13 weeks and the 13 weeks of winter divided in two almost puts us on groundhogs day. The saying about groundhogs seeing their shadow actually has to do with the position of the jet stream and if it's cloudy it supposedly means the jet stream is moving to it's summertime flow if it is clear it means the jet stream is still in it's winter flow. How do you suppose the groundhog knew that before there were jets?

Of course that is all subject to change just like the weather..........


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## bigoak9745 (Dec 22, 2008)

Agree with Heaterman, its already been a long winter here in Michigan! We start burning in Oct. and will burn into April. Steady burning all of Nov. through end of March.  That being said, Mid January is the have way point. 

It has been a cold and way too snowy winter here!


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## jebatty (Dec 22, 2008)

This season we started our first burning in early September, and last season early June was the last of our burning. Hard to believe we actually burned wood for heat 9 months last season. And this season, since Thanksgiving, has been exceptionally cold. It's -20F as I write this.

There is a method to the madness of starting this heating season with 14 cords of firewood. Normal would be to burn 4-5. If this cold continues for another six weeks (Jan -- early Feb is normally the coldest for us), I can see burning at least 6 cords, if not a little more.

Keep the home fires burning.


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## antos_ketcham (Dec 22, 2008)

"February second, Candlemas day: half your wood, and half your hay. Half the winter has passed away, we'll eat our supper by the light of day!"


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## rcollman (Dec 26, 2008)

I like the Candlemas saying.  At the moment  I am in Plymouth MI for Xmas.  It is just lovely.   I did a quick peak on degreedays.net just for fun.  Looked at Mt. Pleasant MI.  This year 12/26/08 HHD was passed on 1/1/08 last year.   1/2 would, in theory be around around 1/24/08 last year.   The year before the half way point At Mt. Pleasant was 1/24/07, which surprised me.  Of course there is Mother Nature and peoples habits .  20 degrees in March always feels so much warmer than it does in November.

Northern NH had a week separating the half way point in the last two years.   Certainly  for these two spots on the northern tier, The half way point would seem to be well after 1st day of Winter (12/21) and it has passed by Candlemas (2/2 ground hog) day.

I am looking forward to going home and tending my Solo40.

Best to all   Chris


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## herbert (Jan 3, 2009)

Lot's of Michigan folks on here . (I am from Nashville Mi (Battle Creek ).  Summer normally starts in this area in Mid Feb.


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## free75degrees (Jan 3, 2009)

I made this chart from data I found for monthly heating degree days for various cities.  There were a bunch more cities, but when i graphed too many they all started to overlap, making it hard to read.

The way to read this is that the y axis shows the percentage of all of the heating degree days that have passed and the x axis show the month.  So for the 4 cities shown the 1/3 way point is early to late Dec, 1/2 way point is mid January, 2/3 point is mid Feb, etc.


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## chuck172 (Jan 3, 2009)

I'd say Jan.15 sounds about right.


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## DenaliChuck (Jan 3, 2009)

Free73

Thanks for including us in the far north on your graph!


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## djblech (Jan 3, 2009)

I live about 25 miles S of Duluth MN. I have electric baseboard in my shop as a back-up. The electric company gives me a nice graph that shows or heating season. It usually starts in Oct and goes to May with Jan and Feb being the highest usage months. Now that my boiler is in the garage I hope the electric doesn't kick-in.

djblech
Greenwood 100


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