Battenkiller said:Soupy, one cord of good dense wood like (oak, ash, maple, hickory etc.) weighs about 3600 pounds. Burning only one cord since Oct.1 means you used 3600 pounds of wood in 120 days, or only 30 pounds per day. The low heating value of seasoned wood (20%) MC is 7800 BTU/pound. If you can realistically achieve a day-in, day-out average of 75% overall efficiency (pretty difficult, but I'll assume you can), that's 7300 BTU/hr for 24 hours. At 30º outside temp, the average home will need twice that amount of BTUs to maintain a 70º inside temp (40º temperature difference). All of this tells me that one would have to have burned at least two cord to heat one's home entirely with wood from Oct. 1 until Feb. 1. YMMV depending on home and layout, but there are no free rides in the world of physics and heat. 30 pounds a day is nothing. I have put two splits in my stove before whose combined weight exceeded 30 pounds.
Electric would be almost that much a month.
Soupy doesn't 24/7, in fact he lets the stove go out during snow storms.. and at least where we live, 2 weeks of vacation in January would mean near 1/3 a cord "saved".. I figure we have about 16 weeks of heating season, with about 4 of them being shoulder(ish) few random cold spells or ambience fires outside of that.
If averaged.. we probably burn 24/6..lol
But we are through about 2 cords so far, have about 2/3 of a cord of 2yo cherry ready to move to the porch.. should get us through. My estimate after talking with full time burners around here was 2 1/2 cord.. stacked +3.. should have some left over..