My Oslo heats my home said:
I try to soley heat with 100% wood as well, my furnace is natural gas and was installed new in 2008. I don't think it's been used very much since then. We go away occasionally in the winter season and will rely on the furnace, but overall we heat with wood. I'm glad NH brough up trying to be more efficient with wood consumption, this year I am looking to do the same.
This weekend I started the process of moving the seasoned wood in the backyard to the covered porch. After moving about a cord I realized I had much more 'shoulder' wood this year than I have had in the past. I'm hoping this will fit into the fuel consumption numbers for future reference. If I can use the shoulder wood (which is wood not counted as cord wood) deeper into the shoulder season and save maybe a months worth for March I think I can save maybe 3/4-1 cord of wood for the 24/7 burn times.
Can anyone else ring in on how they plan to use and burn this year
Same idea as you. I just finished loading about 5 cord in the barn (exact same amount loaded as last year, and I had a little left over). I separated the shoulder season wood into a few different areas - 1 area of uglies (small pieces, irregular pieces, small rounds, etc.) that I'll burn first. A second area of normal splits, but lower BTU wood, mainly black cherry, white birch and red maple. I'll burn that wood until things get cold, but will hold onto a reasonable amount for spring shoulder season. The rest of the wood (and the majority of all wood) is red oak, with some beech, and black and yellow birch for the cold months.
We have a sunroom that faces south and once the windows are in, I can raise the house temp (downstairs) into the lower 70's (on sunny days) into late October, and into the high 60's even into early November. I plan to make heavy use of the solar heat this year - last year I didn't even bother putting in the windows until November because I was having way too much fun learning the stove and getting the house into the upper 70's/lower 80's. As it gets colder, I figure my shoulder season burning will start when temps are much cooler and it is an overcast day with no solar heat from the sunroom. Then, single nighttime fires as temps really start dropping to supplement the solar, and finally moving into more full time burning. I really think I'm going to save a significant amount of wood this year.
Cheers!