How'd you start?

[ArsenalDon]

$600 per month in propane bills forced me into it.

 

[dafattkidd]

I wonder how many folks fell into woodstove heating, because the house they bought had one. Having grown up with many open fireplaces (old houses), my plan when I bought our current house was to tear out the woodstove the previous owners had installed in one of the large cooking fireplaces (see my avatar). My wife thought we should give the stove a try, though, and the rest is history.

I still miss and prefer an open fireplace (smells better, looks better, sounds better), but after realizing how much oil we can save while using the stove, we bought a second for one of the other fireplaces.

Good idea for a thread. I'm really enjoying this.

 

[Oldhippie]

Had my first new house built in the seventies during the oil crunch. Had a wood stove instead of a fireplace installed and have had one ever since.

Me too. I'm still in that first house.. and still have the Garrison One on the living room and it is still keeping us toasty. But, I added a 2nd stove to the basement/finished family room, and that stove does the trick completely until the temp drops below about 15'F then I get the Garrison going and we all sing "It's Hot In Here, Take Your Clothes Off".

 

[343amc]

I grew up with it. Dad had an old Ashley stove in the basement, then got a wood furnace somewhere around 1982. That was the only heat until he passed away.

Flash forward a few years. I bought my current house in 2001. It had an oil furnace and three open fireplaces - two upstairs and one in the basement. Oil was a buck a gallon when I bought the house, so I ran oil until 2003 and used the open fireplace a few times a year.

Oil went up so I bought a wood insert and stainless liner. That cut my oil consumption in half. A few years later I bought a used pellet insert for the other upstairs fireplace. Ran that into the ground and replaced it last fall.

Now it's pellets during the day when I'm at work and cordwood at night. All my cordwood is scrounged. If I had to pay for wood I'd probably just run pellets for the convenience. It is nice having the wood insert for power outages though. Scored a good sized white ash this fall from my moms house. Tree service dropped it and left the wood. Got most of it bucked and split except what the MS290 can't get through. That is my 2014 wood.

I started the oil furnace once this season to make sure it would run if needed. Last oil delivery was in 2010. No plans to have oil delivered any time soon.

 

[Oldhippie]

No plans to have oil delivered any time soon.

Can't beat that!!