the value of wood heat?

[jetsam]

Looks to be about 20 and you are pretty much spot on...and you forgot falling asleep exhausted in your chair once the room is nice & toasty.

I dunno, after all that it seems like I'd be too hot to sit by the stove.

My dad always said "warms you twice", but we had a simpler process back then. We'd have dropped the tree directly into the stove if it was close enough. As it was, there was a lot less hauling and restacking, but we nearly always burned wood that either was green, or at least that this picky crowd around here would call green.

 

[VirginiaIron]

Dont forget to count that warm and fuzzy feeling you get when your other half gives you that searing look for tracking debris on the floor and making a mess near the stove/fireplace.

 

[jetsam]

Dont forget to count that warm and fuzzy feeling you get when your other half gives you that searing look for tracking debris on the floor and making a mess near the stove/fireplace.

LOL!

I had formerly been able to distibute blame for this between all involved parties. This week I am travelling and she is home alone, and she sent me this:

 

[VirginiaIron]

Lol, Schmootz? That's right...

 

[StihlKicking]

The value of wood heat...the house we bought has electric hot water baseboard heat. The previous owners changed the oil system to an electric system about 1983, not wanting to pay the high oil bills they paid in the 1970's. We belong to an Electric Co-Op that purchases electricity from the big guys. The first year in the house we had a fireplace [chimney warmer] that did not do much to warm the house. Keeping the house at 56 at night and 60 during the day, our electric bill from November to April was never less than $400.00. We installed the insert that year. Bought 6 cord of wood since we lived there...scrounged the rest of the wood I have with the exception of some trees I had taken down at my house. Have 18-ish cord of hard and softwoods now. Since installing the stove we have not had an electric bill over $140.00 in the winter. All the wood I have now is from scrounges & from the trees I had taken down. Using rough math...subtracting the cost of the install & the trees I had taken down, figuring the value of scrounged wood at $200.00 per cord, I am almost $1400.00 ahead in the almost 2 years we have had the stove. Best of all, the very pregnant wifey is toasty and happy in the cold weather...that in itself is priceless.

I agree completely. I actually save a lot of money burning scrounged wood. The power bill last month was $107 and my 2700 sqft house was nice and toasty. Even though my wood heater saves me money every month the quality of the heat is priceless.


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[LondonNeil]

I put a small stove in for the ambiance really but since they cost a bit too buy and as much again to install i worked out the savings. My logic is this:
1. Stove is rated at a nominal 5kW, max 7kW. I run it fairly hard so I've taken 6kW.
2. I'm on mains gas and looking up the price of a KWh it's about 4 pence, so I'm claiming a 25p/hour saving from running the stove.
3. With the mix of soft and a little hard wood I've used, I'm getting about 180 hours/m³ of wood. So a m³ is worth about £45.
4. Chainsaw, maul, axe, ppe etc cost me about £350, stove £600, install about the same again. So I need to burn about 35m³ or 10 cords to be cost neutral.

Good job i didn't do it for the savings, as that's a 5+ year time frame with my small stove as mains gas is so cheap. Although prices just rose 8% and keep going up, so.... Eventually the stove will save me money.

It's a good job i can scrounge wood, to buy in its about £100/m³, over twice the cost of gas.

There are other benefits and a significant one in a damp UK is the drying affect. With typical relative humidity of 90+% in the winter things like condensation on Windows and even mold can be an issue. I find the stove will pull the internal relative humidity down about 5% and the house environment is much better for it.

Plus i get to use chainsaws and axes

 

[jpl1nh]

This thread was only posted a week ago and you have four pages of responses! I think most people who burn wood think the value is absolutely there. Monetarily..? Meh.. if you count your work getting wood, it's not a high payback endeavor. But add everything else to the mix, exercise, sustainable heat, that unmatchable WARMTH, ambiance, the fun of burning stuff, the art of burning wood well, etc., and you see why you have four pages of responses. I have a wife who is supportive and a good person too so I posed the first paragraph of your question to her regarding the value. Her answer, from that perspective, was no. I asked her if she thought, considering all the time I put into firewood (six cords a year) it was worth it and she said absolutely yes, for all the afore mentioned reasons. She does have a lovely amount of pyro in her and she's a willing partner in that I source, haul and process the wood and she stacks. If you are willing to do the work and you mostly like the whole process, it's so worth it.

 

[dafattkidd]

Great thread. I am enjoying reading everyone's experiences. I value wood heat very highly. I enjoy every part of the process. Oil prices are pretty low right now, so our annual savings isn't that much this year- but since we installed our insert we have saved over $12,000 in fuel costs. So the financial savings is significant. Beyond that we are able to keep the house warmer than we did with just oil heat. Most importantly I just love building fires and having a fire cranking all the time. Like many have said, I really love be seeing my kids wake up every morning and go straight for the fireplace. Wood heat has been a tremendous blessing to our house.