To heat or not to heat

[stihly dan]

If no one is going to be home for the day, Do you load up with wood in your appliance? Last couple of years someone has always been home. Now mon thru fri house will be empty all day. If I let the house get cold until I get home, I should save 6 splits a day. At the end of the year that's about 800 splits. Don't know how much that is, but it's got to be at least a cord. Seems like it would be worth the hour of being cold after work to save 800 splits. What do you do?

 

[blackdogon57]

Load er up. Nothing worse than coming home to a cold house in the dead of winter.

 

[CWME]

I load it it up. My system is gravity fed so it takes a long time to recover though.

 

[MrWhoopee]

Load it up. It takes more heat to recover than to maintain.

 

[Garmins dad]

I would always fire up when i got home from work.. It felt warm inside cause 50f is a lot nicer then -25f. takes me a hour tops to get the house really warm.. I never worry about freezing up though as my basement has heat..

 

[Steve NW WI]

Don't take advice from a dude from GA on whether to let your stove out during the day. (Sorry Del...)

Getting back up to temp is gonna take wide open burning, and there goes your savings. My house is empty, except for the dog (who refuses to fill the stove on her own,) over half the day, and fill the stove before heading out to work each day. If I didn't, in this moderately insulated place, the propane would be running, and I do NOT approve of that.

The 24/7 club is the "cool people" anyhow, or should that be the "warm people" in this instance?

 

[olyman]

as steve said,,youll gain nothing by letting it go out. keep the wood in there. if your nervous about it going out,,turn the heat reg on the stove down a bit..

 

[Whitespider]

My mid-winter routine has always been to fill the firebox when I get up (between 4:00 and 5:00 AM), top it off before heading out (around 8:00 AM), fill it when I get home (about 5:30 PM), and top it off again before bed (anytime between 8:00 and 10:00 PM)... and if it's a real cold day the wife may add some in the early afternoon, if she's home.

I've never really tested it, but I believe it requires more fuel to warm something up than it does to keep something warm... just as it requires more fuel to get your truck up to speed than it does to maintain that speed. Still, you can only take that so far; if you run your truck up to 60 MPH, and then maintain that speed for 4 hours... well, you'll surely use more fuel over that 4 hours won't ya'? The way it really works is you'll burn more fuel during the 30 seconds it takes you to get up to speed than you'll burn maintaining that speed for the same 30 seconds.

People with gas, oil or electric heat turn their thermostats down at night and when no one is home to save money... and it's been proven to work, they use less fuel. Even though they use more fuel during the 30 minutes used to warm the home back up than they would've used to maintain that temp for the same 30 minutes... they still save on fuel because they didn't have to maintain temp for 6, 8 or more hours. So I'm guessin' you actually would save a few splits by not having a fire burning all day when the house was empty... even if you have to run it hard for some amount of time to warm things when ya' got home.

The thing is, wood heat doesn't recover anywhere close to the speed of gas, oil or electric... ya' haf'ta get the fire going, get the firebox up to temp, and finally get the appliance itself warmed up before it will start heating in any meaningful way. It ain't like ya' can just turn the dial on the thermostat and have 150° air exiting the ducts in a few seconds. Likely the best solution would be a lower, slower fire during the day so the house wouldn't lose as much heat and hopeful there would be some fire left (i.e. a bed of coals) to get things going faster when you returned... both of which would reduce the recovery time a lot. And besides... if I didn't have the fire going during the day in mid-winter, my home would cool to the point that the (heaven forbid) gas furnace would have to run to keep ice from forming in the toilet...

 

[NSMaple1]

I burn in the evenings. What the house doesn't use then goes to storage that will keep the house warm until the next evening. No early morning fire tending for me, thanks.

But different strokes for different folks & situations....

 

[jrider]

How much wood depends on the size/length of your splits. I cut to 16" and split down to about 4"-6" pieces. At this size, a cord has roughly 500-600 pieces. If you have same size splits as me, you might be saving 1.5 cords. How much work is your indoor comfort worth? To me, it's a no brainer but what do I know, I heat with an OWB?

 

[Dalmatian90]

Oh, I suspect there's a difference between a 30º day in early December, and a 0º windy day in February on whether he can get away with it even with a well insulated house.

My poorly insulated house will drop in hours to 45º -- how fast it drops is dependent on how cold it is. And I loathe it when I come home to a 45º house and it takes two hours before I can strip down to boxers

But then it only very slowly (a couple days, maybe three I'm guessing) before it would get to 32º as the basement and crawlspace act as a heatsink drawing up warmth from below the frost line.

I suspect with a well insulated house up here you can easily get through the "shoulder seasons" not burning in the day and be comfortable. From mid-January to late-February...I'd bet not.

 

[CWME]

Back when I had my wood furnace installed I would skip a load to save wood. But that fire breathing dragon would get the house from 60 to 90 in less than an hour with temps around 0 outside. And that was BEFORE I super insulated the basement. I actually have a shot of the thermometer reading -10 outside and 90 inside:hmm3grin2orange:

Anyway I swapped to a smaller EPA stove to save wood over the long haul but the trade off is slower recovery. The plus side to lots of insulation and a new stove is I cut my wood use in half so skipping a load is not really a factor for me.

 

[Steve NW WI]

Apology accepted!


From what Stihly has posted in the past he has a highly insulated house and a very high efficiency hi tech wood burning whole house furnace.

I'm quite sure there is a wood savings to be had by keeping his daytime temps lower.

Stihly's system burning wide open likely does not see any drop in efficiency.

Savings, probably some. The question is how much, and is it worth the decreased comfort. I believe it will be less than Stihly is figuring. It takes X btus to maintain a temp over 10 hours, but it takes Y btus to get it back to a given temp. Don't ask me for cold hard numbers, I don't have em, just know that a stove burning at 100% capacity will burn wood faster (more or less efficiently than at low heat probably depends on design) than one running at 25% capacity, so while getting back to temp, use is increased.

Once again, the is it worth it question is one only Dan will be able to answer (and hopefully report back after he tries it.)

Thanks for taking my ribbing, BTW!

 

[Encore]

Saving wood? I burn wood because I want to be comfortable and not have it cost me a dime.

When we used the wood stove I used to load it up before leaving and come home to a nice warm house when returning.

Cold houses are no fun. Especially if you have a wife and a little one.

Fortunately now with the OWB its no problem. Load it once a day and it's all good.

 

[brenndatomu]

I burn all day. You probably would save a bit of wood by not firing during the day, but to me it is not worth it. I like coming home to a 72* house when I have been working outside all day, especially if I got chilled from getting wet.
Another bigger factor in my mind would be the thermal cycling of the furnaces metal firebox/heat exchanger. I usually try to build the fire slowly during a cold start. I don't like to hear all the loud "ticking" of the metal expanding/moving when it is heated rapidly. I know it might not mean much to some, but to me if I've spent $4-5K on a furnace, and I could get 30 years out of 'er instead of 25 (for example) just by "taking care" of 'er, I'll take the extra 5 years. I don't know if you have ever been around a stove that has been run hard, it definitely has an effect on the metallurgy...

 

[stihly dan]

Ok, my furnace the Kumma regulates itself. So there is no beating the heck out of it at any time. With a cold furnace, as in no fire for a long time it takes about an hour to raise the house 10* when it's in the teens outside. If I were to leave the house at 70, 9 hrs later It would be around 58 60* if it were in the teens. I have more than enough wood to burn away, but why burn it if I don't have to. I will have to test this theory out, I tend to agree with spidey on the consumption. I have no other means of heat so nothing will turn on to waste money. Bright side would be if any of the teenagers stay home from school they will be cold, incentive there to go to school.

 

[ClassicSWC]

Load the stove at 3:30 am when I get home
Throw a couple more sticks in at 5 am when the g/f gets done beetchin that I came home too late
Throw a couple more sticks in at 7 am when I go to work
Load it again at noon when the secretary and I come home for a "quickie" lunch
Load again at 6pm
Repeat as necessary

Clear as mud

 

[Red Amor]

Ive got to say I just don't know how you folks do it
I have enough trouble working in mornings when the temp is minus 4, 6, or 8 degrees cel
my fingers n toes oboy,
we get down to minus 3 4 every once n a while -8 . 10 or 12 but the temps you blokes live n play to well no no not for me
Ive two free standing wood heaters in house and once we into full time burn the go 24/7 for a few months
I just feel the cold particularly sinse my heart went bung on me
I recon we burn about 8 ton a year maybe a tad more never really counted that much jut used it like it was free
Its all hard wood gum stringy bark , as well as blue n river as long as it dry its goes in the shed green or wet stock pile in the yard
both fires burn well over night and if were out for the day there always still going when we get home one is a KENT 22" with flue choke and air slide dampener on front
the other a Norsman no flue choke just the slide dampener on the front
Ive modified the dampener as it wouldn't burn over night It now emits less smoke and burns over night a very good heater