Think about it this way
I'm considering adding Central Boiler Elcassic to my home. I locked in oil for the upcoming heating season at $3.99. I bought 800 gallons. Since we built our house in 2005, the price of heating oil has doubled. Every year it goes 20-30 cents higher. Add the fact that I now have 2 little ones, well my oil use will go up within the next couple years. If my usage goes up to say 900 gallons and the price of oil hits 5 bucks which it probably will in about 3 years, well its going to cost me 4500 to heat my home. Seems everything doubles in price except our salaries. Its getting harder to make ends meet. I got a couple saws and don't mind bucking up some logs if I have too. If I have to spend a couple weeks a year cutting, splitting and stacking wood to save 3-4g, well thats a no brainer for me. I really don't see the price of oil coming down much ever again. I just need my wife to get on board as she just sees it as adding more work to an already busy schedule. I see that as money that we could use for college or to pay off the mortgage a little sooner.
You can always scrounge wood for free if you hustle, and you get used to doing it, your mind takes over and you start seeing free or real dang cheap wood everywhere, and different ways to get it.
Now go try to scrounge a tanker truck of oil coming by for free...good luck with that///
Ya, you can stick a used waste oil heater in, but you know what I am saying..and it is getting harder to scrounge that waste oil. Heck, even the veggie oil diesel burners are having a hard time scrounging fryer grease from restaurants..
But wood? You can scrounge, and if you have a yard, you can stack years in advance of needing it.
I make bupkis, like around double your heating bill. For real, I am working semi retired, this is around the best I can do now. Forced early semi retirement, so..that's what I got, lucky to be able to work at all really..
No wood, I'd be beyond broke. Of course it is easy to scrounge right on the farm here, but I have scrounged out and about before, it's doable, and I bet at least half the guys here have to or prefer to scrounge.
One of the slicker ways to get the wood is try to get some for free from tree services, sometimes they just run out of room, someplace to put what they cut, or they get charged to dump it, etc. Take it off their hands, you'll get good wood, bad, ugly wood, just take it, you can deal with it one way or the other. It'll all burn.
If you ain't a wood snob, scrounging gets loads easier. Pallet wood is good to scrounge, anything but pressure treated.
Local governments have road crews that cut wood, sometimes you can get it right where they cut it.
Tons of threads here on how guys scrounge wood. Good luck! And wood heat is the best heat, it has "cozy" all over it.
And it is also our cheapest, most practical and safest nuclear power..nuclear FUSION power. Hardly anyone stops to think about it like that, but it is true. Wood is stored solar power, nuclear fusion power, the cleanest safest most environmentally sound energy we can use.
Cheap, effective, safest, greenest..what's not to like? Added bonus, cutting and splitting is big fun!
