Wood Heat

Anyone else heating with wood? While I like bleeding-edge tech, I like heating the house with old fashioned cast iron and wood. 30 year old cast iron Vermont Castings Vigilant Parlor Stove and a small fire to chase the morning chill.

If your location is correct, do you really need to heat your house in FL? I've always used oil in my homes..

A friend of mine went pellet stove in his old house and then for the new house he's gone geo-thermal with radiant heat throughout the house..

Raz0rEdge said:

If your location is correct, do you really need to heat your house in FL?

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If I lived in 25 degree latitude Florida, no I wouldn't need to bother heating my house. I live above 30 degree latitude Florida, and while we don't have a real winter, there is enough below freezing weather to grow peaches. Bridges and overpasses can ice, as well as the roads on rare occasions. We occasionally see snow, though sleet is more common. Yes... the house will get cold without heat.

Hmm..that's interesting, I didn't think there was that much of a differential in Florida weather..I'd read recently about the colder weather wreaking havoc on orange and other fruit crops..

I wonder how much wood you'd have to go through to heat a decent sized house in the East Coast with temps sitting at best in the solid 30's from Nov to early March..

I know I get abused (to put it mildly) for the monthly oil fill up to keep the house at a decent temperature..

Wood burner here. We have our three cords of oak and pine to get us through the winter. Even though we have central heat that runs on propane, we opt for wood heat. There's nothing like the heat off a wood stove.

If this winter is as mild as last winter, I'll burn less than one cord of seasoned oak. Here is a chart from the Weather Channel showing monthly averages, record highs, and record lows in Live Oak, FL.

He's correct about northern Florida weather. I lived and worked in Tallahassee for 2 years and while the Winters were very mild, we did on occasion get frost and temperatures approaching the low 30s. We used electric heat in the house we lived in. Summers were a different story - sweltering humid heat.

Never used wood-burning for heat. My grandparents had a house from the 20's or 30's that had a wood-burning stove in the living room and I always thought it was really cool (no pun intended).

I have a natural gas furnace in my home. Phoenix, AZ so it's not too bad in the winters, although we do see temps in the mid to low 30's sometimes.

Wood is my backup heat. Gas/electric furnace with generator backup is first and a gas fireplace with an iron wood stove in the basement (vented) for backup to that. Never gotten to where we needed the stove, but we fire it up for fun every so often. Minnesota gets pretty cold, but if you prepare it's not too tough to get by if the worst happens.

I use a rice coal stove to supplement my oil fired boiler. Wood is good heat but can't compare to the amount of heat you get from coal. The stove also has a water jacket in it and is piped into the hot water baseboard system. This helps distribute the heat throughout the different zones in the house. Works really well and is quite a bit cheaper than the price of oil when looked at from a BTU standpoint. I'm in upstate NY and it really made a difference in heating costs.

Thats a very nice looking wood heater you have. I love old iron stoves and wood heaters.

I don't have a heater here, I am living near Butuan City Philippines which is about 8.9degrees north of the equator. I did however cut my A/C down a tad today.. LOL..

My Dad lives in north Mississippi and he uses wood heat. He has one of the more common wood heaters thats more square looking and is more for heating the looks. Nothing wrong with wood heat, nothing else the extra carbon emissions caused by humans is what has kept the next ice age at bay for the past thousand years.. LOL.. (Global warming my ________ )...

Bugzie said:

I use a rice coal stove to supplement my oil fired boiler. Wood is good heat but can't compare to the amount of heat you get from coal. The stove also has a water jacket in it and is piped into the hot water baseboard system. This helps distribute the heat throughout the different zones in the house. Works really well and is quite a bit cheaper than the price of oil when looked at from a BTU standpoint. I'm in upstate NY and it really made a difference in heating costs.

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If I move back to the states, this was something I am considering doing. While I want do coal, wood is more abundant and I have enough property to grow all I need. A heated base board or water pipes in a cement floor would work very very good..

We yanked our two central systems and replaced them with five inverter mini-splits. Far cheaper to buy and we can apply the heat (and cool) only to the rooms that we need. And instead of the big units trying to smoke the bearings on the electric meter, a 110 volt inverter can keep the room at any comfort level and lope along - usually - at just a little more than an amp. For those who don't speak Ohms law, that is not a lot more than a couple of light bulbs.

Wish we had done that years before.

Speaking of inverter style of heating and cooling. The air con I got for our house here is only a rated at 2.5 horse power. I know thats a crazy measurement as it seems most asian countries don't speak BTU's.. But its a Samsung 2.5HP Inverter style. Its one of the Split units, with half the AC in my house and the noisier half outside. What sets it apart from my perspective, is that normal air cons fan motor and pumps seem to run at full blast on or off. While this one runs the inside fan, outside fan and compressor pump all seperetaly at much lower speeds. So if it need to pump just a little, it doesn't kick on full blast it slowly starts up and slower. Its much much quieter then I have seen units from home. I can be outside right next to it and have to look at it sometimes to even see if its running. Normal run is about 25db and outside during the day thats quiet. But it cuts a lot down on our AC bill..