wood stoves

[Laney]

dh and I are still looking at houses. found one outside of the city limits, built in 1983 and it looks to have once housed a wood stove. anyone here with a wood stove that would like to share the pros and/or cons of having one? how much does it help with the electric bill?

[zakity]

How cheap it is depends on how well the wood stove heats the house up and how cheaply you can get wood for it.

[MrsClaus]

What zakity said. You have to have a place to cut and way to haul it home. If you don't have a saw or two and a way to haul it you have to figure those expenses in. 3 of 4 households in dh's family heat with wood so they cut together a good bit of the time.

Plus, you would have to check with your insurance. Our old trailer had a porch addition that had a wood furnace. The only reason the insurance would cover it was because it was originally where dh lived and we just transfered the insurance over when we got married.

When we moved the old one out and had a new modular home set they would only cover a wood furnace that was an outdoor one that sat so many feet away from the house.

For the last two winters we have used propane to heat with and that is what I grew up with. Dh complained all the time he was cold. With wood heat we averaged 150 gallons of propane a year, when heating it went up to 800 a year. We've never used electric heat so I'm not sure how much you would save.

Dh's grandparents used an inside woodstove to heat with and it was totally different from the furnaces that we've used.

[mhope]

I love my stove. I don't pay for any wood.

[mh3rdwheel]

We had a woodstove and it heated a three bedroom, living and kitchen and it was so hot in the house (two story) that we had to open the windows in December (and it was in the teens outside) but 90 degrees inside.

We would go out backroading and finding fallen and dead trees blocking the road we would cut it up and haul it home free, we would ask if it was private property. When we get back we would split it with an axe and sit it on the porch until needed.

[heartofmine]

I love wood heat. We've always had a wood stove but we also had wood available to us for free on family land. A few times we cut down unwanted trees in people's yards and hauled that home.

We are building a new home and although we'll have central heat and air we are putting in a wood stove and will use it for heat most of the time.

Another good thing about wood heat besides dropping the electrical bills down is when the electric is off you still have a way to heat your home and cook. I've never worried when our electric is off. I cook full meals on our stove. I've even fed our neighbors during snow/ice storms when electric was out and no one could get out of their driveways. We have an earth stove.

[Ali Lee]

I had a wood stove for many years. Heated the whole house with it. I put a fan behind it & that really helped with distribution of heat. The room with the stove was always in the 80*'s, less thru out the house. Then, I moved out. I noticed my kids had less colds & I had less sinus infections! Now my dau has a son with asthma & allergies & their beautiful fireplace sits idle. If you have a problem with sinus, asthma, or allergies...think twice about wood burning stoves.

[KeithBC]

We heat with wood. It would provide 100% of our heat, except we use electric when we are away in town. Electric heat is a lot more expensive.

It works well because it is an efficient stove, and because the design of the house allows heat to circulate well without roasting us. In a different configuration, it might not work so well.

We get most of our wood from blowdowns or trees that have needed to come down for another reason. We did buy quite a bit of wood early on to build up or stock, but now that we have a full two-year supply, we don't expect to have to buy much more.

We like the fact that our heating comes from a renewable resource.