So I'll fill you in a little so you get an idea of what's going on. Back in start of August we found a house and bought it. It was darn near everything we've always wanted. It has wood heat and electric heat on the furnace.

I knew that the furnace would be expensive to run so I went for wood heat by default. we've always wanted wood heat!

So we ordered a log truck load of wood and had it dumped at the house. 10 cord of paper birch. With all move ins things get hectic. But I finally managed a day where I could get a big group together to help with the wood since it was so late on the year.

Managed to muster up about 10 or so people. But it ranged from 4year old's to 50 something year old's with emphysema and a handicap from their leg.

Haha, what a combination.. I was the only one able to run a saw and a neighbor Running a splitter. The rest just stacked wood.

We managed to put Back what looked and calculated out to be 4 cord in 6 hours.

Now, it was just sitting and letting it season. Fast forward to now, when the temps are really dipping down. A lot of wood had time to season up pretty good. But the other stuff didn't. I'm sitting on half seasoned wood with winter staring me in the face.

If I run the furnace for heat, I know the Bill Will skyrocket. The previous owners highest electric Bill was in middle of winter at 650!!!

They must have liked it warm!

I've been burning quite frequently now trying to keep wood in the stove at all times for burning. My coal pile is getting so big I can barely get more wood in.

The temps are dipping into the 20s, and I'm struggling to keep this 2500 square foot house warmer than 60!

I've got fans pushing all the air around I can and using the furnace on fan to get the air into every bit of space that the fans can't.

The woodstove is a Quadrafire 4300 and I'm slightly impressed with it. It says in the manual it can heat a house this big, but I'm having a hard time believing it. I've been Running it as high as I can without over firing it and it doesn't seem to make a difference.

I'm looking at getting a different stove. I've always wanted a blaze king and their king model is exactly what I want.

The stove isn't in our budget this year so I gotta figure out what to do as we can see negative Temps for weeks during winter peak.

We're running around in layers but in reality with wood heat we just shouldn't have to do that. I want to cook myself out of the house!

Also, unless I go retrieve my own wood, loggers don't sell anything else around here for firewood except the paper birch.

I was thinking my best bet would be to buy a cord of wood and hope for the best. Anyone burning got ideas?

I sure hope next years season Will be better!

5 hours ago, Mopar1973Man said:

My darn tablet will correct spelling or typing errors sometimes replaces words with the wrong one. (Pellet / Pullet) 

My Android does t too. Took a while for me to figure it. 

 

1 hour ago, Me78569 said:

Just bring you wife up to 11 mile this winter for a weekend of winter camping and icefish.

 

After that anything.....and I do mean anything....will look like a 5 star hotel    Gotta set that bar low to start.   I can only put the bar so high and I don't plan on doing that until 20-30 anniversary.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nd7vLDFgSn0

Pellet stove is almost just as bad. Instead of a shed, now you just have pallets of bags to stack. Not near The amount of heat for The work and still have to clean it. I know, I used to use one.

Silly me, I didn't Even realize this thread had a second page!

Also, I just recently remembered to put something on the stove to keep humidity in the house. Been walking around getting shocked! That's when I remembered I ought to start using the stove to cook more! 

Edited November 25, 20159 yr by hex0rz

9 hours ago, hex0rz said:

Pellet stove is almost just as bad. Instead of a shed, now you just have pallets of bags to stack. Not near The amount of heat for The work and still have to clean it. I know, I used to use one.

I don't know.. I have done both as well and pellets are far cleaner, take up a smaller space (3x the BTU's per sqft of storage), and if the stove is the right size it is plenty of heat. One of the things I dislike most about a wood stove is how quick it takes a house from comfortable to too hot which wastes energy and isn't comfortable. A steady temperature is much more comfortable and uses less resources. 

The cleaning is easily done with a shop vac in 5 minutes once every 10 days or so, and about 30 minutes once half way thru the season and once at the beginning. 

Wood stoves certainly have their place and when I first bought my house I priced pulling the pellet stove out and replacing it with a wood stove but that will never happen now, the pellet stove is just a better stove for home use. I am shopping wood burning stoves for my shop thou.

 

14 hours ago, Killer223 said:

no power no heat. yes you can get a generator, but like really?

 

Agree, but there are other things than heat that require power. I am not about to let multiple freezers full of food go to waste because I don't want to deal with power. Water is also another one. I would guess, based on where you said you live, that you also have a well. So no power means no water, and no food storage. 

Edited November 25, 20159 yr by AH64ID

On November 24, 2015 at 7:22:36 AM, AH64ID said:

 

I bought a house last December that has a pellet stove and a propane furnace. Based on the price of propane I use the pellet stove for the bulk of our heating needs. It's a Quadrafire 1200-i. 

From December thru May last year we used about 2 tons of pellets and only 300 gallons of propane from December thru September and the propane also fuels the hot water heater and stove. Either way our fuel costs were not bad for nearly a year. Very little propane was actually used for the furnace on a standard day I would guess the furnace ran for about 15 minutes at most, sometimes more if we were out of town or forgot to fill the pellet hopper. 

Our house is 2450 ft2 and we keep the main living area at 68°-70° with the stove which keeps the bedrooms about 58°-62°.

I was not happy with the thermostat that came with the pellet stove so I installed a Honeywell WiFi thermostat which took a bit of work since it needs 24 VAC and the stove is 12VAC. I put a 24 VAC transformer on the stove circuit and ran thermostat wiring from the stove to the wall next to the furnace thermostat. I then added a 24VAC coil relay so the thermostat opens and closes the relay with 24VAC but the pellet stove is still on it's own 12 VAC circuit. I also added a break on delay relay to the thermostat side of the relay to have a minimum of 10 minutes between call's for heat so there is a smaller chance of a misfire at startup.  

All in all the pellet stove is a great way to heat the house and based on my experience with both I will take a pellet stove over a wood burning stove for a house anytime. While it is possible to get wood cheaper than pellets ($199/ton) that is where the advantage stops for me. The pellet stove starts and feeds itself as long as you throw a bag of pellets in. The stove maintains a set temperature and can work while you are gone. The pellet stove still has the feel of a wood fire but a lot less hassle. 

Pellet stoves are also a lot more efficient, the pellets take up less space, and they don't waste fuel because they turn off when the house gets warm enough. They also maintain the temperature in the house while you are at work which takes less energy than reheating a house that has cooled off quite a bit. 

I currently have 2 tons of pellets stacked in the garage which takes up about 73% of the area of one chord but has the BTU's of 2.18 chords of Lodgepole or 1.92 chords of Douglas Fir, which are the two most common firewood trees around here. Pellets have about 3 times the BTU's per sqft of storage space, which is why I only went thru about 2 tons last winter. 

Figure about a bag a day on average so 1 ton will last ±50 days. 

There is my 0.02. 

My wife LOVES the pellet stove. She can handle a 40lb bag with ease and if she wants a fire she turns the thermostat up and waits 2-3 minutes. They do make some fan noise but we hardly notice it anymore. 

I do really enjoy wood stoves too, but IMHO they are better in a shop/cabin and pellets are better for homes. 

Where are you finding pellets for $199/ton?  We pay 250-260!  Would like to have a forced-air furnace to help circulate heat throughout house, but only suplimental heat we have is portable electric. Stove is Quadrafire Mt Vernon(porcelain coated cast iron). Options are limited since we rent. Sure don't miss cutting wood!

Another factor on wood burning or pellet burning. Now like AH64ID is down in the city area of Boise area. (Not exactly but general area). So now for him to travel out and get firewood is much more demanding to travel up to the forest and spend a day cutting firewood and trucking it home. I can see the bonus for him just either have pellets delivered to his house or just chucking a few bags in the back of the truck. 

Now like myself my firewood is all around me. In my front yard in my back yard. I could drive less than 10 miles be hacking up a tree in no time. I figured out my cost of gather wood and I can having my heating wood for around $200 year if I do it myself. This year I was buying logs from a local yard being I just don't have the man power as I once. So this increase the cost more so but requires less man power to deal with. They always say that firewood warms you more than once. But hey now this is my exercise routine of bucking, splitting and stacking firewood.

So I will admit that pellet stove is way less messy, easier to get wood for, user friendly, etc. But that all comes at a cost. Wood burning stoves are messier, more work, but come with a bonus of no electricity required, no moving parts to wear out, and works without a generator.

This is kind of like the whole Dodge, Ford or Chevy battle. All I can say burn it if you got it. At least you'll stay warm and comfortable!

42 minutes ago, Royal Squire said:

Where are you finding pellets for $199/ton?  We pay 250-260!  Would like to have a forced-air furnace to help circulate heat throughout house, but only suplimental heat we have is portable electric. Stove is Quadrafire Mt Vernon(porcelain coated cast iron). Options are limited since we rent. Sure don't miss cutting wood!

Unless ALL the duct work in your house is insulated, this is usually not a good option to move heat...............as the "heated" air has to travel back to the blower/furnace via the AIR RETURN/RETURNS, then into the plenum to be distributed to the ducts that go to the rest of the house.  Not very efficient.

 

It's much, much more efficient to move the colder air toward your stove...................along the floor if possible...............because that's where the cooler air is.  I use a small 6" desk fan on the floor at the end of my hallway blowing air ON LOW, on the floor toward the stove room.  This gets a "convection" current going in my house, causing the back bedrooms to get almost as warm as the stove room.  The fan is much quieter than listening to the whole house blower also.  I don't use this little fan all the time either.

 

 

1 hour ago, Royal Squire said:

Where are you finding pellets for $199/ton?  We pay 250-260!  Would like to have a forced-air furnace to help circulate heat throughout house, but only suplimental heat we have is portable electric. Stove is Quadrafire Mt Vernon(porcelain coated cast iron). Options are limited since we rent. Sure don't miss cutting wood!

The local D&B Supply does a sale about once a quarter where pellets are 20% off. It makes the American Eagle Pellets I buy $3.98/bag or $199.00/ton. Pretty cheap and they have a very high BTU content and minimal ash. They are also a local pellet company. If I have to buy pellets when they aren't on sale it is $249.50/ton. 

We do have a forced-air furnace that we use to circulate the air. I have a Honeywell 9000 WiFi thermostat that has a circulate option for the fan that runs the fan about 30% of the time. 

The room the pellet stove is in has vaulted ceilings and the main return is in the peak so it picks up very warm air. 

Because the pellet stove is on a thermostat the peak of the ceiling doesn't get as hot as it would with a wood stove and we generally have the ceiling fan on pushing the heat down and even with that the furnace fan moves the warm air quite well. I measured the temps last winter on a 20° day and this is what I came up with. 

Thermostat/Stove Room Temp: 68°

Return Air Temp: 82°

Master Bedroom Discharge Temp: 68°

Master Bedroom Ambient Temp: 62°

 

I think that's pretty darn good considering I would be running the fan either way. 

 

57 minutes ago, Mopar1973Man said:

Another factor on wood burning or pellet burning. Now like AH64ID is down in the city area of Boise area. (Not exactly but general area). So now for him to travel out and get firewood is much more demanding to travel up to the forest and spend a day cutting firewood and trucking it home. I can see the bonus for him just either have pellets delivered to his house or just chucking a few bags in the back of the truck. 

Now like myself my firewood is all around me. In my front yard in my back yard. I could drive less than 10 miles be hacking up a tree in no time. I figured out my cost of gather wood and I can having my heating wood for around $200 year if I do it myself. This year I was buying logs from a local yard being I just don't have the man power as I once. So this increase the cost more so but requires less man power to deal with. They always say that firewood warms you more than once. But hey now this is my exercise routine of bucking, splitting and stacking firewood.

So I will admit that pellet stove is way less messy, easier to get wood for, user friendly, etc. But that all comes at a cost. Wood burning stoves are messier, more work, but come with a bonus of no electricity required, no moving parts to wear out, and works without a generator.

This is kind of like the whole Dodge, Ford or Chevy battle. All I can say burn it if you got it. At least you'll stay warm and comfortable!

Yes my wood cost would be much higher than yours. It would be an all day even for each chord unless I bought a trailer which would add to the cost even more still. Without a trailer I would be looking at 6-8 days and the associated cost which is probably more than I spend on pellets. I still get about 1 chord a year for camping and I figure once the shop gets built I will need around 2 chords a winter just for it, maybe more. 

I am able to load up to 2 tons at a time in the truck if I need to and the entire round trip and unloading (CSS :-) takes less than 2 hours. When I plan ahead to make it from sale to sale it's very cost effective. 

Yes at the end of the day fire is fire and a much better heat!

 

10 minutes ago, dorkweed said:

 The fan is much quieter than listening to the whole house blower also. 

 

What kind of whole house blower do you have? I can't even hear mine when I am in the room adjacent to it. 

47 minutes ago, AH64ID said:

The local D&B Supply does a sale about once a quarter where pellets are 20% off. It makes the American Eagle Pellets I buy $3.98/bag or $199.00/ton. Pretty cheap and they have a very high BTU content and minimal ash. They are also a local pellet company. If I have to buy pellets when they aren't on sale it is $249.50/ton. 

We do have a forced-air furnace that we use to circulate the air. I have a Honeywell 9000 WiFi thermostat that has a circulate option for the fan that runs the fan about 30% of the time. 

The room the pellet stove is in has vaulted ceilings and the main return is in the peak so it picks up very warm air. 

Because the pellet stove is on a thermostat the peak of the ceiling doesn't get as hot as it would with a wood stove and we generally have the ceiling fan on pushing the heat down and even with that the furnace fan moves the warm air quite well. I measured the temps last winter on a 20° day and this is what I came up with. 

Thermostat/Stove Room Temp: 68°

Return Air Temp: 82°

Master Bedroom Discharge Temp: 68°

Master Bedroom Ambient Temp: 62°

 

I think that's pretty darn good considering I would be running the fan either way. 

 

Yes my wood cost would be much higher than yours. It would be an all day even for each chord unless I bought a trailer which would add to the cost even more still. Without a trailer I would be looking at 6-8 days and the associated cost which is probably more than I spend on pellets. I still get about 1 chord a year for camping and I figure once the shop gets built I will need around 2 chords a winter just for it, maybe more. 

I am able to load up to 2 tons at a time in the truck if I need to and the entire round trip and unloading (CSS :-) takes less than 2 hours. When I plan ahead to make it from sale to sale it's very cost effective. 

Yes at the end of the day fire is fire and a much better heat!

 

 

What kind of whole house blower do you have? I can't even hear mine when I am in the room adjacent to it. 

I did say USUALLY it's not an efficient way to move heat.  It's usually much easier and more efficient to move cool air.

Don't know what brand or size blower that's in the furnace..........................but the furnace/blower were about 2 feet to my left when I took the picture of the desk fan at the end of the hallway.  Main floor, center of the house.

 

My house has 4 air returns...............essentially one in each corner of my little 1100sq.ft.  single story ranch house...........one return IS in the stove room.  The ducts for those are in the unheated attic and covered with about 1-2" of fiberglass insulation.  These ducts run toward the center of the house where the furnace/blower is....................thru the filter.....................thru the heat exchanger..................then down into the plenum which is in the unheated crawl space.  From the plenum all the separate lines go out to the rooms of the house................all ducts are uninsulated.

 

Don't know how your duct work is, but still, you're losing a fair bit of heat thru them.  I'll be willing to bet that in my house if I tried what you do, I'd lose much more.  The temps may or may not be higher on my end, but I think I'd have a great loss as the temperature differential between the return and discharge.

Here in town a company called lignetics makes Pellet fuel, people can sometimes score a ton for 100 bucks. They usually sell retail for 150.

I don't bother with gathering wood. I've done it and it sucks. So I order a log trucker to deliver it too me. 10cord at a time. Should last me 2.5 years. Paid 1100 for the load. Even if it costs me more per year, I have the convenience of not wasting my time scrounging it and still get my exercise and still get my beloved wood heat that penetrates to my bones like no other heat. 

I'm happy to have wood heat, period! ?

24 minutes ago, hex0rz said:

Here in town a company called lignetics makes Pellet fuel, people can sometimes score a ton for 100 bucks. They usually sell retail for 150.

I don't bother with gathering wood. I've done it and it sucks. So I order a log trucker to deliver it too me. 10cord at a time. Should last me 2.5 years. Paid 1100 for the load. Even if it costs me more per year, I have the convenience of not wasting my time scrounging it and still get my exercise and still get my beloved wood heat that penetrates to my bones like no other heat. 

I'm happy to have wood heat, period! ?

I've not found an outfit that will deliver full length logs.  If I could, I'd do that, and process it all in my yard.

 

 

7 hours ago, dorkweed said:

Unless ALL the duct work in your house is insulated, this is usually not a good option to move heat...............as the "heated" air has to travel back to the blower/furnace via the AIR RETURN/RETURNS, then into the plenum to be distributed to the ducts that go to the rest of the house.  Not very efficient.

 

It's much, much more efficient to move the colder air toward your stove...................along the floor if possible...............because that's where the cooler air is.  I use a small 6" desk fan on the floor at the end of my hallway blowing air ON LOW, on the floor toward the stove room.  This gets a "convection" current going in my house, causing the back bedrooms to get almost as warm as the stove room.  The fan is much quieter than listening to the whole house blower also.  I don't use this little fan all the time either.

 

 

Thanks for the info. Will try the small fan idea. 

56 minutes ago, Royal Squire said:

Thanks for the info. Will try the small fan idea. 

 

Hopefully you'll be pleasantly surprised!!!

On 11/25/2015, 10:17:04, dorkweed said:

Don't know how your duct work is, but still, you're losing a fair bit of heat thru them.  I'll be willing to bet that in my house if I tried what you do, I'd lose much more.  The temps may or may not be higher on my end, but I think I'd have a great loss as the temperature differential between the return and discharge.

 

I am quite alright losing 14° on the run from the main return to the master bedroom, which is the longest run I have. The furnace is in the garage and the straight line run is about 30' from the main return to the furnace and then about 50' to the master bedroom. 

My house is 2450 sqft and the furnace has 5 or 6 returns and only one of them is in the room with the stove so I may be losing less heat to the ducting in the attic/crawl space and more to mixing of air from the other returns. My ducting also has the standard low R value 1-2" wrap around it, but that should be plenty of insulation with decent airflow. 

 

We spent the weekend at my folks cabin on the Olympic Peninsula. It's a wide body single wide with a added room on the side of it. IIRC it's a 14x70' home and the room is 14x30. The room is unheated but is inuslated and doesn't have a door between it and the home. There is a wood burning stove in the "new room" and on Thanksgiving we moved the main furnace return to the ceiling above the wood burning stove. The ceiling is vaulted and about 14' tall where the return is located. There is about 20' of duting between the return and the furnace blower. The rest of the ducting is below the home an the insulation is in sad shape but it is 40 years old. With the new room temps about 75-77° we were able to keep the main house at 69-71° with the furnace off and the furnace fan on. The outside temps were in the high 20's and low 30's and there was no sun hitting the home. The windows have all been upgrade from the original mobile home windows but the insulation has not. I'd have to say the furnace fan did a great job moving the heat around, but having a short return run with a single return is a big factor. 

I dunno if it's Really appropriate, so I'll do it here. I'm Really getting less interested in keeping my Quadra fire. I read a post on a forum to buy a bundle of wood from the store that's been kiln dried to get a baseline, so I'll do that first to rule out the idea of me having wet wood.

If after I'm still not impressed, I'm eyeing other stoves. So far I have interests in three different stoves:

Vogelzang ponderosa

Blaze king king model

Or

Englander 28 3500 furnace.

Anyone have experience on these or thoughts? I Need some serious heater output without breaking the wallet. Going to try and get 1200 for the Quadra. Retails 2k New and this one can't be more than a couple years old.

We had a Blaze King stove and it didn't last very long. The stupid EPA designed stove burn poorly and the weird air ducting and cat's make it a mess of a stove. After a few year the air duct get deformed from the constant heating cycles and eventually start to crack and leak air in different places. Like ours was leaking more into the exhaust of the chimney than into the fire box so the fire would go out on its own. Our lasted about 4-5 years and end up throwing it out for these two "Stove That Jack Built" and never had any other issues.

These two stoves are built with heavy plate steel and no glass door so there is complete fire safety. I can crank down both air shutters and kill a fire in mere minutes. Very air tight box. Compared to the old Blaze king it had a cheap sheet metal shutter for air control and even on the lowest setting it would run quite hot.

I suggest you don't look for a stove with beauty in mind but a good heavy steel cabinet and steel door. If there is any steel metal or light gauge metal anywhere in the stove you can bet it will fail in short amount of time. 

1 hour ago, hex0rz said:

I dunno if it's Really appropriate, so I'll do it here. I'm Really getting less interested in keeping my Quadra fire. I read a post on a forum to buy a bundle of wood from the store that's been kiln dried to get a baseline, so I'll do that first to rule out the idea of me having wet wood.

If after I'm still not impressed, I'm eyeing other stoves. So far I have interests in three different stoves:

Vogelzang ponderosa

Blaze king king model

Or

Englander 28 3500 furnace.

Anyone have experience on these or thoughts? I Need some serious heater output without breaking the wallet. Going to try and get 1200 for the Quadra. Retails 2k New and this one can't be more than a couple years old.

I know several folks with the Blaze King King.  They love the thing............................the "CAVEAT" being is that the unit requires TRULY SEASONED wood for the performance that is advertised.  If you try to burn "wet wood" the catalyst won't fire, and you won't get heat.

 

That's the reason I'm trying to get 3 years ahead on firewood.  To make sure my wood is truly seasoned.  Splitting in the spring and early summer;  and then burning in that same wood in the early 
Fall and Winter, IMHO, is not seasoned wood...................no matter what Mike says!!!   Sorry Mike!!

 

If'n you're willing to forth the work to get "at least" 2 year ahead on wood and better yet, 3 years ahead..........................I'd recommend the Blaze King King in a minute.

 

If you're gonna procure in the fall to burn that Winter..................I'm not gonna help you.

 

Go here for help if you don't believe me, go here for way more info than I can type here..........................http://www.firewoodhoardersclub.com and  http://www.hearth.com

Edited December 1, 20159 yr by dorkweed

With all the standing pine and fir we have up here that is fire kill it's very easy to cut/burn in the same year. It was seasoned standing up :-). 

 

Even the few green lodge pole I cut down are seasoned very quickly with the high heat and low humidity we get all summer. 

8 hours ago, AH64ID said:

With all the standing pine and fir we have up here that is fire kill it's very easy to cut/burn in the same year. It was seasoned standing up :-). 

 

Even the few green lodge pole I cut down are seasoned very quickly with the high heat and low humidity we get all summer. 

Most of the wood I get is standing dead and dry when I cut it down. Just like AH64ID example I've been wood out of the Poe Cabin Fire for years now. Most of wood is still standing and dry. Just lightly scorched. Nothing like what you are using in hardwood which hold water for long period. I cut down trees before and bucked them up and had them start popping and cracking by the time I get home. Softwoods season quickly.

Doesn't get any drier than this...

As for this fire year I've purchase from a log yard in New Meadows, ID and brought them back early in the year to season out in the yard. As for what in the shed is good and dry. My standard stove lighting method works just find.

Now any wood I split from this point on will NOT be loaded into the shed because now this damp or moist wood that will need a summer to cure out. I'll most likely stack it up in the yard and cover it for now.

Here try this on for size load your stove with normal size firewood, no kindling. Then light your weed burner rest it on the edge of the stove. Now fill the tea kettle with water. The fire will be lit in the time the tea kettle is filled. remember this in not kindling.  Now leave the air vents wide open for exactly 10 minutes and the pyrometer with be off the scale. The stack is now clean to the top and now I adjust the air shutters to just a hair past a 1/2 turn a piece which brings me back to about 600*F pyrometer.

5 minutes just went by and blower just kicked on.

If my wood wasn't seasoned you couldn't do this. Wet fire wood burns extremely cold, smoky, hard starting, etc. Even with kindling... Or in my case a weed burner.

Edited December 1, 20159 yr by Mopar1973Man