Heating with wood burners/fire places only?

[McCulloch610]

We've been heating our entire house evenly for nearly eight years with this:

Its an Englander 28-3500 add-on furnace. The silver duct you see exiting the top feeds into my existing furnace plenum. The wood furnace has it's own blower and filter box which draws air from the basement, blows it around the firebox, and into the furnace plenum where it gets distributed evenly to every room in the house. I also can turn my main furnace blower on to help it. Regular wood stoves are space heaters and while they can generate a lot of heat, it tends to stay in one room, especially if you don't have a very open layout. As far as I'm concerned, central wood heating is the way to go. We burn 4-5 cords of wood a year and merely use our oil heat to take the edge off during the early fall/early spring. Last year I only burned 50 gallons of oil.

 

[Beekissed]

Sounds good...until summer time. I like living in the middle...not too hot for very long, not too cold for very long, four seasons, not too rainy, not too much snow, not too much drought. It's juuuuuuuuuuust right, as Goldilocks would say.

 

[McCulloch610]

Bee, I was asking @McCulloch610 I already know what patch of God's Country you live in. But I didn't realize that you get below zero too!

I am in Northwest NJ, about 60 miles from the nearest coastline and about 450' above sea level. We tend to see slightly colder temperatures than the rest of the state. Sub-zero is not the norm, but it's not uncommon either. We usually get about a two week stretch where I see the minus sign on my outdoor thermometer. The norm for nighttime lows in January and February is high teens to low 20s.

 

[McCulloch610]

You mentioned keeping the chimney clean. I've seen some products you can burn in your stove/fireplace that is supposed to clean the chimney, but I'm unfamiliar with those. Do they work, or is it just a gimmick?

Definitely stay away from those. The only proper way to clean a chimney is with a brush. I have a brush sized to fit my 6" stainless chimney and a set of 4' long fiberglass rods that are threaded 1/4" NPT on each end. I just get up on the roof, pop my cap off, insert the brush, and screw in the rods as I go. When I hit bottom I start pulling it up, removing rods as I go, and that's it. I pull the creosote out of the bottom and that's it. I think the brush and rods cost me $60 total.

 

[wyoDreamer]

We heated mostly with wood for 7 years in Wyoming. The house we bought had a woodstove already installed and we added a second one. The first one was installed in the corner of the dining room, not the best location but it was there so we made do. We had to use a fan to get the heat to other areas of the upstairs, like into the bedroom, but we loved the warmth. The house had a propane forced-air furnace, that we used as a back-up. after adding the second woodstove in the basement, we burned about 8 cord of wood a winter and kept the house toasty warm.
this is the dining room stove. The same model of stove was installed in the basement.

 

[wyoDreamer]

We purchased an old farmstead when we moved to Wisconsin. It is farmland, so no real supply of firewood. This house had a big old fireplace in the livingroom so we installed a pellet insert with a thermostat.

It is helping to cut our heating bill and does a great job of heating the main living area. however, the design of the house does not really allow for transfer of radient heat to the kitchen, bathroom and mudroom areas so we moved the thermostat for the furnace to the hallway by the bathroom and shut the furnace vents to the main areas where the pellet stove will heat.
We have to buy pellets, but we don't have to buy firewood. Our intention is to grow old here and we feel that our age will soon limit our ability to cut firewood so we opted for the ease of pellets.

 

[TwoCrows]

Yeah it is....ha! I am such a clean freak and all other aspects of my home are immaculate. However you could write wash me/clean me on any surface all the time around here.

 

[Awskin]

Nice project!
A friend of mine also completely relies on wood.

 

[rhoda_bruce]

 

[Denim Deb]

Hey Rhoda, could you post step by step instructions, including what size pots you use? Thanks.