This post was originally published on my blog A Blessed Crazy Life earlier this year. It’s still summer, but Fall is in the air and before we know it we’ll be turning on our furnaces so here is a alternative to gas or electric heat for you to consider - it works for us and it has saved us a ton of money over the past several years.

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The Hunter’s Wife asked me to post about heating with wood since she and the Hunter are thinking about doing the same thing - so since I’m still working on my Saving Appalachia post for Thursday I thought I’d blog about something I’m very familiar with today.
After a major ice storm we had 5 years ago where we were without power for 3 days and kept the house at about 55 degrees with the fireplace and seeing how our natural gas heating bills were climbing we decided to see what we could do to heat with wood so we did a bunch of research and eventually bought this woodburning fireplace insert:

Picture taken from Napoleon’s website

We have been happy with the insert - it isn’t the best brand out there but for the money we could afford to spend at the time it was worth it - the stove ended up costing us around $1200 (I don’t remember exactly…) and then a couple of years later we installed a 6″ stainless steel fireplace liner all the way up our chimney and it greatly improved our efficiency, we wished we done it from the start - that little addition of the liner set us back about $400. This stove has fiber baffles in the top of it - they create a “re-burn” chamber and make the flame really pretty and improve the efficiency of the stove - we’ve had to replace those about every year at $50 for the pair but this year when I talked to the rep he told me that we shouldn’t be having to replace them every year - they are a part that wears out but you should get 3 to 5 years out of them at least and the baffles they sent us this time were different and seem to be holding up better. I guess there were some manufacturing issues so they moved the manufacturing from Canada to the USA (yea for the USA!). This year we also had to replace a few of the firebricks inside the stove - they are about $3 each.

We cut and split all our own wood. My husband has 2 chain saws, a 2 pound splitting ax and some wedges and a splitting maul. His dad has a hydraulic splitter that we use sometimes too.
Not buying wood - is what makes the saving money part possible. We both enjoy the exercise of splitting and stacking wood (he won’t let me use the chain saw and stands really far away when I’m doing the splitting… I think I have a reputation for being clumsy oh well.) We get our wood from people that have trees they need cut down, we get cutting permits for the wildlife area we live close too - they pile trees that have fallen or they have cut down and we can go in and cut them up. We like to burn: locust, hedge, hickory, oak… but will burn anything but pine/cedar. The stove has a door that closes so you don’t have to worry about sparking but we do have to worry about creosote.

At the end of every burning season I clean the whole house - I start with the stove and move my way back. I wash the walls, clean the mounts, dust all the shelves, wash the curtains… the ash gets everywhere - when I’m done the house looks and smells good - but it takes a full week or two of cleaning. During the burning season we have to brush the chimney out a couple of times - but my husband doesn’t mind getting up on the roof and the whole process takes less than 30 minutes.

The money we save - this year our thermostat is set just a smidge over 70 degrees because we didn’t want the house to get too cool for Lil Sugar but in the past we set it at 65 and for the coldest month of the year this year our gas bill was $69. Also our electric bill goes up about $20 a month to run the blower on the stove and the electric heater we run in the bathroom sometimes.

So we save around $550 a year on heating the house - of course we have ongoing expense of saw blades, fuel to get the wood, and etc… but it doesn’t add up to much. We’ve had the stove for 4 years so our investment has paid itself off. Also our house is normally a very comfortable 75 to 78 degrees, sometimes we even have to open a door or a window in the living area of the house because it will get up to 80 or 85 otherwise. We’re the only ones we know who don’t bundle up in our own house during the winter (most of the time!)

Hubby getting a fire going in our stove

Our House: 1200 sq foot, 2 bedroom on a concrete slab with 30-year-old drafty windows laid out like below:

The living room is certainly the warmest room in the house with the laundry room and our bathroom being the coldest rooms - the bedrooms are colder than the rest of the house but when we leave the doors open they stay pretty warm. Lil Sugar’s crib is right by the door to her room up against the closets. You can feel the temperature change as you walk down the hall - the thermostat for the heater is right outside our bedroom door.

We are glad we decided to heat with wood - it takes a lot of work but it saves a lot of money. Hopefully in our next house we’ll be able to put in an outside wood-burning furnace (just one link to the many options available) - those are neat!

Well - if any of you are thinking of heating with wood I hope this helps. If any of you already heat with wood - I’d love to hear about it!

Posted: 08|22|08 at 9:12 am. Filed under: All About Blogging.
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