The key to getting free wood is getting it in the spring and summer when people don't have an immediate need for it.... They just want it gone... Craigslist is a great place to find it.. Especially after a severe wind..
Yep, we did for much of my life as a kid (after my dad had to get rid of the wood stove due to my mom's allergies). We bought pea coal from a local guy who delivered it to my dad's home built coal chute. Super warm heat, less daily tending than a woodstove, but very dirty. If I build, I will put either a wood fireplace insert or aa decorative soapstone woodstove for supplemental heat. Geothermal for my main source. I have a large supply of wood between my parents ground and our cabin's 1200 acres. In fact, I have a tri-axle load of pole wood sitting over at my parents that I need to start working up. Came off our cabin's pipeline ROW. Between my uncle, dad, and myself, we have about 24 cords to work up. Lots of work, but I'm still young. If I had to pay for all of my wood, I would be less likely to opt for wood heat as a primary source. Sent from my Samsung Galaxy S4.
Pat, if you have to buy wood, before getting a wood stove, I would check out corn stoves. From what I've read corn stoves don't have to be vented like other furnaces, only like the dryer in your laundry room. I would also be curious if your insurance would go up more with a wood stove compared to a corn stove.
Matt mentioned geothermal, I'll also be researching this before we build. I'll compare all of it and decide what will work best for us.
I had a pellet stove that would also burn corn in my last place. There is pretty much no corn in the Adirondacks so I only burned wood pellets. My inlaws and my wifes entire extended family also have pellet stoves, they are pretty popular in the Adirondacks. I didn't use mine much as I didn't have a good place on the main floor of the house to install it and ended up putting it in the basement with no connection to our duct work. It would turn the basement into a sweat box, but wouldn't do much to heat the upstairs if it was much colder than 30-35 degrees outside. The block in our basement would just soak up the heat and prevent it from going upstairs. My inlaws have a roughly 1400 sq/ft ranch that they heat almost exclusively with a pellet stove. They burn 4 tons of pellets a year and when you go in their house......it's usually around 80-85 degrees (literally). My wife and I usually have to open bedroom windows in the winter because it's so uncomfortably hot in there. To give you an idea, pellets cost roughly $250 a ton for high quality hardwood pellets that will produce low amounts of ash. They burn 4 tons a year, but could probably get by on 3 tons if they kept the place at a normal temperature. You can get crap pellets for around $200 a ton from Home Depot, but they produce tons of ash and have a high content of soft wood in them and don't throw the same amount of btu's per bag. Corn and pellet stoves are basically the same and many models can burn both. The Harmon I have will do both. Dan is right when he said you can easily vent them, ours used simple double walled stove piping that was maybe 6" in diameter and you could almost put your hand on the piping when it was going full tilt. I ended up knocking the glass out of a basement window and replacing with pressure treated plywood and putting the piping through that to vent outside. It's amazing how efficient they are. Usually if we were running ours full tilt we would burn 1.5 bags a day, and the hopper on ours would hold a full 40lb bag so it wasn't a ton of work......just fill in the morning and top off at night and you were good. I love our fireplace in the new house in IL. I love the open flame and smell of wood smoke. I hope to find a place I can cut firewood out here this summer and if I can I'll do that as long as we are out here. When I move back home though eventually and we build our "forever" home.........I'll probably have a fireplace but just install my pellet stove as an insert in it. It's a LOT cleaner, less work, and if your buying the wood and not cutting/splitting it yourself it's also quite a bit cheaper. My view tonight................
Wow! I have two of them. No issues here That's a chord... Cheapest we can get it here is $70 a face chord
I'd be buying the heck out of that! Out here it's $100-120 a face cord right now for decent seasoned hard wood that will actually burn. I've already gone through two and need to pick up another face cord probably this weekend.
Is this the type of corn stove you guys are talking about? I had never heard of them! http://www.pinnaclecornstoves.com/Model_3000.html Sent from my GT-N5110 using Tapatalk
Yep, like that Pat. I don't know anything about specific models, but that's what I'm talking about. May be something to look into, as I'm sure corn is readily available around you.
I think our local price is up to $5.25! Too bad, our big tank needs to get topped off in the next week or two It's been a cold winter for sure.
The Obama administration has place very tight restrictions on wood and coal burning stoves starting in 2015, if you are looking to buy you need to do it before these rules take effect or cost is going to sky rocket and efficiency will be poor.
Corn is available! This may be the best option for me... I have a fireplace that, as of right now, is a waste of space. It just has a stupid little electrical decorative log that has spinning lights. No heat or anything. Rediculous. This insert burns pellets or a 50/50 corn/pellet blend.
