I am on round (what is this six?) whatever of my two to three hour sleep shifts as the temps once again plummet below zero. They are forecasting a dip to around -7 tonight and then not getting above the lower 20's for the next 5 to 7 days. The radio is basically saying the snow will remain indefinitely and with it the wind chills are diving into dangerous levels once again.
Really the wind isn't all that bad to be honest, nothing like that first polar vortex as they called it. But without running the backup heater in the basement every few hours I would more than likely get frozen pipes again.
While I wait for the heater to run it's course I been crunching some numbers and I am pretty certain now that there is absolutely no way on earth one person (meaning me) can possibly keep up with the wood needed to heat this entire house totally off grid.
I started this experiment three Winters ago and managed to figure out the best way to keep things going with no backup propane use and only using enough electricity that I could produce myself with solar panels and deep cell batteries if I had to.
There have been issues of course. For one thing my initial figures for the volume of wood needed proved to be short of the mark even using average temps as a guide. Relative wind chills always seem to throw those numbers out of whack. As I found out the first year attempting to gain a good stock pile during the Summer months proved almost impossible. I could do it but the time factor cutting a load during the Summer was running almost 2 to 4 times as much as cutting in Fall and Winter and when you are trying to do it as basically a one man show those time considerations were important.
Cutting during the Fall and Winter was more efficient but also suffered set backs of incalculable lengths due to snow and ground conditions that were constantly freezing and thawing. The best system I found was to cut as many trees down as I could and make various wood caches that I could then go and pick up when ground conditions allowed. February was the worst month for encountering long term snow cover followed by extreme muddy thawing.
Last year I was able to enter the heating period which I calculate as November through March with 4 cords of dried and split wood and then make on average one cutting/hauling trip a week that allowed me to keep up with demand and use. I had one point last year where I had plenty of wood cut but was stressing being able to get to any of it. Again that was in February. This is what prompted me to begin the large "needing split" cache at the barn. The large snow storms also proved good times to split this wood and add it to the truck for weight.
This year all bets are off. I have averaged 2.3333 (etc.) loads of cutting and/or hauling per week. As near as I can calculate it as I started off with just North of four cords once again I have now consumed at least 22 cords of firewood this Winter alone and I still have a month to go. That number includes about 6 full loads or about 4 cords of prime long burning Oak.
There is absolutely no way in Hell I could keep up with this volume of wood cutting on my own indefinitely. I am just not young enough to keep that up for five months straight. If we removed small gas engines from the whole scenario well let's just say we would all be frozen here after about the second week of December.
So as of this Winter I am declaring the post-collapse use of my large wood furnace as the sole heat source as completely impossible unless more man power can be added to the equation or I recalculate the average inside temps and really piss the wife off.
There is just simply no way I alone can keep up with harvesting the amount of wood I am using in my current calculations. Maybe if I was 25 years old once again.. maybe... but heat wasn't as important to me back then either.
There have been times this Winter when I have been shoving wood into that furnace so fast it reminded me of a movie watching one of those firebox tender guys on an old steam engine. I have burned an entire truck load in less than two days time on average. If I have to make more runs per week then I also have to start adding more time in for unloading which I now get around by burning directly off the truck.
At this point I am going to declare this long term experiment unsustainable and make plans for adjusting to the smaller stove next year and only using the large furnace when temps get below a certain number.
Also another thing. I usually make 50 firestarters from bees wax and lint each year to use. The last two Winters I have on average needed to use at least 45 of them, which means the fire was allowed to go out and needed to be restarted with the firestarters as there were no coals to use.
I have used seven....count em 7, firestarters this year. That's just insane. I have also dumped more cans of ash this year than I can count.
Your mileage may vary but if you think you are going to heat your retreat location with wood I suggest you actually try a year or two, day in and day out before it comes down to crunch time.
Keep Prepping Everyone!!!
I am using an indoor wood furnace which is kind of different but I have come to the same conclusion that you did. You have encountered much worse weather than we have had but I maxed out the amount of wood I could burn, just couldn't burn anymore and the backup heat came on a lot to keep temperatures up. My plan is to install two non-electric wood stoves for next winter. The old part of our house has a fireplace in each room, not efficient but man they must have had the smoke rolling back in the 1800s.
ReplyDeleteSF - Yep it really comes down to time in my opinion. I mean by all rights I have done it (so far) this year I am just admitting now I could not put this much work into it each Winter. I figure I am on the down hill slope as it is.
DeleteWe're down to maybe two days worth of the seasoned, split & stacked wood. I know we weren't up to "Snuff" before winter started, but we've gone through SOOOOO much wood. There are a few small piles of split, green wood (which we won't use), just sitting there, mocking me. There are still plenty of 2-3 year old logs, ready to be cut & split, but these back to back freezing snaps are making it impossible to get things done. It's harder for me to do things during the day with the kid so splitting is almost impossible unless both Paul & I are home. Grandma is going to try to brave the driveway down here so I may have a kid-sitter and take that time to split some.
ReplyDeleteKeep safe & warm (ish).
Carolyn - Yep the cold and especially the snow makes it so much harder and adds time to the factor which is really what this is about. Time.
DeleteI do burn a bit of green stuff but since I have a short flue I can get away with it. Putting a green log to the side in the box can keep the coals going a lot longer and helps for over night burns.
Could a newer stove burn better?? A combination of propane & wood, natural gas & wood ??
ReplyDeleteRob - My furnace isn;t that old and all of this more efficient stuff is hogwash mostly anyway and isn't about the burn times but airflow and heat seepage out the flue. I could build a windbreak around the stove that would help some.
DeleteIt's only going to work here if we replace the insulation destroyed by the squirrels, and manage to keep it from happening again, and we let the house get down to 50F at night, and I hang all these darn insulation curtains... basically the only warm room will be the kitchen where the wood stove we heat with is located. We could do it in a pinch, but it isn't going to happen unless the S really HTF, because my husband hates being cold.
ReplyDeleteXL - That is the conclusion I have reached. Basically going to a much smaller stove and focusing on one or two rooms. Better insulation would help for sure but that won't come until we start the new house.
DeleteI notice that many old homesteads had multiple rows of windbreak around the house. Cutting that windchill factor must be a major component for winters like this, but that many trees don't grow overnight. Now I understand why "old" people didn't use to be as old as we are, & why in some places, the first floor of the house was the barn, with large animals.-M
ReplyDeleteAnon - Ya there needed to be more windbreaks here and the powerline companies were not good for alot of windbreaks. I have planted many trees to act as windbreaks but they haven't grown enough yet to do any good.
DeletePP - jam has spent 3yrs stuffing insulation everywhere in this house. then he put all of those windows at the front of our house and man - what a difference that makes - especially on a sunny day!!! we live in a very small house so it doesn't take much to heat it (we have electric heat but plan on getting a wood stove this spring/summer). in the days of yore (teehee - don't i sound old?) - many people closed off the majority of rooms of their houses during the winter. we did it, even as a kid. and one story houses were considered best. doors to bedrooms were closed off and people slept in the living room and kitchen. as children, we used to think it was fun and it sure cut down on how much wood my father had to get to heat the house during the worst of winter which is about 3 months here. have you considered changing your winter lifestyle living in order to be able to sustainably manage your wood situation? and, have you thought of hiring a couple of teenage boys for a weekend in the summer/fall to help you get out and get a ton of wood ready? that way, if you started with a giant pile in the summer, you could keep aging your wood and adding to the pile over fall/winter. i may be talking out my butt because i don't have the experience with this that you have...but those are the first few ideas that come to mind after reading your post.
ReplyDeleteanother great post buddy! hopefully your experiment will make people really stop and think about their ideas of "oh we'll just bug out to our BOL and use wood for heat". your experiment has really got me thinking about ways to get a 2yr supply of wood at the ready by july!!! your friend,
kymber
Kymber - Passive solar would be the bomb. I had plans to add a green house on the SOuth facing porch but those got nixed when the Mrs. decided we needed a new house.
DeleteAs for your other options. I could do that. I could also start buying wood but that would render the experiment a failure as well. Since I have declared it unsustainable at this point it doesn;t matter though so I have more options open to me.
i'm thinking of a rocket mass heater heating a 300 gallon water tank both in a shed close to the house then pipe the hot water antifreeze solution to old cast iron radaitors throughout the house
ReplyDeleteAnon - This old house doesn't have radiators. It has an old propane furnace with duct work put in long after the house was built. I tapped into the duct work with the wood furnace and also have part of it directly blowing into the front room. I almost went with a combination water heating furnace but decided I didn;t want to burn all year. Part of me wished I had still.
DeleteWe run about 3/4 of our heat via wood.
ReplyDeleteOur woodstove is VERY efficient, heating air that is distributed through the forced air heating ducts.
We average about 5 ricks of wood per year, sometimes as much as 8. 1500 SW ft, and Northwest Indana.
If you are going through that much wood, either you live north of the Canadian border or you have a large home or your stove is inefficient or something.
B - Well I think this year the problem is Canada, or at least it's air, is living here. I think you may have missed my point though which was the time factor and whether it would be sustainable without the use of gas powered engines with no backup use at all and only one man harvesting the wood.
DeleteWe invested in a super efficient wood stove that burns little wood and keeps the house so warm it almost runs us out. The temps are 10 below at night and 20's during the day. We also live in the dining area, kitchen and bathroom. Bedroom is unheated with fleece sheets, down comforters and two cat under the covers with us. Having a great woodstove is the secret. Also as Kymber said....lots of insulation in the walls.
ReplyDeleteTewshooz - I think like B's comment above you are missing the point which isn't can it be done period but can it reasonably be done under the rules of the experiment. My studies into so called wood stove efficiency do not impress me with any greater heat output or longer burn times that isn't what the so called efficient numbers show. In almost all cases it is an EPA thing. Regardless that has little to do with the experiment at hand which was no backup use, one man harvesting, and the ability to do it without gasoline engines. The last part was flexible and dependent on my calculations using the time involved when I did harvest a load or two without a chainsaw or log splitter.
DeleteMy figures showed that my use this year far outstripped time needed to harvest that wood in a grid down situation.
We live in Alaska, and although we have had a remarkably warm winter this year, this is not typical. We have a 2300 square foot home and heat with (currently) one wood stove in the main living area and have heating oil for back up.
ReplyDeleteEven in our coldest years, we have not used more than 6 cords of wood! We do close off portions of the upstairs that don't require heat when we are not in them, and we close off other unused rooms downstairs when we go to bed at night.
My suggestion to you -if you used 22 cords of wood (WOW!) -is to add a whole lot more insulation to your attic area and blow more into the walls. Insulation is not cheap, but it is cheaper in the long run than continuing to heat as you are.
Also good windows cannot be over-emphasized. We have triple-paned glass in most of our rooms, and these make a tremendous difference. Even so, good insulative drapes or coverings will reduce heat loss even more, and if you cannot afford to replace old windows with efficient ones, you can use quilts or insulated drapes to stop heat loss. Also, if you can't afford good windows, do everything else you can to stop heat loss. You can purchase cheap vinyl film to "heat shrink" over the inside of the windows, and it really does block some heat loss and seals out much of the draft.
Also, at every door, we have installed a drapery rod above the door and have put up an insulated drape panel to block heat loss around the door.
Last, if your wood stove is not efficient, you are going to burn a lot of wood. One other thing I noticed in your article is that you mention cutting and slitting wood when you need it. No can do! For wood heat to be efficient, it needs to DRY for 1-2 years, otherwise, it just burns up quick!
My intention is not to be critical, but to instruct on how best to cut your heat loss and how best to use your wood stove.
Good luck to you through the rest of the winter. Hope these tips help.
Anon - Well I do disagree with your efficiency comment as I have stated above. As to your other points you have jumped tot he same conclusions as other comments here have. It isn;t about doing it with back ups or closing off sections of the house. I believe I mentioned that in the post.
DeleteIt is about time and harvest ability. Not buying wood, not having the backup for the dips, etc.
As to your last tip I can only say I don't think you have much experience with standing dead hardwoods. Allowing a hardwood like Locust, Oak, or even Elm to stand dead then harvest it and split it at the appropriate time is more efficient than cutting it live and stacking it in a drying process. I am not burning green wood here I am practicing/rediscovering old knowledge of overall wood lot management which from what I have read part of is allowing the wood to cure int he lot standing up right.
I'm sorry you seem to have taken offense at some of my suggestions. As for Locust, Oak, and Elm, we don't have those in Alaska. The wood that is best to burn is Birch where we live, and we only have access to Birch and Cottonwood. Cottonwood is full of water and burns quickly anyway. We have Willow and Alder, but those do not burn! Still, I would imagine that every type wood would burn better and longer when completely dried out.
DeleteSo when I make suggestions about ways to use the heat you have more efficiently, I am speaking from my 64 years experience.
I find giving suggestions about how to do things frugally and efficiently doesn't seem to go over well with younger people. They wring their hands about what to do, but then they really don't want to listen to someone who has been on the planet for a while.
If you are burning 2 cords of wood even with the "polar vortex", there is SOMETHING wrong with what you are doing. Period.
I am a one man wood cutting, wood splitting fiend during our short summers in Alaska. Last year was a really short summer for us with rain coming in July and never stopping until the cold came. I have to chop it, split it, and stack it all by myself most summers.
Yea, time is a problem. I live in the Mat-Su Valley and commute 102 miles per day to and from my full time job. So I understand the one man, no time factor.
Still, people CAN do things when they have to do so. Efficiency always is a part of the equation. There is ALWAYS a better way to do things.
Most people I know want to heat their homes and leave all their non-sunny windows uncovered. That ain't efficient. Leaving gaps around the outside doors and not covering them up ain't efficient. Heating rooms where nobody is going to be is as foolish as using lights in empty rooms.
Extra insulation is the BEST and cheapest way over all to cut winter heating costs -that and having a highly efficient wood stove. But every other thing my wife does to keep out the cold adds dollars to my heating oil or food cache budget.
Good luck to you. As a homesteading, prepping type site, I would think learning from other experienced folks who live in bitterly cold weather half the year would be worth knowing.
Excuse me, I meant to say, "If you are using 22 cords of wood..."
DeleteGood luck to you, Sir.
Anon - I must say that I find it interesting that simply pointing out that you have zero experience with the type of wood I am harvesting and burning comes across as my being touchy to you.
DeleteSince you want to reduce this to thinly disguised insults via age I will say I have found many older people have that same narrow focus issue when they find out they are not all knowing on a subject.
In this particular case I have experience you do not have. I not only cut and burn the types of wood you do but harvest many varieties you know nothing about. I would love to ship you up a load of 100 year old Locust that has grown over itself embedding it's thorns and limb chunks in it's own heartwood to let you split it. Then we could talk.
I believe I said 22 cords is well over twice the amount I normally burn and if I wasn't attempting an experiment I could burn alot less wood overall. It is unreal the cold we have been getting here this year.
It isn;t your advice that was necessarily wrong (as far as it went) it was the fact you are jumping to conclusions and failing to take in all the parameters of what the post was/is about.
Oh I guess I should say we don;t have Birch here really. We have Sycamore which is close but usually very hard to harvest because it likes to grow in deep rocky creek beds that are hard to get into.
DeleteThat's an enormous amount of wood. Even for an old house as large as mine. We use a wetback stove which you can cook on as well as it heating radiators and the water.
ReplyDeleteYour point about the level of work required without chainsaws etc is well taken. It was the reason farmers often had so many children. My grandmother would be sent out to collect sticks every day in the autumn along with her smaller siblings. Her older brothers would be cutting and stacking with her father. There was no dead wood not worth burning.
Anon - It does seem like a lot. My storage racks by the furnace is exactly a cord and a half by volume I figure. Which is 8 foot long, 4 foot deep (with two rows) and I stack it 6 foot high when full. So my figures come from how many times I refill the racks but I also have to guestimate a bit when I burn directly off the truck. So maybe give or take a cord or two.
DeleteYou are correct everything get's gathered up when you don't have use of a chainsaw and smaller trees become more time efficient overall when harvesting under those conditions.
My inside stove that I haven't used for this experiment is the same type of design as yours. It can be used to cook on and has the extra heat exchanger off the back before going into the flue pipe. It put's out the heat but is typically only useful for the one room.
I am sure that is what I would need to go back to in a grid down situation.
I should also mention I have been keeping the average inside temps at 75 degrees as well. The wife get's cranky when I let it fall.
DeleteIt's 21* here right now. We heat with wood, cutting fallen & standing dead trees. Oak and maple. I cut a lot of really oversize squares with the splitter, as large as will fit through the stove door. These I insert on a bed of coals before bed. It leaves coals to start the fire in the morning. This year I didn't split enough large pieces. The more pieces of wood in the fire at any one time, the quicker it burns up from the air space. I'm running low. We live in an uninsulated 1800's farm house. I try to keep it around 70*. Old wood furnace in the basement , heat comes up through a register in the floor over the furnace. Caulked the exterior and gained 20* over last year. Getting old too.
ReplyDeleteMV - I do about the same you describe with the split stuff. Cut in sections I can load then haul it here to be split. I also try and put the largest piece I can in for my sleep times. I do add a green log in on the side as they tend to burn slow but do not generate much heat, they are there to keep some coals going in case it burns faster than I estimated.
DeleteI could add some more insulation to the attic but the walls were all redone a few years back. The basement was a problem early on with a door that wouldn't close properly but I got that fixed.
It's just been a very unusually harsh and cold Winter here.
PP-
ReplyDelete22 cords of wood!! OMG!! That's insane! Sounds like you're heating a swimming pool!
You're right - that's NOT sustainable. Maybe it's time for a couple of modern efficient wood stoves? Hitzer makes some really good ones. I recommend then. I have one and it's what all the Amish around here use.
http://www.hitzer.com/
Worse I can say about them is that they are dirty. One day when I get some money I'm going to buy a Defiant for the living room and put the Hitzer in the basement.
We burn between 5 -7 cords every year and that includes cooking. We also keep the house pretty warm - about 80F.
Did you ever see this post?
http://www.granny-miller.com/the-true-cost-of-heating-with-wood-coal/
Take care of yourself :-)
GM - The only woodstove I might move to would be one of the double stack gasification ones like someone up above mentioned. Some call em rocket stoves. All the other so called more efficient ones I have really looked into are only actually more efficient in emission regulations not actual heat output or they rely on secondary electronics that I am trying to avoid.
DeleteThey also are not always set up for the types of wood you have available.
Burning wood is really a very regional thing and one size does not fit all.
As I said I think my normal usage is about 12 to 14 cords but I will burn alot even when I don;t have to just to keep the wife extra happy.
I could enclose the outside furnace that would help it a lot but I am hoping to move it to the new house when we get started so I haven't sunk the money into enclosing it.
You may have done the research, but I have 60 years of experience with wood stoves. The new, efficient ones are totally better than older ones. Unless you are living at the North Pole, you are using too much wood. Attic insulation is as if not more important than in the walls.
ReplyDeleteTewshooz - If you run the numbers comparing them to the older air tight models you are wrong. They do claim to capture more BTU's but in fact have a cost attached to them in overall burn times, more breakable and non-replaceable parts, higher expenses and overall loads that can be used. Also many of them cannot with stand much burning of the higher output wood without suffering melt downs. The total effect of which is less overall BTU output on the large scale/upside.
DeleteThe environmentalist and such don't care about any numbers but their so called emissions which are carbon neutral to begin with.
Now of course we need to establish just what you are calling efficient. If you are only referring to air tight stoves lined with firebrick as the "efficient" models we may be in agreement. I don't know what you are burning but then again you have no clue what I am burning. I will say it is NOT a wood stove which makes this entire line of comments redundant.
What I do know is if you run the overall numbers on what they are calling "efficient" stoves by today's standards... they aren't.
As for insulation yes that can and will make a difference but was not a part of the overall experiment. So would blocking off rooms etc. Those comments really have no bearing on the overall outcome but are indeed ways that can change the outcome if the experiment is tired again under different parameters. Yet again you have no clue what I even have up there and it's pretty simple that no matter what I have I could always add more. Even if I encased the entire house like a big foam ball I doubt the final outcome using an outdoor wood furnace and the time it takes to harvest the wood to feed it manually would change.
I now understand that you wanted to be sustainable with you current home in the condition that it is in at this time.
ReplyDeleteBut dude, 22 cords of wood?
A cord is a "well stacked: volume of wood 128 Cu ft....normally 4 x 4 x by 8.
THis is generally about a ton of wood....which for oak equivalates to about 150 gallons of heating oil..
So if you have burned 22 tons (more or less) of wood, then you either have a very inefficient stove or you have a home which leaks heat like a screen door.
THis is the approximate heat equivalent of 33oo gallons of fuel oil
Which is a LOT of BTU's.
Something is wrong here.
B - Please see my next post on the subject. My theory is the drain is really coming out before the heat actually reaches the house. I hope the next post clears things up a bit.
DeletePreppy...Do you know anything about this?
ReplyDeletehttp://www.independentsentinel.com/epa-bans-most-wood-burning-stoves-in-a-corrupt-scheme-fireplaces-next/
MB - Yep I did a post about the EPA move some time ago although the scam part of it is new to me. The EPA regulations are making the new stoves almost impossible to regulate by the operator and making top end BTU outputs next to impossible.
DeleteMore agenda 21 stuff making wood heat unaffordable for rural dwellers.