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Tim Ellison's avatar

At LEAST 30 years ago I had a physicist from Oak Ridge National Laboratory at my home for dinner. I forget his name. And I was showing off my wood stove. And he said, "If you're going to heat with wood, just bring in a wheel barrow full of wood and put it next to your wood stove." So, this guy was a smart physicist, and he live in the woods of Tennessee, and it's only taken me about 30 years to take his advice.

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Tim Ellison's avatar

I've probably done my last fire in the wood stove for the season.

And today I will go Off Grid till after the fall Equinox.

And, you know, I'm pretty lazy ... I don't cut and split fire wood. I buy it from an neighbor who has a machine that cuts logs, splits them, and throws the split wood into the back of a dump truck. So there Mr. Henry David Thoreau.

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Tim Ellison's avatar

Yup, up North where you're at, there's probably not much hardwood --

I tried burning a bit of pine 10 - 15 years ago, and even though "seasoned",

it clogged my stove and chimney up with creosote in no-time!

When I burn well-seasoned (couple of years or more) hardwood,

I don't even bother inspecting my chimney, let along cleaning it.

You must need to both inspect and clean !

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Tim Ellison's avatar

Actually, when I checked the specs, my heat pumps are 400% efficient. Maybe only 300% at minus 5 oF.

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MattB's avatar

Great article (albeit discovering it quite late during a dive into your excellent climate discussions!)

We heat with wood (~95% of the time) and it works like a charm up here in the mountains near Whistler BC. Our Regency stove isn't 46 years old but will be one day (hopefully). We go through 4-5 cords of wood/year of mixed but mostly fir variety (and as much hardwood as we can scrounge.)

Our hose is 2500 sq ft and the nights can be quite cold -5 to -20C so unfortunately the woman in my life (brunette) has yet to say "It's too hot in here, I need to take off all my clothes."

Appreciated your heat cost chart. From a rough cost perspective, it costs about $1200-1300 per year for wood. When not using our stove, our heat pump does the work but unfortunately only down to about -2C but it does keep our electricity bill manageable at about $60CAD per month so total energy cost $160/mth. Have been looking at ductless heat exchangers when we are away as without the wood stove our heating bills go stratospheric when we're not here in subzero temps.

Re-reading your climate articles and thanks to that!

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Tim Ellison's avatar

I commented, but not as a reply -- oops.

I'll add this:

Since I wrote that article I added in a permanent wood ramp, making my house accessible.

And now have a much nicer battery-powered wheel barrow!

It's going down below freezing tonight, so I COULD light the wood stove,

but I'd have to bring in some wood!

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CW's avatar

OMG! I haven’t laughed so hard since moving out here and sweating that wood AT LEAST 10 times. Per rick. Shopping list: Chinese battery powered wheelbarrow and dog ramps. Ty~

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Tim Ellison's avatar

And, on the Other-Other- Hand, you could say "Fuck the wheelbarrow, I'm getting more Ductless DC Inverter Heat Pumps!".

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Jul 21, 2021
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Tim Ellison's avatar

Cool! Thanks.

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