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Last site update

15/03/2010

Heating our home with wood

One of our aims on the home page is

“Use more wood to heat our home”

Now this sounds great and totally possible to do, but in reality you have to think of all aspects of using wood.  

There’s the green argument that it releases the same carbon as the tree absorbed when it was growing, that’s a very powerful argument against the use of coal, oil, gas and electricity (as much electricity is generated using these fuels).  We buy into that completely, but also have this fear that we are using some fuel that could become rare or expensive.  The more people that use wood means greater demand, shortages and higher prices.  Without a policy of tree planting and renewable sources of timber, then this fear could become a reality.

At the moment, supplies of wood are readily available.  Trees will always need to be cut down, burning them for fuel instead of a huge bonfire in a field does seem more efficient.  The market for logs is not regulated like other fuels.  The price of a cubic metre of wood is basically determined by the commercial laws of supply and demand.  The more people demand it the higher the price will go.

On stoves you have to burn well seasoned wood.  This means allowing the timber to stand for up to 2 years whilst the moisture content drops to less than 20%.  Now suppliers are interested in selling wood, not storing it for 2 years, so most wood you buy will have started to season but not enough.  Therefore you have to have good storage space to keep you wood supplies dry for this long.  To have a store of wood that will last you for 2 years is considerable and as you take it out one end to burn, you need to top it up the other.  This wood has to be handled perhaps several times.  Great exercise.

So without trying to be negative (which we are not) wood as fuel is more difficult than conventional fuels.  There’s no switch to press and the heating comes on.  It’s newspaper, sticks and patience.

Many people we talk to have combinations of heating systems.  They may use oil, but with the price of it they have had a wood burner installed as part of the heating system.  This can be complicated, but it works in tandem with the oil boiler.  When the fires on, the oil boiler never switches on.  Saves oil that way, but you still have the back up of oil if you don’t want to light the fire.

So what have we done?

Well we have gone for reliance on a multi-fuel stove (as opposed to a wood burning stove).  Now this means we burn wood and smokeless coal.  The mix, 50:50 is not too bad and isn’t as polluting as neat coal or other fossil fuels.  We see this as a move in the right direction.  We haven’t any backup of oil as a “can’t be bothered to light the fire” reserve.  We do have an electric immersion heater for when the summer so we don’t have to light the fire, but the rest of the time it’s back to basics, fire in the hearth, hot water and radiators.  We like that simplicity and keeping in touch with the efforts required to keep a house warm.

You can also read about how we opened up our Victorian fireplace

The cost of heating with wood can be seen in the table below.  This was taken form perge who make wood burning equipment.  You can visit their site for more information.

Clearly wood makes good economic sense.  Even if mixed with  smokeless coal, it still offers good value for money.  Bulk un-processed timber means straight from the tree, so you will need to cut, split and season the wood before use.