Lets do a poll. Best heat source for your house. 4 choices.

[Old Cowzilla]

wood pellet heat all the warmth and no fuss or mess. Keep solar powered fencers in basement in winter so batteries don't freeze. heh heh!

[SASKFARMER]

One year three farms ordered a whole semi-truck of Birch. It arrived we divided it up and then stacked but wow it was like natural gas a new beginning compared to poplar that burnt so fast.

How much simpler life was when it was life or death.

Didn't get the wood woke up frozen and an ass whipping.

[Old Cowzilla]

After school job filling coal hopper on furnace then cleaning klingkers ? out of furnace and taking outside. PLASTIC 5 gallon pail not a option .

[Hamloc]

For me my best choice for heat in my house is natural gas, it takes 277 kwh of electricity to produce as much energy as 1 gigajoule of natural gas, it is a no brainer!!

[burnt]

So very grateful for the 25 acres of hardwoods on the back of our farm. It's our complete source of heat, never even start the oil burner anymore.

It's a lot of work, but it's work that I love as much as any job on the farm. We cut enough wood to heat our house in about a week's time if it was all put together. It replaces about $1500 worth of oil and the heat is much more even and "warmer". That's something only wood-burners can relate to.

[SASKFARMER]

Redland farms had a machine that took the logs of Birch cut split and loaded onto a truck to take to the Lakehouse.

Would have worked in the 60s.

[bucket]

So very grateful for the 25 acres of hardwoods on the back of our farm. It's our complete source of heat, never even start the oil burner anymore.

It's a lot of work, but it's work that I love as much as any job on the farm. We cut enough wood to heat our house in about a week's time if it was all put together. It replaces about $1500 worth of oil and the heat is much more even and "warmer". That's something only wood-burners can relate to.

Go to kijiji ..there was machine for a skid steer that would save alot of work cutting and splitting....

[beaverdam]

Saskfarmer,

you didn't list wheat,,, I have lots to burn, nobody seems to want to buy it anyway.

[SASKFARMER]

Oh, an old poster on here from years gone by sold a wheat burning stove. Wheat was worthless so it did work as a heat source.

[Blaithin]

Guy up north burns ergot.


Why can we only pick one?

I would say my ideal home heating would be similar to my ideal power supply. Multi sourced. Why rely on one?

Wood stove helps offset my gas bill. Natural gas is cheap you say?! What’s with all this whiny carbon tax posts then. My bill is hardly astronomical yet it’s increased quite a bit. Reliable? Maybe. Power went out for a week in November a few years back. Can’t say the natural gas was doing dick all to heat the house then. Gas might’ve been there but the furnace sure wasn’t running.

Hard to beat having a stove for heat.

[Austrian Economics]

I have an outdoor wood burner that heats water which is then piped into a heat exchanger in my furnace. No need to haul wood into the house and haul ashes out.

Because the water circulates all the time, there is always a bit of heat percolating up through the ducts. When the fan kicks in, you get instant warm air.

It helps that I have a small excavator with a grapple that I use for cutting wood. I can hack up a cord of wood in a couple of hours. I also have about 20 acres of hardwood forest next to my house.

These systems are not practical in urban settings, because insurance dictates a 75 foot distance between the burner unit and any insured building. However, I don't have to pay any solid fuel surcharges on my house insurance because no burning of combustible material is done in the house.

[Taiga]

In floor heat with nat gas boiler tied to secondary wood boiler with generator backup to run the circulation pump if needed.

Would like to look into a real waste oil heater for the shop but my earlier searching was that they were very expensive.