So, now that winter is approaching.....

[SidecarFlip]

In the midwest and north country, what do you heat with and why?

Here at the farm we use a propane 90+ efficiency condensing furnace with a bio mass stove to help carry the heat load when it's really cold out and carry the entire heat load on temperate days and have been doing that for around 25 years now.

The bio mass stove is basically a looser (cost wise) with propane at what it is per gallon but the wife likes the ambiance of the fire so I keep running it. I run dried field corn (12%RM or less, usually less) and pellets (cheapest ones I can buy) at a 1-3 ratio, 2 parts corn to 1 part pellets.

Pellets are around 210 a ton in 50 pound bags and the corn (other than drydown and harvest cost) is basically inconsequential. I use the same corn in the bio mass stove that I feed my cattle with.

Of course we run a humidifier all winter too. The lower the RH inside is, the colder it 'feels' so we like to keep the RH up to a comfortable level as well.

 

[skeets]

Wood mostly and when I dont feel like filling the stove gas

 

[bearbait]

Nothing like wood when it's cold and damp for this old body however we can't leave our zero clearance on for long before it get's too hot so then after the chill is off we switch over to the heat pump, one of our better investments.

 

[GreensvilleJay]

Natural gas furnaces,water heater and fireplace. Too dang old for wood, even though I can get all that I want for free. Up here all 'wood burning appliance' AND chimney MUST have an approval sticker AND house insurance is $250 MORE....
If I was 1/3 to 1/2 my age I'd have an outdoor wood fired boiler or geothermal though.....

 

[chim]

LP. Buried a 1.000 gallon tank about 8 years ago. We generally use about 500 gallons a year and can often buy at less than $1.00/ gallon. House is about 2,700 SF, 30 years old and well insulated.

Also have a solar panel for hot air. No means of heat storage just a simple stat and insulated duct. It helps quite a bit and it's only 4' x 8'.

 

[RCW]

We’ve been wood pellets for 14 years. Hot water baseboard off a fuel oil boiler is the backup. Boiler is treated with antifreeze.

Burn 5 tons of pellets and about 15 gallons of heating oil.

 

[Oliver]

In the midwest and north country, what do you heat with and why?....

Although there are large gas lines around none is piped to homes in this area (northern WV 1 mile south of PA line) so I went with a heat pump when I built my 1,700' 2-story house 18 years ago. It's well insulated with spray foam so it's fairly easy to heat. Generally in the 30's and below (like right now) I heat with a Jotul wood stove. Most of my acreage is wooded so no shortage of firewood from fallen and dead trees. This year I'm burning mostly oak and cherry with a little hickory, birch, and maple in the mix as well.

 

[SidecarFlip]

Just picked up 7.5 tons of dried dried field corn augered into my grain tank. I have 2 big GSI's one for cattle feed, the other for stove corn.

Have a 45 foot PTO powered grain leg I run on the Kubota PTO to fill the tanks and I pick it up in Kilbros gravity wagons from my friend down the road who dry's it for me for a nominal charge. 7.5 ton is enough for 2 years. along with a pallet of wood pellets. It's on right now (stove) and all the cats are parked around it.... Have the propane furnace set back between 11PM and 6AM every day.

We have NG pipelines underground, just down the road (Panhandle Pipeline Company) but none locally. No gas, no water, no trash pickup and no pavement either. Mail delivery only in good weather. Same with newspaper.

Out here you never buy a black car, always white, silver or brown. You'd be washing a black car every day.

Nearest pavement is 1.5 miles and it ain't much. Typical Michigan secondary road, like a bombed out runway.

 

[NHSleddog]

As long as I have NG available, we will stick with that. Set and forget.

When we move to the big piece of land, probably geothermal/solar/wind, we are still deciding.

 

[Bmyers]

Natural Gas is what we use.

 

[Workerbee]

Flip, funny that you would say that your bio-mass heater is a loser compared to propane. Every farmer I know who uses one feeds all corn through theirs. Main reason being the corn is FREE to them. Every dime spent on land costs, seed, fertilizer, fuel to harvest, and right on down the line is written off as business expense against their farm income. Or by saying that, were you inferring that your propane is corn drying fuel, thus also 100% deductible? I guess that’d be the only reason the bio-fuel heater could be a loser for you?

 

[fruitcakesa]

Gasification wood boiler with 650 gallon water thermal storage tank and back up fuel oil burner integrated into the wood boiler
Burn maybe 6 cords a year and minimal D2 as we only run the oil when away from home more than a day.

 

[David Page]

Outside wood boiler that then runs through oil boiler. Runs through our baseboards controlled by thermostat.

 

[SidecarFlip]

Gasification wood boiler with 650 gallon water thermal storage tank and back up fuel oil burner integrated into the wood boiler
Burn maybe 6 cords a year and minimal D2 as we only run the oil when away from home more than a day.

Catalyst boiler or pre catalyst?

 

[Tornado]

Down here in Florida everyone just uses electric central heat/air units. Some houses have fireplaces. My house luckily does have a fireplace, and while It doesn't really heat the house, we like to make fires just for the ambiance. Lets be real though, its Florida. You could likely get by down here without any heating at all. You would have to deal with some cold nights and a few chilly days, but by and large the temps average into the 70's for highs in the winter. Our coldest temperatures are typically in the teens, and we may have 2 or 3 nights all winter that get down in the teens or twenties.

 

[michigander]

NG forced air 95% efficient for the house.
Garage also NG I keep at 45* all winter when not working out there.
What little firewood I cut gets sold.

 

[fruitcakesa]

Catalyst boiler or pre catalyst?

No catalyst.
A blower forces air through specially cast refractory with air channels with it that raises temps to 2000*f and incinerates all the usually unburned gases. Literally zero smoke from the stack.

 

[SidecarFlip]

My bio mass stove operates on the gasification principle as well (why it emits minimal particulates ((visible smoke)). It's a double burn. The fuel bed is the primary burn with gasification and reignition above the fuel bed. It's the visible particulates that are the bane of all chunk fired woodstoves and why the government mandated that the new ones have a catalyst in the upper chamber, to induce gasification and burning of the visible particulates. Un needed in a biomass stove, whether freestanding or a central heat system. They are gasification by inherent design.

 

[Lil Foot]

Here at the house we use two NG furnaces, one for the first two levels, one for the second two.
We also have two masonry fireplaces, (below grade family room, 3rd level master bedroom) but we never get to use them anymore. For air quality, we have county "No Burn Days", when we can't burn wood, and they always coincide with the coldest days when we want to burn. If we remain here, they will be converted to NG.

At the cabin, we have four electric wall heaters, plus a wood burning insert fireplace. The fireplace was supposed to have been replaced with a modern pellet stove years ago, but the caregiver thing put that on the back burner. (pun) Maybe some day.

 

[bearskinner]

I love sitting in front of the wood stove in the AM having my coffee. It would be easy to just set the thermostat, but there’s just that radiating heat from a wood stove.