Heating costs may triple as nat gas, propane shortage looms

https://www.foxbusiness.com ^ | 9/28/2021 | Fox Business

[Ellendra]

Not yet. Mine is still in a box. But a friend has used one, and he said it worked well, once he got his stove to the right temperature.

[Augie]

We heat with wood from our property. Only cost is a couple of weeks of labor every year.

I do more or less the same. I find as I get older that I enjoy the experience of cutting/splitting/hauling/stacking firewood less than I once did, so I've shifted the bulk of my stovewood supply to sawmill waste.

I need ~12 cord to get through a typical Missouri winter. Once I have half of that on the pile I burn it straight off the trailer, then use from the pile while the trailer is at the mill being reloaded.

Depending on how the scrap falls a load on my trailer is 1.75-2 cord. $45/load for the wood and a 50 mile round trip to fetch it home adds up to less than $500/yr to heat the house and warm up my 1200sq/ft workshop when I want to do something out there.

I still work up any deadfall on my property that's easy to get to. Doesn't make sense to let it go to waste.

[Pollard]

I find as I get older that I enjoy the experience of cutting/splitting/hauling/stacking firewood less than I once did,

I hear ya. I've taken to cutting down a tree, limbing it, cut it in half and drag the halves up to the shop yard. Then I put my forks on the tractor and lift it up so I'm cutting at waste height. I have to cut a piece off one end and then the other, back and forth so it doesn't get out of balance. Then my 19 year old son takes over with bending over to pick it up off the ground to split & stack it in the racks.

There's a stave company near us that will load up a truck or trailer of most any size for $10 but I've heard some of the pieces are huge. The kind where you have to stand your splitter on end and split it 4-6 times before you get pieces you can actually lift. Someday I'll get some sides put on the trailer and get a load to see what it's like. They always have plenty which tells you something. $10 for a cord or three and they ain't cleaned out all the time? There's a sawmill on the same road that bundles up their edge cuttings for sale but I don't know the price. Quite a bit of bark content in those. 50/50 - 60/40

We had lightning strike a couple of trees a few years ago and it killed several trees around those two. I'm taking them and a bunch of small standing dead wood for this year. I like dry wood and usually cut this year's wood late last last winter - early Spring before the ticks are out. We use about 6 cords but have a tiny house.

[MSF BU]

Have to do what you have to do. I didn’t know the oil radiators were that less expensive.

[Augie]

I've got two big black oaks and a middling size Kentucky coffee tree on the ground that need to be worked up and burned this winter, but so far I haven't found the gumption to start on that. The weather will cool off soon and I'll feel a little better about running the chainsaw.

This is the last load of mill waste that I brought home. 90% of it would fit into a dry stove or fireplace insert no problem. I've got a large WoodMaster outdoor furnace that will take anything that I'm able to pick up and shove inside, up to 4' long, and it doesn't really care if the wood is properly seasoned. I'm not crazy about feeding it when the weather is crappy, but it keeps the mess and smoke out of the house, which for me is a good trade.

[Ellendra]

I find as I get older that I enjoy the experience of cutting/splitting/hauling/stacking firewood less than I once did,

I'm hoping to start construction on my house soon, but what you describe is the reason I included a masonry stove in the design. It runs on twigs, but radiates heat for 8-12 hours after the fire goes out. I'm in favor of being able to cut the bulk of my firewood with pruning shears :)

I and a few people I know have also been testing different kinds of crop waste, to see if firewood could be replaced with something faster-growing. So far, corn cobs and the inner disk from sunflower heads seem to burn well. Bean pods and sunflower shells burn too cold, and *most* stalks seem to harbor enough bugs to make them inconvenient for household use. I was hoping to test the stalks of walking-stick kale, but the ones I planted got torn up by deer. At any rate, my point was, maybe there's some food crop you already grow, that could double as an alternative to firewood?

[caww]

Well even my landlord put one in the laundry room when he saw the difference it made in my apartment. My son put when in his bathroom And the other tenant in this building bought 3 of them for their two bedroom apartment. $60 investment for each and of course you can get bigger ones.

[Mercat]

We‘re getting a second propane tank and guaranteed front of the line all year. We have a well and two generators. Ten square feet of freezer full of meat. We grow our own garden. But still I’m worried.