Efficiency Maine has a great calculator for this stuff.

I paid $275 a cord this year and I usually go through +7 cords plus pay about $300 for help stacking totaling $2,225. Vermont's a 7 month heating season so that averages to project $320 a month for me in 2022/23.

Firewood types provide various BTU values but home heating oil BTU is , so I bet a model of Dollars/BTU comparison between oil and various firewood types would be the best approach for answering this.

I found this home heating fuel calculator online which might help. You can adjust variables such as price per unit, BTUs per Unit and Efficiency.

https://coalpail.com/fuel-comparison-calculator-home-heating

A lot of this depends on the efficiency of the wood stove and the location of the stove in the house but even if the wood stove is supplemented with oil it makes a huge difference in cost savings in my house.

I have a vermont castings epa stove and we only use it in the coldest months Dec - March and don’t let it go out during that time. We only use 3 cords at the most. There’s an oil back-up for the coldest days and the shoulder seasons. Not sure what people are using to burn through 7 cords.

Also if you want cheap firewood order a log load. Buck it up and split it yourself to save some money.

Wood is tremendously cheaper if you have a modern catalytic (or burn tube) stove and buy your wood in the spring (or ideally the previous spring) so you are using dry wood.

If you have an old 70's stove and are burning "seasoned" wood that you bought in September... you probably aren't saving much.

The difference is because the amount of BTUs (heat) that can be extracted from a chunk of wood depends on:

• How much moisture is in the wood. Fresh cut maple or birch could be as much as 45% water by weight. If you burn it when it is wet, you are expending an enormous amount of heat energy to boil off the water before the cellulose can be turned into heat. Dry (less than 20% moisture content) wood produces almost double the amount of heat.

• How efficient your stove is at turning burning wood into heat. This comes down to whether you have a modern stove that is built to combust the smoke or not. A modern stove can get up to twice the amount of heat from the same chunk of wood as an older stove.

Put these two variables together and that's how you get some people who burn 3 cords a winter and some people who burn 9 cords a winter. Obviously 3 cords is cheaper.

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House size, stove size, stove efficiency, multiple stoves, old leaky house, poor attic insulation, no/minimal oil backup use, heat preference, etc.

For me: 5-6 cords, large EPA stove, 175 year old house with shit insulation, tend to only use oil in fall and spring and prefer to prevent it from kicking in over night/early morning and while away during the day so I basically always have the living room stove burning. On sub zero stretches I have an old non epa stove with an air blower in the basement that really pumps out heat. Can go lower than 5 cords if I burn more oil and can go more than 6 if I burn no oil.

Can’t emphasize enough the dry wood part. You should actually have two years worth of wood, in a rotation in which the newest stuff is drying out for a year while you burn the older supply, then in spring you order what you burned, and the next winter you burn what dried out the previous year.

Also, just thought of another thing. Depending on where you live and the particular year at hand, the heating season may well run from September through May, or somewhere inside of those months. While fuel use during those tails might be vastly lower than mid winter that still means an 8-9 month heating season, and depending on those other factors I mentioned it would certainly be possible to burn an exceptional amount more than your 3 cords. This is especially true considering you say you only burn for 3 months.

Plus some people simply might not be well versed/skilled with their stoves even if they have an efficient EPA stove like yours and don't operate them at proper efficiency. So many factors, now that I think about it.

I use 2 full cords a year (not face cords) from October to April. I purchase semi-seasoned in the spring, split at $200 a cord. Mind you, i live around lumber yards at the MA/VT border. I will assume the price will go up next year, but currently have enough trees down around the property to satisfy the next winter. Oil is backup, and has Nest telling it to warm things in the morning before reupping the wood stove and to take a shower. My wood stove is a Quadrafire with blower

With maple firewood at $275 per cord providing 24,000,000 BTUs/cord burning at 70% efficiency, I'm paying $0.0000164 per captured BTU.

With #2 heating oil at $4 per gallon providing 138,690 BTUs/gal at 80% efficiency, I'm paying $0.0000361 per captured BTU.

80% efficient #2 heating oil priced at $0.0000361 per captured BTU costs 120% more than 70% efficient maple firewood priced at 0.0000164 per captured BTU.

Trade offs are fine with me.

Maybe I'll install a steam turbine atop my outdoor wood boiler's chimney to reclaim some of that lost energy converted to steam.

For years, I used two wood stoves to heat my house exclusively because I had nothing else. Now I have super efficient propane driven radiant. Since then there are some years that I don't burn any wood. It's cheaper to use propane than it is to buy firewood. I cut my own wood from my own property and even then it's borderline not worth it. Propane has to be pushing $4/g for me to think wood. Otherwise, it's thermostat controlled propane radiant and a warm floor. Wood is labor intensive. Especially the "load the stove" part. Most people don't factor their time in.

2000sq ft house.

$800 6 cord log length delivered.

+chainsaw and split by hand. This typically lasts me an entire winter.

My electric bull rises up to a whopping $130 in the dead of winter to run all 3 water pumps my outdoor wood boiler uses.

I'd say wood is the way to go. Especially when I can harvest 100% of my wood off my land. Just a whole lot of time investment.

This can't be real. Are you paying 600 a cord or something? Something is very off here and if you really think loading the stove is the labor intensive part I have to wonder whats really going on.

Wood wood wood wood by a mile

Good for you but the manual labor is not worth it to me hah. I helped my dad with it all growing up and I am not interested in that.

We have an 1800 sq ft house, I purchased a pellet stove our first winter here and love it. Two tons of pellets heats the home all winter and barely moves the needle on the electric bill. There are also some rebates you can get for buying one. Of course, if you lose power you can't run the stove. I do wish I had a wood stove, maybe someday, but there is no chimney at our house and would have had to pay a lot more to build one to go that route.

This is a good easy calculator

You can play with Fuel cost and Wood cost

https://www.pelletheat.org/compare-fuel-costs.

​

By the way... a heat pump at 18 cents per KWH and 200% avg efficiency fairly competitive with purchased dry cord wood.

I don't buy wood. I cut my own. I can cut, block, split, and stack a years worth of wood in 3-4 days. Loading the wood stove means getting wood from the wood pile and putting the wood in the stove multiple times a day for months. Even if you only spend 15 minutes/day doing this, that's 7.5 hrs/month just loading the wood stove. If you run your wood stove 6 months/yr, that's 5.6 eight hour days spent just to load the stove. But as said, I can cut a years worth of wood in 3-4 days. Loading the stove is more time spent than the entire process of obtaining the wood.

Last year i paid $1849 for propane with the most recent price of $2.45/g for propane. I use propane for grill, stove, clothes dryer, radiant heat, and domestic hot water. If I were to burn wood exclusively and buy it, it would be 5-6 cords/yr which would be $1400-1800 or more depending on price/cord just for heat. For me, propane currently is cheaper than buying firewood. When propane gets in the $4/g area, the tables start to turn. But even then it's iffy since firewood sellers know when the price of propane, oil, or whatever alternative goes up.

As I said, I cut my own firewood. Any type of equipment breakage will destroy any savings you think you're getting by cutting your own wood. One year I was skidding out a beech and I broke one of the 3 point hitch casing mounts off the tractor. That was a $3000 fix. So much for cheap firewood.

So cheaper only to you as you seem to way overvalue your time spent loading the stove. That's gotta be one of the funnier things I have read here. But either way no matter what reasoning you come up with wood is and always will be cheaper. Just wait till you see the propane price now lol. But hey enjoy the propane and the never having to load the stove again.

...juust giving you a baseline for your question OP. You don't have to spend $800 on a chainsaw to do even more labor but lower your heating cost. You could also spend more money on a splitter to raise your overall cost slightly.

Just trying to give you a complete picture of one residents' heating journey not toot any horns about what I am able to handle and how little I spend vs just turning a dial.

How much are your charging yourself per hour to make those 5.6 days of 8 hours not cost efficient? Even at $20/hr wood is significantly less expensive. I think it is fine if you do not like the labor of wood, but to claim it is cheaper than propane is laughable. Even in your description the numbers do not work.

As I said wood is not cheaper for me at this time. I gave you the math. Sorry if that blows your mind, but the math doesn't lie. I cut my wood in at the most 4 days time. I thought 15min/day was probably accurate. When burning, I fill my primary stove (sometimes both) maybe 4-5 times/day so ~3.5 minutes per load. We keep a stack of wood right outside the door, but that needs to be replenished every couple days. 15 min/day is probably right in terms of wood handling. At 15 min/day it takes upwards of 6 eight hour days/yr to fill the stove. That's a total of 10 days/yr screwing with wood. It's a super time intensive task. Last I looked, propane was $3.51. However, it's likely that I can get a better price than that since I own my tank and can shop around. As I said, propane has got to be in the $4 area to even begin to start thinking about wood, even buying it split and delivered. Even at $4. it's iffy.

2 old Castings Defiant's. In an old Vt farmhouse. If you are willing to do the work.... definitely cheaper with wood. If you are burning with a catalyst and buying kiln dried-toss up. Really depends on the house and stove.

I love wood heat and between shoveling and heating I guess it keeps me in shape.

Edit- We go 10 chord a year.

Also, If you are going to avoid oil-BUY YOUR WOOD NOW. By January there wont be much to be found and it will be pricy if you can find it.

The numbers work. My total propane expense is for heat, domestic hot water, grill, stove, and a clothes dryer. Maybe you missed that.

I would never trust that 200% number first it's kinda impossible free energy and all that. Yes I know they dont include the air as an input of cost. The 200 number would be under the absolute most ideal conditions possible. Colder it gets the worse it gets.

I am referring to you splitting wood yourself versus having cords delivered. You are correct that depending on your heating systems, delivered wood could be more expensive overall than propane in your situation.

Wrong. And you never actually gave any math that shows what you said none at all because the value of your time is not listed. Without that number you cant do the "math" so the math doesn't lie is a lie it says nothing. It's still cheaper you again are just inflating the value (you don't specify) of your time. As you said you do all your own collecting and cutting so it's basically cost free but for your time. And seriously who counts how much time you spend putting logs in the stove. That's a good one:)

Yes but he repeats that he gets all the wood for free and does the cutting etc himself. Oh well the days of sub 3 dollar propane are long gone anyways. He's not gonna like these numbers.

https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/pet_pri_wfr_a_EPLLPA_PRS_dpgal_w.htm

I cut, block, split, and stack my own wood. It takes me upwards of 4 days to do this part. Then it takes those 5.6 days to fill the wood stove. I never really assigned a dollar value to my time, but you're talking upwards of 10 days/yr dealing with wood. If I used what I get for pay for my job, that would be the priciest wood ever. If you want to use $20/hr then 10 days*8 hr days*$20/hr= $1600. At some point, you have to ask yourself is it worth it. Of course, that doesn't include fuel, equipment, etc. Or any injuries you sustain. That's a whole different angle.

I put in a gas-condensing 95% AFUE boiler with low mass radiant and it's just so efficient that it turned the whole wood scenario on it's head. The pivot point is when propane gets over $4/g, but I probably would still use it up to $5/g.

Oil prices are likely going to be much more volatile than wood so be sure to factor that in.

I did a similar exercise a few years ago. My townhouse is all electric baseboard heat so after the first winter I got a wood pellet stove and that was so much cheaper to run.

Eventually, I installed a mini split heat pump system; the focus was to provide air conditioning in the summer, but you can also run it as a heater. In fact, after calculating the total costs, it turned out that heating with the heat pump was less expensive than hearing with the wood pellet stove. It’s that efficient.

I did calculations to determine the cost per BTU of heat for my different heating methods. I took into account the efficiencies of the heating systems and factored in the efficiency drop in the heat pump as it got colder outside.

Even at the lowest suggested outside operating temp for the heat pump it still beat the cost of wood pellets, though by only a slight margin at those temps. So now we only get a ton of wood pellets for the winter and use them on just the coldest days of the year while using the heat pump on the other days.

I turned it into a spreadsheet so I could calculate the cost per BTU given a change in electricity costs and wood pellet costs. You can likely do something similar. Most wood stove manufacturers provide a rated efficiency for their stoves and I’m sure you can find published efficiency ratings for oil burner heating systems.

It's not impossible or "free energy:" the issue is that the way your space is heated is completely different and it's hard to understand/explain for people new to the tech. The heat pump is not producing heat like an oil or gas furnace do, hence why their efficiency percentage can never go above 100%. It's circulating colder air out of your house and warmer air in (yes, the design of the evaporator/condenser is such that it can do this even when it is below freezing outside). So the 200% number, or even higher for top-rated models, is accurate. But you're right that the efficiency rating can drop in colder temps and also depends on how well your house is insulated. My heat pump heats my 1980s condo-boom condo very nicely (and more evenly than my Rinnai gas heater) in fall and spring and on warmer winter days, but when temps get down into the teens I start to notice a dropoff in performance so I switch to the Rinnai. Improved insulation and a newer model would probably improve that to the single digits or even just below zero.

That's crazy we have a NG furnace and a supplemental gas stove. We pay maybe $90-100 for gas a month to run gear at most in the worst of the cold season. 1700sf raised ranch while heating the finished basement.

I completely understand the labor aspect not being for everyone, and there is nothing wrong with that. If for you your time is more valuable than low cost heating, that is fine. I am saying to assign the word "cheaper" in this subject means that it requires less cash. Cutting my own wood from my property with a gas chainsaw and a little riding lawn mower with a trailer costs me no cash other than the gas for chainsaw and lawn mower. It is exercise for me and a stress reducer so it arguably is saving my money from finding a new exercise routine. For many people that chop wood this is why we consider it cheaper and it uses less cash. Does it take more of your time than propane? Absolutely.

I am not sure I understand why filling the wood stove takes so long in your case, but with mine I fill it twice per day. My parents have an outdoor wood boiler that heats everything for the house and is very efficient and loading it doesn't really seem to be a problem for them at age 70.

To each their own on what they heat with. Everyone's situation can make things different. But cutting your own wood has the capability of being the cheapest way of heating out of any other resource.

Oh that's laughable. Why don't you pick a number? I actually value my time higher as does my employer, but go ahead use $20/hr. So 10 days* 8hrs/day*$20/hr=$1600. Still cheaper with propane. Why would collecting and cutting be cost free but for my time? Is the tractor, winch, splitter, chainsaws, chainsaw chains, gas, oil, bar and chain oil, pulp hooks, the land, etc cost free? That's more expense than my time would be even if I amortize it out. If I include all that then obviously propane is cheaper than wood by an order of magnitude. Yet you want to hand wave that away.

I gave you an example of how cutting wood resulted in breaking the tractor and causing a $3000 repair. You ignore it. That adds to the expense.

Let me guess, you've never cut wood.

Additionally putting wood in the stove is an activity specific to wood. You don't do anything of the sort with propane. Why would you not include it when comparing the two.

Fair enough. I value my time.

I would fill it 4 times/day. I also have two wood stoves, one of which I only use if it's real cold. 15m/day works out to be ~3.5m per fill. Even if you spend 10m/day it adds up to 5hrs/mo. Most people wouldn't even include this time, but they should if they are comparing wood to propane, oil, etc.

It's actually the $4 area, not $3.

Did you not read anything I wrote?

Add to that, you seem to take joy in me having to pay more for propane. What's wrong with you?

Come hang out in my sub r/woodstoving , large sub with lots of active people. We have this conversation pretty often, and there are lots of factors to consider.

Are you taking days off of work to heat with wood? Would your time be compensated if you weren’t using it to do firewood? You can’t put a cash value in your time if it’s not inhibiting your ability to earn other income. Also factoring in operator error to this cost analysis is dumb. You broke your tractor, skidding a log didn’t break it. I’ve done a myriad of dumb shit to my equipment, but it’s 99.9% of the time an operator error.

First time I’ve heard anybody refer to a face cord in a long time.

Really hard to get a real answer out of this. I burn 18ish cord a year to heat our large house, shop and farm stand plus a couple cord to my mothers house. But I’m not paying anything to do that beyond fuel. None of the equipment besides the wood splitter (which we built anyways) is solely for wood. So it’s essentially free heat over running oil (which we do still burn a little bit of)

But depending on your situation wood might not be the cheapest. For example you could be using one of the new junk EPA stoves that requires 16” kiln dried wood that you’ll pay out the asshole for, in that case fossil fuels might be more cost effective.

I don’t recall you being there when it broke. I’ve taken time off for wood before. Good grief what’s everyone’s problem.

Four bucks a gallon? That’s a bargain! I just paid $5.35!

The cost of firewood is mostly in the labor of cutting, hauling, stacking and tending the stove. You either pay someone to perform some of that labor or do it yourself. The amount of labor per cord required is always the same. It’s a lot of work. Or a lot of money depending on how much labor you are buying. With petroleum products you are at the mercy of your supplier. Price fluctuates wildly. I prefer to cut my own four cords of wood per year myself. It’s always a lot of work but it doesn’t change. The only thing that changes is my ability to do the work. Tough getting old. This year I bought half my wood. Supposedly burning wood is carbon neutral. You cut the tree, a new tree grows back. Now I don’t have to feel guilty about not freezing to death.

Dang. $5.35 a gallon of #2 heating oil burning at 80% efficiency, well that's $0.0000482 per captured BTU.

What's the problem? I think it's like you said earlier, they probably haven't ever cut their own wood and they are just trying to find cracks in your logic because it doesn't fit their beliefs.

I do it all myself, like you. I enjoy the process and take value from it, like a rewarding hobby. But yes, the equipment costs are real and need to be included. I think they're often underestimated. I buy two saw chains each year, a bar every couple, and a new saw about every ten. E0 saw fuel, 2 stroke oil, bar and chain oil add up. Splitter fuel, hydraulic oil, etc. It all adds up.

And yes, things do wear out and break even when the operator does everything right. The person who only breaks stuff when they do something wrong is probably doing lots of stuff wrongly.

But if the OP was simply asking about the cost/btu of cordwood vs propane, I think buying wood is cheaper.

Dude breaking your three point hitch skidding a log is an operator error. I’ve been there, it’s not a judgement on you. My other points still stand though, I do about 20 cord a year for my house, shop, farmstand and mothers, I wouldn’t never account for my time as it’s not like you’re taking time off of work to put up wood. If you do you’d have to value that time, but with the amount you’re talking about (3 days I think you said?) I don’t understand how you’re putting that into the metric. And idk, if everybody has a problem maybe it’s not them it’s you? I really wasn’t trying to “have a problem” at all, just pointing out where I thought your cost analysis was flawed.

It was just a fluke. You need to include your equipment repairs into your cost regardless of how they happened. Otherwise you are not being honest with what wood is costing you. If you were selling firewood, you most certainly would include it as a means to lower your tax burden. It's not dumb at all. In fact, it would be dumb not to.

Also, you can value your time as you see fit. You can measure that however you wish: money, time away from kids, time not fishing, etc. It's your time spent. Wood is time intensive. That's the tradeoff. If you don't value your time dealing with wood, it will always be cheaper in your own mind. Put a value on it plus include costs like equipment repair and maintenance to obtain the wood and you're into the more expensive or break even area compared to using other energy sources. In my case as propane prices keep rising, that becomes less true. But it's not there yet.

Since it differs here’s my scenario:

100+ year old, 1,100 SF house with poor insulation at best.

I heat with ONLY wood, no back up. Green wood cost me $260/cord this spring. Bought 5 but use about 4 cords a year give or take.

Wood stove is an Atlanta stove works “huntsman” model. It’s a glorified sheet metal box from the late 50s. Works 1000% times better than my defiant did.

Everything is cheaper than oil.

Hi there, I was building a similar spreadsheet to yours when I stumbled upon this "heat pump balance point" tool that Efficiency Vermont put together. It's much better than anything I could have come up with. Check it out.

"This Heat Pump Balance Point Tool was developed to help contractors find the proper balance point based on system capacity and economics. The balance point is the outdoor temperature at which the heat pump no longer has the capacity, or is no longer the most cost effective option to heat a building.
By entering data into the input cells on each tab of this simple spreadsheet users can find the outdoor temperature at which a dual fuel thermostat will change heating systems."

https://www.efficiencyvermont.com/trade-partners/heat-pump-balance-point-tool

Nice, thanks. I'll definitely check that out and see if I can use it to improve my estimates.

Man I feel extremely lucky reading all these posts. We are far away from town, but somehow still have natural gas. We also have a wood stove but I only run it 2-3 days a week in the depths of winter. Natural gas averages us about ~$150 / month and I pay $225 for 1 cord that let's us enjoy wood heat on the cold days. 1800 sf home.

Wow, where do you live? The places I've seen in my area that use natural gas end up costing more than oil usually.. maybe I've only looked at home with natural gas that have terrible insulation?

How much land do you have?

To get the answer we need to know the marginal value you place on getting exercise outside, the amount you pay in property taxes, the other uses for your land, how densely wooded it is...

Also are we installing new systems or what do you have?

Generally speaking wood makes a ton of sense if you can drag deadfall hardwood into your front yard, chainsaw it up, and add splitting it to your kids' list of chores.

This is the real talk.

I have a small city lot so lumberjacking isn't an option for be. But I may be able to steal from my parents.

Underhill. Natural gas is about 1/3 the equivalent price of oil. Natural gas is regulated by the state of Vermont. If VGS wants to raise rates, the state has to approve it.

https://www.nationalgridus.com/media/miscassets/advantagesgraph_980x551.png

That said, my house is well insulated, I have no tall ceilings, and I do have pretty good windows

Modern heat pumps from Mitsubishi have such excellent efficiency, they're able to produce heat down to -22f.

To learn more about heat pumps, how they work, and why that 200% efficiency claim is actually true, I recommend checking out Technology Connections video on the subject.

Well aware thanks very much. What you are ignoring as that while yes they will make heat at -22 they do it very inefficiently. Plenty of charts out there that show this. Or just ask someone who has one how they work at that temp and you will get the same answer. Not all that great or maybe ok for supplemental.

That's true, but I would argue the efficiency with those latest units make them viable for most households in Vermont as the main source of heat for the majority of the winter/fall/spring, as the amount of days where it is truly cold enough to make a modern heat pump struggle are so few, one could easily switch to a back-up source of heat for those, yet still gain the efficiency gains for the rest of the year.

Wood is pushing $400-500 a cord, plus you have to move it 2-3times, plus everything is covered in ash. Sure, it's great stuff.

Not to sure about most as we have lots of older poor housing stock here. That's lots of poorly insulated homes and what comes with it. I do think they are better utilized in a newer home that is much better insulated however lots of people get these as a way to save cash in an older home or much larger area than they are rated for and become disappointed pretty quickly. Even with the rebates. At least we have not had the electric rates double like Mass and NH and have. Double the heat bill right there ouch.