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headgasketidiot t1_j6ij820 wrote

Have you considered upgrading to a modern wood stove? I have an Alderlea T6, and it is an absolute beast of a heater and the single most important item for my quality of life. My house is a 3000 sqft 200 year old farmhouse. I refill the stove 2-3 times a day unless it's very, very cold. There's never any smoke, and even though I do 90+% of my heating with wood, I only go through 4 cord in a winter. Modern wood stoves are incredibly efficient!

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lottabigbluewater OP t1_j6ijnpu wrote

Actually I hadn't considered that! My stove is from the 80s and burns out in 4-5 hours if I don't tend to it, for example if I'm at work. If I want it to heat the house up well I have to fill it every hour it seems. Great comment, I'll look into this.

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headgasketidiot t1_j6il1r9 wrote

I meant what I said without exaggerating - my wood stove changed my life. Before my T6, I had a VC Vigilant from the 80s, and it was a lot worse. I went through 4 cords in the winter, and I still relied heavily on the backup hydronic system. With a fresh load, the T6 puts out enough BTU to heat the entire house for at least 6 hours on all but the coldest days, and there are still coals 24+ hours after loading it. It's currently 11:20, and there are still flames from when I loaded it this morning around 7; the upstairs room farthest from the stove, which is downstairs in the living room, is a comfortable 67 degrees.

If you have questions, check out /r/woodstoving. One of the mods there, /u/deepwoodsdanger, is a Vermonter, and it's worth subbing just to see the gorgeous stoves they restore.

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sneakpeekbot t1_j6il33e wrote

Here's a sneak peek of /r/woodstoving using the top posts of the year!

#1: Something a bit different - our Rayburn wood cooker. This little beast is our oven, as well as heating the hot water and running the radiators in our off -grid house. | 49 comments
#2: Not as impressive as so many I see here but as a Plan B to combat winter gas shortages in Europe, I'm happy with my little project. | 48 comments
#3: Stack p🪵rn | 48 comments

^^I'm ^^a ^^bot, ^^beep ^^boop ^^| ^^Downvote ^^to ^^remove ^^| ^^Contact ^^| ^^Info ^^| ^^Opt-out ^^| ^^GitHub

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DeepWoodsDanger t1_j6j7kyi wrote

Good bot! But we have lottttts of cool posts all about everything and anything wood stoves!

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DeepWoodsDanger t1_j6j7gl0 wrote

Yea I do some cool things, thanks for the shoutout! My sub is the best sub on Reddit! 😎😊

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goldenlight18 t1_j6j1iw3 wrote

Highly recommend the Hearthstone Green Mountain Series! We have a 60 and it heats our 1500sf home pretty well. (plus its a Morrisville based company!)

The catalyst makes the logs last longer & get more heat out of the wood. There is currently a federal 22% tax credit for installing an efficient woodstove which helps cut down on the upfront cost & VT Efficiency has a $400 rebate for replacing an old stove with an energy efficient one.

Do you belong to one of the Credit Unions around? VSECU has VHeat where you lock in how many gallons of oil you'll buy over the winter & it locks your price per gallon- which is lower than the market rate.

Would also recommend looking at what your insulation situation is like- VT Efficiency has some work on that as well.

For example- we were getting oil fill ups once a month last year (eek!), saw the way the oil prices were going and decided to bite the bullet and get a woodstove. We've only needed one oil fill up so far since last May & still have a 1/4 of a tank. The caveat is that we both work from home. But we do our last load of wood around 10 pm and oil kicks on around 5 am- which is almost a full work day. Plenty of hot coals left to restart the fire around 7 am.

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Vtfla t1_j6ipgt0 wrote

The problem with a wood stove is it requires a lot of work to get your heat. Even if you buy your wood, it needs to be stacked (somewhere outside), dragged into the house, and loaded in the stove. If you source it yourself, add craptonnes more. Then, stove needs to be shoveled out daily and pipes disassembled and cleaned monthly. Say nothing of the poking and prodding during the day.

That’s fine for a youngster, or even middle aged, but we old folks can’t handle that kind of work anymore. When we bought our house, it had a beast of a wood stove. I was really excited to be burning wood again. With no land, the cost these days is ridiculous, our beloved porch became a wood crib and every time I loaded up my arms with wood, I bruised myself for days. The corners and weight of the wood is not kind to aged flesh.

We gave up and switched to a pellet stove. Still more work than adjusting a thermostat but doable for the old fogies.

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zarnov t1_j6iwa7a wrote

A little exaggerated. I have my stovepipe professionally cleaned every other year and burn DRY wood. Shovel ashes weekly. Stove runs in morning for a few hours and evenings + most of the night. Yeah stacking and hauling is a little PITA, but if you break both jobs up, it’s doable. Heck of an inexpensive way to heat a house.

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Vtfla t1_j6izapj wrote

Last time I noticed, dry wood was running around $300 a cord. Our beast used 6 cord before we sent it down the road. That’s not exactly cheap. Pellets run about the same for way less work, and gramma doesn’t have to chase spiders all over the parlor. 😉

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dmcginvt t1_j6kcke0 wrote

Well I just paid 1500 for 250 gallons of oil which is the second full this winter

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SchmeddyBallz t1_j6kb91p wrote

If you don't enjoy working with wood to heat your house it's probably a bad move. My dad is 70 and I grew up splitting with him to heat our house. He still splits everything by hand and loves stacking it after.

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