You’re numbers are right on Steve. For $900, I was hoping I could rent a machine for a week and sub it out since I have some friends and relatives with piles of wood also.

It gets delivered on a truck like this. I believe it is 6 full cord per load.

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Since we’re talking about how much wood I am burning, I should clarify my house is a pole barn. It was originally a barn built in the early 80’s that was remodeled into a house and shop area over the past 10 years before I purchased it.

About 4,500 ft2 of the structure is shop space with 13’6″ ceilings heated by the wood boiler via in-floor heat. There is a lot of concrete to heat and then a lot of air to heat. The exterior walls are 2×6 studs covered with tin on both sides. The walls are insulated and have a vapor barrier to the inside. The house itself is a separate system heated by propane.

By my calculations, I need between 16 cord of dry red oak and 24 cord of green red oak to heat the shop for 5 months (Nov-Mar).

Heat required: ~106,000 BTU/hr
x 24 hrs x 150 days = 382 MMBTU/season

Dry red oak: 24 MMBTU/cord –> 382/24 = 16 cord
Green red oak: 16.8 MMBTU/cord –> 382/16.8 = 24 cord

This agrees with what I burnt last year.

sticker wrote:

Wow, 20 plus cords a wood for one year???

Yep… I did make some plumbing changes to the in-floor heat this year that I hope cuts down on the wood consumption. It had obviously been a few years since the lines were cleaned out as there was a lot of rusty water coming out and some of the lines were plugged. I didn’t have time to do it last year before we needed heat. I wish I was more confident that these changes would make a significant impact.

sand-burr wrote:

Lars,
Place an add on Facebook and get some high school help! I will bet in one weekend you could have it pretty cleaned up!

Not a bad idea Shannon!

A couple of things I haven’t figured out yet:

1) is there a back/index button within the thread, or do I have to use the browser’s back button or click on General Discussion forum In red at the top of the page? I believe the old site had an index button at the bottom. That was more convenient than having to scroll back to the top.

2) do the thread titles look different if there are new posts within them I haven’t read?