[Greenbuilding] wood split or not, make a difference?

[Sacie Lambertson]

HI Reuben,  My delayed response to your note.  I've left in the whole
conversation since I'm so late in replying.

I still haven't done a blower door test so don't know how tight our house
really is.  It is not a conventionally built house.  The insulation is EPS,
6 inches in the walls, 9 in the ceiling.  The walls are covered inside and
out with stucco.

The main part of the house is about 2300 sq ft.  The wood stove does not
reach 200 sq ft of this, so the stove does heat 2100, albeit the furthest
reaches (dining/library) are cool, ie 60 degrees.  The propane heats the
water for the radiant floor in that bathroom and the 700 sq ft area in the
walkout basement.  It has never gone on in the 2100 sq ft part of the
house.  400 sq ft of that 2100 ft are located up in what would essentially
be a second floor, so especially in my office, which is open to the lower
part, it is always nicely warm no matter how cold it is outside.

The house faces south, has lots of windows on that side though all of those
in the room where the stove is located are blinded so sun can not shine
directly in; nonetheless when the sun shines the house definitely feels
warmer.  We don't expect 70 degrees anywhere, although the very large room
in which the stove is located reaches that temp most days.  If we burned
only 2-3 hours a day like you do, we could never heat our house with wood; I
keep it going all the time to keep the house warm.

Our mostly shed shaped ceilings are all higher than 'normal', reaching 12-13
feet at the highest point, so there is a whole lot of volume in the house.

2 ceiling fans in the stove room help enormously to bring down the warm air
that rises above the stove.

And speaking of splitting wood,  I spent a bunch of hours today splitting
wood for two years+ hence.  Because of this extended conversation I decided
to split it much more than I normally do, a kind of experiment for the
future.  My inclination after early experience, has always been to save  in
their whole form, the larger no-long longs, mostly 4-5 inches in diameter,
because they last so long in the stove.  Today I split these.  We'll see.  I
don't need a hotter fire however, in fact I don't really need to do anything
different because our stove heats our space very well, but I'm curious what
the smaller splits will result in.  I'm afraid it could be a hotter but
faster burning fire that needs to be fed more often.

Cheers,  Sacie

We use about 400 gal of propane a year.  DHW, tankless heater, and cook
stove all run on propane.  Plus what goes into floor heat in about a third
of the house, where the thermostat is kept in the lower part of the 60s.

*
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*On Wed, Dec 29, 2010 at 4:51 PM, Reuben Deumling <9watts at gmail.com> wrote:
*
>
> *
>
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> *On Tue, Dec 28, 2010 at 12:06 PM, Sacie Lambertson <
> sacie.lambertson at gmail.com>
> * wrote:
>
>> * We keep our stove going ALL the time in the winter.  Never let it go
>> out.   And never damp it down.  Overnight four pieces fill the relatively
>> small burn box; in the morning there are always coals to start a new fire.
>> I only clean out the ashes and clean the window.  Some years ago a lister
>> suggested lighting a fire from the top. Works perfectly when there are some
>> coals at the base.  I put the newspaper ball with which I've cleaned the
>> window on top of my new smaller sticks of wood, lite it and within less than
>> a minute the stack is burning brightly, the burning paper having drawn up
>> fire from the coals at the bottom.  I marvel almost every time I do this
>> first thing in the am ritual, always loving the procedure.
>> _______________________________________
>> *
>
> This is all very interesting. I'm not clear about the significance of the
> propane in your arrangement, but leaving that aside for the moment, I'm
> impressed that you can maintain a fire for that many months straight without
> damping it down and use only 1.5 cords.
> ___________________________________________________*
> On Sat, Dec 25, 2010 at 8:44 PM, Sacie Lambertson <
> sacie.lambertson at gmail.com>
> We aren't counting wood this year, but last year used about 1.5 cords for
> 2300 sq ft.   Burned mid Oct to mid April.  This year we didn't start
> burning wood until early November.   Add to that radiant floor heat using
> propane, where the wood stove heat does not reach, an additional 700 sq
> ft..  Temp in the mid-high 60s, considerably higher in the nearly 600 sq ft
> room in which stove is located.  In NE Kansas--5300 HDD ..   Sacie
> * *
> *
>
_____________________________________________________

> * *Our house is 1/4 the size and we have about 1,000 fewer HDD, and we
> only burn for about 2.7 hrs/day on average from October - May. And yet we're
> also heading toward 1.5 cords this winter, now that we've finally gotten
> insulation into the walls. Can you say more about the insulation in your
> house?
> And what is with the propane? Does that explain the difference?
> *
>
> *
> *
> *
>
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