How Much Wood Would A Tree Hugger Burn, If A Tree Hugger Would Burn Wood?

A winner for your wallet but an absolute disaster for the environment. http://burningissues.org/

I don't believe in absolutes- burning wood or pellets that come from clearing forests (thus preventing forest fires) or from by-products of industries that use sustainable forests as suppliers are fine.

Naturally that covers only a small amount of current needs which only highlights even more the need for the improvement of insulation and modest house sizes.

Best to live in in a area that does not need to burn a lot of energy heating or cooling.

@Brad

And what do you suggest?... burning more oil? natural gas? or perhaps another carbon positive fuel? Burning wood will release no more carbon than the tree absorbs during it's growth.

That's a pretty casual amount of heat! I burned 7, as in 7, cords of wood to heat a 900 square foot house in western Massachusetts, with electric backup at night when we had to bank the stove to keep it from going out. Trust me, it's an enormous amount of work.

Thank God for pellet stoves. And my pellets come from a waste stream that would otherwise just clog up the landfills. Better to heat my house with it, put a minimal amount of particulate matter into the atmosphere, and dump the small amount of ash on my compost pile.

=== author's response follows ===
yes it is casual indeed.

It helps that my stove is almost as efficient as my oil furnace; that the house is sealed up pretty tight; and that it is "zoned" for heating, so that the stove only really heats the downstairs for most of the day and we let it pretty cold upstairs all day and on all but the coldest nights. I let the fire go out after 10:pm and restart on awakening - 16 hours use per day roughly

Plus, SE Penn is warm compared to MA. Thanks in part to climate change, we never saw a daily average temperature much below 23 degrees F all last winter!

That's a pretty casual amount of heat! I burned 7, as in 7, cords of wood to heat a 900 square foot house in western Massachusetts, with electric backup at night when we had to bank the stove to keep it from going out. Trust me, it's an enormous amount of work.

Thank God for pellet stoves. And my pellets come from a waste stream that would otherwise just clog up the landfills. Better to heat my house with it, put a minimal amount of particulate matter into the atmosphere, and dump the small amount of ash on my compost pile.

Passive solar gain can make a huge difference in winter heating. Our rectangular-shaped home is oriented north-south, unfortunately (mea culpa - I designed it). Our living room-kitchen-dining area at the north end requires a cord or more of wood, burned in an efficient air-tight stove, to heat through the winter. Our master bedroom suite on the south, with lots of windows (got that right), needs hardly any supplemental heat, other than that provided by the sun.

I suppose you've never heard of Ianto Evans, or his book Rocket Mass Heaters: Superefficient Woodstoves YOU Can Build. Evans claims to heat his house with 2/3 of a cord of wood.

Thanks for your response. It's true that this area gets a lot colder, and in the wood stove days (15 years ago), we regularly had -10 to even -20 F at night in January. I've done a lot of insulating work since then, too.

A friend estimated that wood has to be moved 6 times before it is done heating your house - so much work! I'll still take the pellet stove, because I love burning a waste product and not being tied to oil or gas etc.

By the way have you noticed that the carbon footprint calculators never take into account alternatives to oil, gas, or electric as a heating source. I wish they would, because I would like to know more about the impact of pellets.

Ah, I can just see that old-timey Victorian/Middle Ages huge romantic cloud of black smoke clogging towns and cities, as wood burning becomes fashionable again among self-styled "environmentalists". Dear God.

Think I'll stick with natural gas, thanks.

"A friend estimated that wood has to be moved 6 times before it is done heating"

I like how all these kinds of estimates become fact, its like the meat takes thousands of gallons of water arguement.

Maybe someone should try heating with wood all thier life and they will see is costs much less and takes much less work that you estimate.
The typical person who uses wood heat does so because they can pick up wood that has fallen for free, the only people who buy it are those too old to do it theirself and don't have anyone else to do it for them. You have a few acres of land where trees die and fall or get knocked over by storms and such. You don't buy a wagen to haul it, you use whatever you have around already and you don't move it 6 times, you stack it once outside and carry it inside.

I work in the air quality field. I took a look at the emission factors for EPA certified wood stoves.

here is a quick little primer.

http://www.epa.gov/Woodstoves/Documents/Candidate/EPA_stove_emis_reduct.pdf

But essentially, with the exception of NOx emissions (due to the low temp), natural gas and low sulfur fuel oil are superior to even the most advanced pellet stoves when it comes to emisisons of criteria air pollutants. If anyone wants to see my spreadsheet, let me know and I can email them the draft calculations. Essentially, pellet stoves give off 4 to 9 times the emissions that natural gas does and from 2 to 9 times that of low sulfur fuel oil. Normal fuel oil is a mixed bag, worse on some fronts, better on others.

I am not advocating dismissing this entirely, but simply because something may be advantagious from a CO2 standpoint does not mean it will help overall air quality. In fact any sort of significant switch over to residential biomass in my opinion would be a serious mistake.

also, please note that "traditional wood stoves" were upwards of 10 times as polluting as pellet stoves.

Not everyone in the world has access to Natural gas, or can swing the conversion to Propane, Up here in Maine (NW Mountains) prior to last year - we could look forward to -20º daytime highs and then lower at night for about a month to month and a half. -50º and no, that doesn't include the wind chill factors - just air temperature.

Some of us backward people's (yep, that would be me) bought these old fixer uppers of 3,000 ft sq.
facing south with an east/west axis, and had no choice but oil furnace and wood heat.

I don't mind going off to the woods (State sells permits for $10 to clear the fallen limbs/trunks in forests owned by them.) And if we own a camp in logging areas we can clear the slash hardwoods, that the mills left behind as trash wood.

I also don't seem to mind - buying in tree length, or even cut, split and delivered - then moving the three times. To get a savings on oil and a real warmth vs. oil, propane, natural gas heat.

My house is unheated beyond the first floor, that means if you want to keep warm - you do need supplemental heat, the Lopi in my living room does heat the entire house - admittedly my attic is closed off. (Lopi is rated at 2600 ft sq. heater)

Temp's in the house are short sleeve warm - and I tend to burn about 5 cords per year. For around $130 per cord if I get it delivered, or $100 if I haul, cut,split,stack,dry,move in Oct. and finally just burn it. Versus $389 just for oil heat and hot water per month. The cost of biodiesel has gone up so, that lower price is for my diesel pickup @26mpg.

Nothing beats wood heat, in an old house circa 1870 - we can't all afford a state of the art little box in the city or just don't like all the city dwellers. Next year, after the no-VOC foam is applied it will be solar heat and hot water, and still the wood, followed by the oil furnace for backup and more backup supplemental.

Oh yeah, my neighbor with a ranch house in my town, actually bought one of the new and improved pellet stoves and his 3 ton's of pellets for a typical winter he's lucky if he ever sees more than 63º inside the house - and that is with R30 in the walls, and R-40+ in the cellar and attic. I think I'll personally keep the cordwood (oak, birch and maple - just warmer for longer) and keep paying the FD the $30 donation for a clean chimney each year.

If you burn wood make sure you have a good stove, one with a catalytic converter to cut down on the heavy airborne particles.
The fact that someone is burning 2 cords for the winter, and another, 7, is testament to the need for proper energy design and conservation. If you can't do it yourself, hire somebody - like a passive solar designer or an energy savvy architect.

The typical person who burns wood does so because they can pick it up off the ground for free?! That is completely ridiculous. Where do you live, Soho? People really heat their houses with wood around here, and their wood piles stretch all the way down their driveways.

By the way, the "estimate' of moving wood six times isn't theoretical. You would know that if you tried it. Burning wood is not romantic! You don't just wander outside to pick up sticks and expect to keep your pipes from freezing. Please.

But doesn't all that movement of the wood keep you warmer? :)

I also live in Maine, in a late 1800s house, around 1900 square feet. We have a woodstove in the basement, with air ducts to the first floor. We also have backup oil, which we use sparingly until it is actually cold enough to run the stove all the time.

..And YES, wood *is* free. My husband works for the railroad and they cut dead trees near the tracks all the time, which he brings home for the house when he can. ALSO, our neighbor owns 5 acres behind our house, and doesn't burn wood, so he has given my husband permission to basically do whatever he wants with whatever is on the land. So this year, all our wood is coming from the backyard. There is a ton of fallen cherry and dead elm out there.

Also, most people I know that burn wood either own their own land and cut their standing dead, or, like us, know someone who would otherwise just consider the wood "trash."

It really *isn't* just a "fantasy" that there is "free" wood up here!

..Maine has a long reputation of being self-sufficient, with hardy and hard-working people. We have short summers and looooong winters, and efficiency, resource conservation, and survival are not "new" concepts to us. In fact, I think it's about time the rest of the world started thinking more like us!

We heat with wood and supplement with electric baseboards in some rooms when in use as they heat up quickly.

We go through about 4.5 cords a winter. All wood comes from someone we know who never clear cuts and pulls out downed trees from his land. We have also taken some older trees from our land that were not doing well or were blocking new growth.

I live and work out of my house so I am always here. I couldn't imagine attempting to heat an entire house with wood without that being the case. It isn't for the casual heater.

And wood stacking 4 or 5 cords is one of the best workouts you will probably get.

Once I can get solar or wind working well enough to generate all the electric I need I will be off the grid except for cable tv and internet access.

Try a masonry stove. Rob Roy of Earthwood Building School in NY has a couple of great books Mortgage Free! and Underground Living. He uses 2-3 cords a winter in upstate NY.

Come on gang, lets be reasonable. I live in the forest, I heat my house with wood, I cook and heat water with propane, I am off grid generating electricity with solar and propane generator, I pay a wonderful human being two times a month to tend for fire breaks around the house and maintain tree health in an area that is recovering from past logging. I have no experience using pellet stoves but I can say wood is superior to most other air heating methods regarding warming of the space. For those of you who know, there is nothing like it. I know because I live in it and have means to utilize it. For those who do not have means or do not live in wooded areas, collecting "stray" stashes of wood to heat your home is unreasonable and can damage the forest ecosystem. Remember, all is utilized in natural systems, there is no waste. Please educate yourself about what can sustainably be taken and what should be left as is.
I am looking toward reducing the use of wood and propane as much as possible by combining options for passive water heating, seasonal hydro electric and hydronics floor heating. This will allow clean power to heat the water and cut the reliance on wood and propane substantially. It's the 'ten year' plan if all goes well.
I believe it is time for us to be creatively inclusive. We must educate ourselves to what options of reduction are available to us and start with whatever means we have. Anybody googled 'hydrogen power' lately.

How soon Treehuggers forget. Check out this post from '05: http://www.treehugger.com/files/2005/09/mason_heaters.php