anyone else heat with wood??

[argus333]

i live in a small 3 bed room house that is extremely well insulated. i heat my house only with a wood stove. i keep 1 sulcata 2 leopards 2 rhino iguanas 2 beardeds and 2 red tegus but they hibernate all winter. the male rhino ive had almost 16 yrs and the male leopard ive had even longer. biggest problem i have is it beig to hot, upper 80s are the norm and thats not on the lizard room. my gas bill is less the $40 a month and i get all my wood for free. anyone else use wood only?

 

[ascott]

Sweeeet....wish I could lay claim to the same...lol...but no, a slave to the gas man to supplement the fireplace here.

The only critters I have brumating are CDTs and they are in a part of the house that was a conversion years ago of an attached garage --and so I simply close the vents to that room and it gets down to a nice 45-50 degrees for the winter months....

The redfoot torts are in the main part of the house and have their own enclosures with basking/night heat lights....

 

[argus333]

ya my basement holds steady 55 to 60 so all hibernation is down there. reptile room goes 88 to 90 in day to 68 75 at night.

 

[ascott]

Nice.

 

[Yvonne G]

My only source of household heat in the winter time is the wood stove. Like you, I get all my wood for free. A couple years ago I had a huge eucalyptus tree cut down. The trunk was appx. 5' diameter and it was about 60' tall. I'll be burning that wood for many years to come. And I'm always on the look-out for free scrap lumber. I like to have scrap lumber to help those big pieces of euc. burn. About 10 years ago a guy gave me all his cedar shingles (he put a new roof on his house). I'm still using those for kindling and have lots left.

It IS hard to regulate the heat in the house. Once I've got a good fire going the house heats up quickly...then its too hot to do much but sit around and read. It has taken me quite a few years, but I've finally figured it out and if I allow my first fire to die down and eventually go out, the house is usually quite comfortable.

 

[oscar]

We have a Vermont Castings wood stove, it does a good job when outside
temperature is 20 or above. We burn mainly oak, ash, and mulberry.
It is in out family room and use fans to try to get the heat from it to the
other parts of the house. have had it in for 4 years and figure that it has
not paid for itself yet, with stove and pipe ect. we have around $2600.00
invested in it and that would have paid for a lot of natural gas.

 

[argus333]

i burn about 3 to 4 chords a year. so its pretty good bought a splitter 2 yrs ago and made that money back easy and sell 2 to 3 chords a yr as well.

 

[Spn785]

I heat my house with a wood burning stove, since my house is small and has a crawl space with no insulation between it and the rest of my house. How I compensate for the heat of the house is I get a really good fire going and then open the windows until it is tolerable. LOL

 

[redfoot7]

I use a wood stove and a oil furnace as back up. I burn about 4 cords and a couple hundred pounds of coal. It keeps my house around 70 and my oil use under 100 gallons. It varied to much for my tortoise room, so I keep the door shut and rigged up a space heater to a thermostat, and it stays around 75 in there. It's a small, well insulated room, so it doesn't affect my electric bill too much.

 

[tickle]

I don't see a problem nor do I think its to hot.

 

[argus333]

when its 88 + in the house it can feel a little warm. but thats what windows are for.

 

[jtrux]

My gas bill is 200 a month in the winter!

 

[jaizei]

My gas bill is 200 a month in the winter!

How big is your house?

 

[jtrux]

It's only 1600 square feet BUT it was built in 1942 with zero insulation. Oh and it's pier and beam. The part that makes it the most wasteful is that I have those old gravity heaters built into the walls that are probably the least thermally efficient way to heat a house so it really uses some gas.

 

[Yvonne G]

This house had wall heaters too, and I'm on propane here. When my daughter's family lived here, my S-I-L added the wood-burning stove and disconnected the heaters. When I traded houses with them and I moved in here, I had insulation blown into the attic and into the outside walls. I'd like to add double paned windows, but ran out of money. The house is small, and the stove heats it up quickly. I'm very comfortable here.