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$1000 or less

8 (21.6%)

$1001 to $2000

10 (27%)

$2001 to $3000

11 (29.7%)

$3001 to $4000

4 (10.8%)

$4001+

4 (10.8%)

Total Members Voted: 37

[userdk]

    Did some digging and found this page on the official Wisconsin.gov website. It indicates, among other numbers, that the average Wisconsin household heating with electric spent about $2400. An average water heater will cost an average household approximately $781 per year. From rough figures and miscellaneous articles around the internet, it appears that the average household with a swimming pool spends up to an additional $800 per year heating that(if they heat the pool). Even with the cost of an outdoor boiler rising a bit on average post-EPA, it looks like outdoor boilers may not be a thing of the past yet. Looking forward to this discussion. Comment below what you're heating and what it would cost without the boiler. Are you buying your wood or getting it free? How does that stack up

[Bondo]

Ayuh,.....    I've been livin' in this old farmhouse that needed oil deliveries every 10 days to 2 weeks through-out the heatin' season,....
That's 'bout 150/ 200 gallons per delivery,....

I built my own outdoor wood boiler, 'n traded my labor for wood from a tree service,....

Since I fired my boiler, 'bout 10 years ago, I've spent Zero on heatin',...

That's many thousands of dollars, dependin' on the price of oil,....

[Pointblank]

Propane is my back up source of heat so it depends largely on propane prices. Over the 16 years I've ran an owb I'd guess the savings around $1500-$2000 a year. Less so on years like now when propane is cheap, but you get it back when prices rise.

Now, if you factor in the nice tractor I bought, the wood splitter, dump trailer, and the 440 Stihl, well..........
Might not have saved any money but its paid for some pretty cool toys in the process. 

[mlappin]

Don’t really know, always had a wood furnace of some kind. After we got the natural gas at the farm, mainly for drying corn, the first real month of winter the gas bill was over $200, next month we turned the heat down to 69 and left it, still didn’t help much so went back to using the wood furnace in the basement. Newly married then and the wife spent a lot of time dusting instead of doing things that newlyweds should 

So went to a fab shop a few towns over and bought a few sheets of 5/16” that had mill scale in the finish or something, can’t recall but they couldn't use it so they sold it to me at scrap price, took it home and laid a 5’x10’ sheet on the sawhorses and started laying it out, all was cut with a oxy acetylene torch as having a plasma cutter in a shop was unheard of back then, ground everything smooth and took it back to the shop and they bend it all for me, brought it back home and burned up a brand new 45# spool of .045 in the three phase wire welder welding it all up. Got it installed the first few days of February and shut the furnace off, about April Nipsco sent someone out to change the meter. Also got a letter stating all the penalties for messing with a meter

So $400 for gas in two months with a cold house and a unhappy wife. Once the we quit burning wood in the basement all the dusting soon ended leaving time for better things, her nosebleeds also quit, air gets too dry and she’s guaranteed to wake up with a nosebleed. Still use the gas furnace once in awhile just to make sure it still works and on the odd occasion where you get a few real nippy nights but it just aint worth starting the boiler yet.

So, old boiler lasted 16 years, have been running a G series for two winters, so lets say four real cold moths each winter at $200/month x 4 x 18 = $14400 then another 2 months each winter with light usage so lets say another $75-100 each of those months equals another $2700-$3600 for a total of $17100-$18000 saved since I put the first one in. Course with the old I couldn’t heat the shop either so messed around with a lot of waste oil and the headaches with that, still use that as well but only in the shoulder seasons, light it once a day or every other day and get 600+ gallons of water up to 190.  I could literally turn the gas off at the meter in the winter if it wasn’t for the clothes dryer and gas range.

[mlappin]

Oh yah, another thing and this is huge, since having a OWB those godawful flannel nighties she used to wear to bed don't make near the appearances they used to.

[NaturallyAspirated]

Oh yah, another thing and this is huge, since having a OWB those godawful flannel nighties she used to wear to bed don't make near the appearances they used to.

Sounds like some heavier duty quilts could have saved you some moola, and provided more years of under covers enjoyment!   

[mlappin]

Oh yah, another thing and this is huge, since having a OWB those godawful flannel nighties she used to wear to bed don't make near the appearances they used to.

Sounds like some heavier duty quilts could have saved you some moola, and provided more years of under covers enjoyment!   

LOL yah, but she was always like “what if I have to goto the bathroom in the middle of the night”.

With the boiler we keep the house warmer at night as well.

I hate paying for something I can do myself, in this case why pay a corporation for natural gas when I have more than enough wood to cut.

[Jon_E]

I designed and built my house around the use of an outdoor wood boiler, so technically it hasn't saved me a dime.  However.... the background is that our old house, which is half the square footage of the current house, used anywhere from 900-1100 gallons of fuel oil every winter, depending on the weather.  Now, the new house is more energy efficient, but it's much larger, so there's a small trade off.  Let's assume that the new house might use 25% more fuel than the old one.  Probably a bit too conservative but whatever.  So 1000 gallons of #2 oil at $2.50 a gallon (again a reasonable assumption, based on historical prices in my area) x 1.25 = $3,125 per year.  This is probably a bit low.

Now, the old house was simple.  Automatic delivery, no hassle, pay the bill.  No problem (well, except for that "pay the bill" part...)

Today it's different.  Outdoor wood boiler means equipment for wood processing.  I don't buy wood, I harvest it off my own land and my parent's land, so there's no cost for me for the actual wood.  However, this has necessitated the purchase of a fair amount of equipment - a tractor and bucket loader, a log splitter, several chainsaws, wood and log handling tools (i.e cant hooks, log tongs, maintenance stuff etc.).  All told I've probably invested $15,000 in the equipment (although I use it for a lot of other things besides firewood).  The initial investment for the first wood boiler I owned was not counted because every house needs a heating system, so it was either spend it on a OWB or spend it on a gas or oil furnace.  The second wood boiler (my current one) was a $10,000 investment to replace the first one.  So let's say I've spent $25,000 over 12 years on wood heat.  That's about $2,100 annually.  If I had to buy wood, I'd get it in tree length delivered to my back yard and probably not need the tractor (but I'd likely still have some kind of ATV or UTV to do other things), I'd also be out another thousand bucks a year for purchasing the truckload of wood.  So, if I had to buy wood all this time, it probably wouldn't have saved me any money and I would have saved countless hours spent busting my ass outside in all kinds of weather, processing wood and feeding the OWB.

However, I still feel I've saved a lot of money over the years, because I have a really hard time writing that check to the oil company and I would rather spend 2-3 weeks worth of time every year gathering firewood.  Now that I have a new OWB and all the rest of my equipment is in good shape, now it's just the annual value of the BTU's harvested, measured against the depreciation of the equipment.  I tell my wife that I save so much money burning wood that she ought to let me buy a new chainsaw every year, but so far it's not worked, I think she's smarter than that.    In ten years maybe it'll be time for a new tractor or a UTV or something like that.

[aarmga]

Propane is my back up source of heat so it depends largely on propane prices. Over the 16 years I've ran an owb I'd guess the savings around $1500-$2000 a year. Less so on years like now when propane is cheap, but you get it back when prices rise.

Now, if you factor in the nice tractor I bought, the wood splitter, dump trailer, and the 440 Stihl, well..........
Might not have saved any money but its paid for some pretty cool toys in the process. 

Lol what you just said reminded me exactly of what I have going on!  I probably didn't save anything at all but went totally backwards and upside down.  Got me a bigger truck, dump trailer, new tractor and a few new saws. 75,000 dollars later I'm saving a few bucks on my heating bill over the winter

[userdk]

Back during the winter of 2006, we were burning approximately $800/mo. of fuel oil. During the summer of 2007, Dad went into partnership with his brother Randy to buy a small outdoor wood stoves business from a friend that was moving out of state. We've never had the tank filled since.

[MD20/20]

Jon-E has a level-headed understanding of the true costs.

[Smokeless]

What does a golds gym or YMCA member ship go for.
Then from door to door it takes two hours to ,change ,drive there ,sign in ,get the germ killer spray bottle,
Warm up, do the work out,cool down, Shower,sign out, drive home.
You are at the two hour mark. Usually you make it there 320 days a year so- 320x 2hr= 640hr of Un -productive time or  0- produced.
  I can cut down and process a half cord of wood in two hours talking 24" wood.  if I want a workout so with that I would have produced 160 full cords. In theory's mind. Then take into account Murphy's Law -30 cord. Then hernia surgery yup. Kyropractor visits. Break downs.
Kyropractor once told me he loves firewood. I asked what kind of stove do you have. He said I dont have one. Then I got it. Yea. Here's your money.   

[mlappin]

Kyropractor once told me he loves firewood. I asked what kind of stove do you have. He said I dont have one. Then I got it. Yea. Here's your money.

Haha, just like orthopedic surgeons love horse's.

[schoppy]

That's the calculation most people forget about, the value of their own time. Don't forget to check the increase of your electric bill by having multiple pumps running 24/7 also.

If a person is honest, it is more about the satisfaction of self sufficiency, not having to pay a heating bill or some other moral victory. In almost 40 years of burning wood, when everything is factored in, any savings are negligible.

But what else can you do that puts that kind of power in your hands? Oh ya, snowmobiling! Come on WINTER!

[mlappin]

Whether or not it’s negligible is what you’d do with the wood if it isn’t cut. We have 250 acres on the home farm, then rent over another 1000 acres, all of it has trees that need cut anyways, You can only shove so many into a fence row instead of cutting them up.

With the ash borer another mess arises, if they aren’t cut and just fall, eventually if your woods is heavy with ash you can’t get thru it anymore. I cut a hundred ash trees out of a four acre woods, still have plenty more, if all those fell that primarily came out of the east third of the woods, wife wouldn’t be able to mushroom hunt there anymore with out breaking her neck.