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[sgd48843]

Hey everybody. Been lurking around for about a year but this is my first post. After two seasons of heating with my LT90 I'm wondering if I'm using too much wood. I live in SE Michigan. We have a 2500 sf  Cape Cod with 1900 sf on the 1st floor & 600sf on the 2nd floor. The house was built in 1990 with a propane boiler and hot water heater. I installed the OWB myself using heat exchangers for the indoor boiler and the water heater. We usually fire up the OWB in late Oct. and let the fire go out in late April. So far in the first two heating seasons we have used approx. 40 facecords of wood  (4x8x18 deep) per season. The only good thing is that the first year I bartered 20 facecords and paid $65 dollars a facecord for the other 20 ( All Ash). The second season, (last winter) I found a neighbor who is a tree cutter who sold me 40 facecords @ $40  apiece delievered. Just trying to figure out if this seems like a lot of wood that I am burning?
 

[HandyMark]

There are too many factors to say what is too much. I have seen many guys post usage much higher than that. That said, if I were burning that much wood I would definitely be checking my system very closely looking for ways to make things more efficient. If you know how much propane the house used on average before you can find sources for average btus of the wood you are using and compare that to the btus of the propane used per season. If they are comparable you should be able to assume the system is working fine and you can look to the house to make it more energy efficient with caulk and insulation. My bet is a cape cod constructed in 1990 probably has very low r value in the sloped part of the ceilings upstairs which is a tricky fix for DIY.  If you are using many more btus worth of wood I would be looking for heat loss in the wood system. I know for a fact my weak link is my poorly constructed temporary lines to the house.

[RSI]

How much does it smoke when burning?
How much when idling?
How many times a day do you load it?
What is the water temperature set at?
How dry is the wood?
How far away from the house is it?

[Bull]

Also what kind of lines do you have? Do they melt the snow?
Oh and welcome to the site

[willieG]

i am not too sure what an lt90 is. if it is a gasser you are burning too much wood if it is not a gasser it is not so bad

i live in southwestern ontario (30 miles straight east of the blue water bridge) live in a 2 story farm house (fairly well insulated over the past 30 years of renovations) and use a home made OWB and burn (by your face cord description) between 30 and 33 face cords. my stove is built simalar to the older style barrel in a barrel so efficiency is low but it was cheap to build and wood here is still plentiful and the ash and elm die faster than i can burn them so the low efficency is not a problem. i also heat the full basement my underground lines are 250 feet one way 1 inch "logstor" pipe

i heat about the sam amount of time as you and we normally keep the heat at about 73 degrees
like others here say there are many things that contribute to the amount of fuel you use but insulation in the home and your underground lines are two of the biggest heat loss areas (if not insulated properly)

also as some one els mentioned if you have an idea of how much propane you used in a normal winter you can compare that in but to the amount of wood you are burning (remember to account for the efficiency of your propane furnace to the efficiency of your OWB

[RSI]

i am not too sure what an lt90 is. if it is a gasser you are burning too much wood if it is not a gasser it is not so bad

i live in southwestern ontario (30 miles straight east of the blue water bridge) live in a 2 story farm house (fairly well insulated over the past 30 years of renovations) and use a home made OWB and burn (by your face cord description) between 30 and 33 face cords. my stove is built simalar to the older style barrel in a barrel so efficiency is low but it was cheap to build and wood here is still plentiful and the ash and elm die faster than i can burn them so the low efficency is not a problem. i also heat the full basement my underground lines are 250 feet one way 1 inch "logstor" pipe

i heat about the sam amount of time as you and we normally keep the heat at about 73 degrees
like others here say there are many things that contribute to the amount of fuel you use but insulation in the home and your underground lines are two of the biggest heat loss areas (if not insulated properly)

also as some one els mentioned if you have an idea of how much propane you used in a normal winter you can compare that in but to the amount of wood you are burning (remember to account for the efficiency of your propane furnace to the efficiency of your OWB

It is a real small non-gasser http://www.woodmaster.com/woodfurnaces_LT90.php

[timbur]

The LT90 is a corn burner that has had the corn burner components removed . Woodmaster modified these to burn wood after corn went sky high .