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[hondaracer2oo4]

Jared, You must be new to the owb scene. Looks like you just bought your first boiler. Congratulations. Now what were you expecting to burn for wood for the season? Anyone that heats solely with a wood stove in the house goes through around 8 cords per year and that is relying on the heat to be distributed through the house from just the stove. They have a very warm room that the stove is in and the rest is much less warm. My house is heated to 70 degrees evenly all of the time, night and day. No feeding the wood stove every few hours and waking up to a cold house etc. What were you told or what did you expect to be burning for an amount of wood for the year? OWB got there bad name from people burning green wood and trash in them which causing extreme amounts of smoke to be put off. OWB never got a bad name from the amount of wood they burn, who cares how much wood I burn to keep my house warm?

Lets do a little math here. I burn mostly oak so lets say that I have semi seasoned oak and I get 20 million btus per cord out of it. Lets say that my boiler and system is 50% efficient. Probably a little high but lets go with it. That means I am getting 10 million btus per cord. Now multiply 10 million by 12 cords which equals 120 million btus per heating season or 666000 btus per day for an average over the 180 day season or 27,000 btus per house average.
So fuel oil being 138000 btus per gallon multiply by 75% efficient furnace equals 103500 btus. So 666000/103500 =  6.4 gallons on average per day for me. So 6.4 gallons x 3.00 per gallon =$19.30 per day or $580 per month or $3475 per year for oil.
So as you can see I heat my home with 12 cords for $1200 per heating season vs. $3500 per heating season. No brainer for me.

What did you go through for heating fuel per season before you bought this owb? We can do the same rough calcs for you. 

[Jared43758]

I core drilled a bunch of holes in the Vinton county courthouse about 4 years ago, and I used to go to turkey shoot in bluerock when I was a kid. Kind of a don't ask don't tell about beer kinda place.

[Jared43758]

I've always heated my house with a inside wood furnace with 4-5 cords a year. It hooked to my existing duct work and heats my whole house evenly to about 76-78 degrees no matter if it's 32 or -10 and I get 10-14 burns times with it

[hondaracer2oo4]

What was your indoor furnace before for a make and model? You don't use any other heat source, just the indoor furnace? I still stand by my statement that I will be very surprised if you burn less then 8 cords for a 6 month burn season.

[Jared43758]

I have a electric furnace which I will not use. I burned 5 cords from as soon as it gets cold till it quits

[hondaracer2oo4]

Well let us know at the end of the year how many cords you burned. I have been burning since October 29th this year. I have been through about 3 cords so far. How much did you expect to burn?

[Jared A]

Jared43758, are you getting any water condensation in the front of your ash pan.  I've been getting some with my 5000e.  I turned my damper to 100% open and trying to keep small fires going.  December has been so warm here, stove is hardly running.

[mlappin]

Several other things need to be considered with a OWB and a lot of people don't:

1: Your indoor air quality will be much better.  Humidity in the home will stay higher, also won't have that ultra fine dust floating around the home. Less dusting means a happy wife, a happy wife almost always results in a happy life.

2: Might want to inform your homeowners insurance company that the wood burner is now outside, it could lower your rates.

3: Heating DHW takes more wood than most people allow for.

4: Insects will stay outside in the wood where they belong.

[suzukidad]

Not sure if this helps...we just installed our MF5000e in a well insulated brick 1400Sq Ft ranch with full basement (2800ft heated) with DWH. We live in the New Philadelphia, Ohio area. We split our wood into medium size chunks due to my 115lb wife loading the stove. Larger than you would for a fire place but smaller than for myself loading the stove. Pieces are marked at 20" so that they stack in the building neater. We try to get exactly 12 hour burns out of our stove as it seems to be more efficient than 24 hour burns. We were putting 4-5 pieces of wood (cherry, hard maple, elm) every 12 hours. As a note: 18-20" pieces keep the fire burning better  than fewer 24-30" pieces. This appears more efficient right now with the weather just in the teens for lows. The more shorter pieces stack higher and burn down slower keeping the fire going. The less longer wood would burn out quicker as there would be no wood stacked in a pile...

I recently added a heat exchanger for the garage and that nearly doubled the usage. it takes 7-8 to get through the night now. I may want to rethink that heating the garage move...lol  I do need to insulate the pipes that are going up through the attic though. That should help some I hope...

That doesn't put it into Cords as everyone wants to use on here but you can tell that the type of accessories you are using may have a dramatic impact on wood use. Our brief 2 month history has us using a 20"rick of wood (4' x 8' x 20") 10 days to 2 weeks without the garage being heated. I anticipate that to improve as I start using oak and hickory.

[Jared43758]

7-8 cords with just the house or house and garage?

[suzukidad]

7-8 pieces per 12 hour period. Was 4-5 when just heating house.

House and garage. No long term numbers as I just hooked it up last Saturday. Thermostat set at 45 in garage.

[Jared43758]

Thanks for the reply. How many months did u burn? Hot water also?  My first level is only aroud 1450sqft. Prolly 800sqft of basement which I won't really heat but it doesn't get too cold down there prolly cause my air handler is down there. I have around 300sqft upstairs but I don't heat it. And my home is brick and stays pretty warm cause the brick holds the heat when the sun is out but not so much when it's shady.

[hondaracer2oo4]

Jared, you said that you wanted to know how much to heat a 2500 sqft home in your first post. Now you are saying that you are only heating 1450 sqft. I can now understand how you only went through 5 cords heating with an indoor furnace. I will guess that you will burn somewhere in the 7-8 cord range only heating 1450 sqft.

[Jared43758]

I have a 2500sqft home. With a indoor wood burner I am heatin 2300 sqft of it cause the stove in the basement is keeping it pretty warm. With a outdoor stove I'm justing going to heat the first level. I may heat the basement to keep the floor warm and cause heat raises, I will see.  I'm saying 6 cords max

[hondaracer2oo4]

Since you are already 2+ months into the heating season this year I would say that if you started today that you would burn 6 by May 1st which is when I usually quit. If you burned a full season I am going to say 8 min. Let us know at the end of the season!