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[chadley]

Sorry to start so many topics but I have so many questions. 

Is there anyone on here that has an all electric house and has a OWB that can tell me how much money they save a month?  I realize where you live, how big your house is, how many residents etc. have a factor in it but I'm trying to compare apples to apples as best I can.  My father in law doesn't think we will be able to make our money back in a decent amount of time to justify buying an OWB.  I disagree but am looking for those who have done it.  Thanks

[willieG]

depending on how much wood you want to cut you should be able to and what type of electric heat you are talking about you  can save likley 90  percent of your current heat bill

if you have electric base board and install hot water baseboard the only electricity you will use will be for likley 1 or 2 or 3 small pumps that might be 10 or 12 dollars a month per pump (a guess on my part for thier usage, others here can likley tell you the exact amount of draw they use)

if you have electric forced air and you switch to an OWB you will save (depending on how much wood you supply) 100 percent of what you would normally spend on the heating element (you will still need to run the blower)

if you have a heat pump you will (again) only need to run your blower

[Bull]

I am total electric here. I have an electric furnace and the year before I installed my owb my highest electric bill was $450 a month. I had 2 months of that (Jan. and Feb.) and about $375 a month on each side of that. Since then it hits less than $200 a month and if I would turn off the computers that run 24/7 and a tv or 2 I could do better.

[kybaseball]

My house is all electric. It is about 6000 square feet. I have 3 heat pumps with srtipe backup heat. Our bill in the past have been running around 750-900 a month in the winter and keeping the house at 70. I installed my stove on Jan.5 and have been keeping up with the electric usage on a daily bases. i am only using about 60 or less kilowatts a day so that would be 1800 in a month so that breaks down to 158.00 a month. That is keeping the house at 74  nice and toasty with an endless amount of hot water. Here in Kentucky I would say about 4 months of winter. So it will pay for it self in 2.5 years. We are cutting our own wood. Hope this helps you.

[chadley]

Well, let me be a little more specific.  Our house is 6 years old (as well as our heating unit).  We have a 1700 sq ft  cape cod house with zone heat. We are on forced air electric unit.  It's me, my wife, and our 1 yr old daughter. Our daughter sleeps upstairs otherwise we don't use the upper level.  We keep our house at 60  and our bill is 250/mo. Who knows what our bill would be if we kept our house warm at say 70.  I'm trying to explain that we won't see as much savings with a 250 bill at 60 degrees as we would at 70 degrees.  My wife is convinced our bill is high and I am convinced our house is cold so we are trying to decide what to do.  I like the idea of an OWB and we are seriously leaning that direction. 

I sell firewood as a side job and have a surplus of wood.  We are planning on adding on a 3 bay garage in the future and finishing out our current garage into a family room.  All of this will increase our heating sq ft to near 4000.

Will we save enough money to justify buying an OWB is the question we are currently trying to answer.  What do you all think?

[willieG]

chadley you could take a spring time bill (before you run the AC and the furnace and subtract taht from your january bill and that would give you roughly what you spend a month on heat?

then take a guess at what it would go up if you kept your house 70 degrees instead of 60 (perhaps 10 or 15 percent more? ((a guess on my part)))

60 is some cold in my house..72 ior 74 seems to sit well with everyone

[chadley]

Willie- yea 60 is freezing to me.  We have a heat blanket on (using electricity) with a comforter and a quilt, a space heater (using electricity), and a slab floor house which is cold on the feet.  I can't wear shorts in my house much less sit naked and eat cheezy puffs watching football on sudnday during the winter cause its too freakin cold.  I'm ready for warmer more comfy living conditions.  I just have to convince my wife and her family that it will be worth the money.

[willieG]

Willie- yea 60 is freezing to me.  We have a heat blanket on (using electricity) with a comforter and a quilt, a space heater (using electricity), and a slab floor house which is cold on the feet.  I can't wear shorts in my house much less sit naked and eat cheezy puffs watching football on sudnday during the winter cause its too freakin cold.  I'm ready for warmer more comfy living conditions.  I just have to convince my wife and her family that it will be worth the money.

the electric blanket and the electric space heater will come close to paying for running the pumps.  if you were paying 150 for heat per month now and lets say you paid 200 if you were to turn it up to 70 if we said you heated at that rate for 5 months (average) that would be 1000 per year for heat  adn also remember the price per KW is never going down. also if your hot water tank is electric your OWB can make all your domestic hot water as well (more savings)

[willieG]

chadley.. according to the net 1 kw hour is equal to about 3412 btu (bear with me here)  if we said your home would use 80 million btu per heating season (im not sure where you are but southern ontario says an average 1800 square foot home would use 100,000,000.

80 million divided by 3412 comes to 23,446 KWH if you can figure out how much (in total) you are paying for electricity you can find what it would cost if you were to heat your house to a normal temp, the you would know what you could save

[Scott7m]

Of course there worth it, it's not just a hobby to have these.  My nils used to be 550-600 in the winter and now there 80-100.  Rates have went up 17% since I got a stove and are going up 31 percent each year til 2015.

[Ridgekid]

All electric here.  Made some major changes in reducing my electric use since April.  Not just the addition of the OWF. Electric bill has gone from 2200 kwh/ month to less than 1100kwh/month. Total savings $100 / month.  You can review my electric use chart in my gallery photos.

[dirtryder]

Well, I have propane for back up heat now with the OWB. Before my boiler in 2007 we paid $5544.00  and 2008 $4068  for propane. From 2009 till today we have spent  about $1000. So if you average it out to lets say 4.5k a year, I have saved close to 12.5K in 3 years on propane. I'm already ahead of the game. I cut all my own wood but in my area I could have bought all my wood and still be saving over propane. My neighbor just paid $4.40 a gal
Oh, yeh to your question......YES they are worth it.
I forgot, 60 IS cold.......we keep it around 76

[6pacmac]

Holy heck Chadley, 60 degrees is freezing!   My wife would kill me if I kept the house that cold!  I'm all electric  like you also.   2500 sq'  new home that has a lot of glass, with about $400-500  a month bill, in the dead of winter.  The temp setting was around 68.   Now with owb, the heatpump does not run, electric back-up stays off and temp is set around 73-74.  The heat is now much warmer than the cool breath that the heat pump would put out. Now the wife is much happier .  My set up is new and I'm waiting to see an actual instead of estimated electric bill.   Your wife and little one thank you if you buy one!

[martyinmi]

We like it warm in the winter. Our fuel oil furnace used to consume between 1200 and 1500 gallons/year. If 1350 gallons is the average times 3.69/gallon equals $4981.50. I will get a return on my $10000 investment in less than 2.5 years, even factoring in chains, gas, oil, fuel for truck, etc. I have an unlimited supply of free firewood to cut.
   I'm not paying any interest on a loan, I already own a splitter, saws, and all other incidentals necessary to process firewood. My exchangers were already in place, as well as the insulated under ground pex. You will have to factor in all other necessary components before you'll be able to come up with accurate cost savings and a pay off time frame.

[Bull]

You should be able to keep your house at 72 -75 and heat your hot water and get a payback in under 5 years. Also something to think about is if you loose power a small generator will run the pump and furnace blower and keep your family warm, it takes a big generator to run an electric furnace or heat pump.