Fire place inserts or wood stoves (Bozeman, Helena: rental, insurance, how much)

[alaska961]

Question for you all....I know that it gets very cold in the winter and I was wondering if you guys have fireplace inserts or wood stoves to help keep the house warm to cut back on the electricity.

I am more than likely going to be spending my first couple of years living in Dillon and I have noticed that there are not many trees. Do you travel to cut your wood?

Thank you in advance

[Timberwolf232]

We have a wood stove in the living room, and use it to heat most of the house... That said I have a shop and a garage that both have wood stoves for heat, but they are only used when needed. We also have a pellet stove, and it works very well when we need to use it. (to heat the basement area) I'd say that wood is primary, but we have water/glycol filled electric baseboards to supplement, and only use that when it's really cold. (These are not connected to a boiler, as we don't have gas up here..) If we ran the electric all the time I'd be in the red on the power bill, but we harvest our own wood and do pretty good thus far.

With the beetle kill if a person needed to buy firewood right now I've seen advertisements for as little as $85 a chord delivered. Might be more in Bozeman or Kalispell... Last year I think I saw 175 a chord.

I'm a cheapskate with a chainsaw and log splitter so I do it myself.. and I enjoy it, so it can be relative...

That said in my old 1200 sq foot house that had forced air and drafty windows and no wood heat, during the cold snaps the power bill could get up to $300 give or take $20.

Now I'm in a 3000+ sq foot, heating with my own wood and using the electric as a backup and I haven't seen a bill over $130. That said, winter has yet to begin...

[MTSilvertip]

My primary heat is a wood stove. I have a pellet stove, (not nearly as much heat but convenient as it burns longer) and propane backup.

I have seen advertisements for wood as low as $50 a cord delivered, but that really depends on where you are and what kind of wood is being offered.

Dillon is out on the prairie, but wood is close if you cut your own. It does pay to check how much you want to invest in a chainsaw, fuel, truck or trailer to haul and wear and tear on you and your equipment to get your own. I cut my own and usually figure on at least one trip to the chiropractor to put my back back in place.

One other concern is how will you get the wood to your truck. Some places allow a 4 wheeler, some places you may want to get a winch or a portable winch that allows you to pull, reset, pull, reset so you can reach trees outside of the length of a cable from the road.
Very few places allow you to just baja out in the forest off road to get your wood, so unless you want to pack it out, best plan on how you will move the downed tree to your bunk.
We use draft horses for ours and have a small piece of land with lodgepole pine that we get our wood from so we aren't as restricted as the folks who only have the forest service ground as a resource.

If you have some or all of the equipment or access to a readily available wood source it can be pretty cheap, but if you are starting from scratch it can take a little while to begin to see the savings of wood over gas if it is already there.
If you can find a good wood supplier, it can be cheaper to buy your wood rather than spend the time and energy to go drag it out of the forest.

Electric is the most expensive hands down, propane is getting pretty expensive. I used to have natural gas, but between the gas and the electricity to run the blowers, I didn't see where it much cheaper than electric, but the heat was better than electric alone.

One thing, the airtight stoves really work well, but watch your chimney as the airtights burn low and you get a rapid buildup of soot and creosote in the chimney which will eventually catch fire if not taken care of. Burning your stove with the flues open once in a while and a good hot fire will burn out the buildup if you do it before the buildup is significant and will prevent flash fire in your chimney.

Make sure your wood system has good double walled stove pipe and meets code or your insurance may be nullified in case of a chimney fire or if you get a radiant start fire in your ceiling.

[Threerun]

We used to burn wood for 75% of our heating needs back in WV. About 4-5 cords per year of hardwoods. To me it doesn't make much sense to buy wood if you burn wood. It sort of goes hand in hand to do it yourself. I had lots of places to cut, free of restrictions and I often had free loads of oak (log length) delivered from friends who cleared lots for home construction. At one point me and my neighbor didn't have to 'gather' wood for 3 years- it was all delivered for free!


A few years ago I moved to a town called Bridgeport WV, house built in 1970 and ran two heat pumps with NG gas back-up furnaces. We had a fireplace but only used it for 'cozy' fires. Last year in the winter our electric bill was about $125 p/mo, and NG about $225 p/month. So combined winter utility there was about $350 or so. Not too bad for a family of 4..

Right now our house in Helena uses propane and electric resistance heat, and yesterday I sat down and looked at our last months usage of propane and electric- I estimate our monthly cost for November at $500.

Soooo.... I've been on the fence about going back to wood or pellet, and quite frankly I'm leaning on pellet in the basement (which is finished). My kids are of the age where they are constantly involved (Scouts, band, sports) so I don't see where I will find the time to cut, split and maintain a woodstove. Plus to move wood where I need it I would have to haul up AND down stairs, through the finished house. Not good.

But with the cost of pellets vs. propane/electric- I should still be able to shave 30% of utility costs (winter wise).

If the kids were grown and out of the house and I had more time? I'd be splitting wood baby.

[alaska961]

Hmmm you all have given me a lot to think about. I do like the idea of cutting my own wood, but this will be something I need to build up too considering I am not yet built like a lumberack

I do agree that the electricity is very expensive so I will be checking on pellet stoves and buying my wood until I get my muscles up to par......gesh this will be a blast!

Thank you all again for the responses.

[Sabinerose]

Personally, I loved our pellet stove in our house we used to own (1250 sq.). It heated the whole place usually, but we did have to run the furnace when it got super cold out. Our first rental had a wood stove in the living area and a coal burner in the kitchen... perfect set-up. We only ran the furnace when I got too lazy to build a fire (or in the wee hours of the am when the fire burned down). The place we are in now has only gas heat with a furnace, so I am trying to decide which kid not to feed so I can heat the house . Lol

[montygarlic]

Originally Posted by alaska961

Hmmm you all have given me a lot to think about. I do like the idea of cutting my own wood, but this will be something I need to build up too considering I am not yet built like a lumberack

You will need to post pictures and let us be the judges of that statement.

I do agree that the electricity is very expensive so I will be checking on pellet stoves and buying my wood until I get my muscles up to par......gesh this will be a blast!

'twill indeed be fun - I love cutting and splitting wood. But first, you should know that some areas of this State have LOW electricity rates. Remember my mentioning the Flathead Indian Reservation? We currently have very low rates. We heat our well-insulated (the KEY to lower fuel costs) house with a combination: 1)A Toyostove Lazer 73 burns #1 fuel oil and costs around $375 for the entire year; 2)we have a woodstove in the basement (not finished - just mechanicals and storage) which we fire up to warm the floors and take the edge off the cold at times - this is also a back-up system when the power goes out; 3) an EdenPure unit.
Now, we try to heat the place to about 68°F during the day and drop it down to 54°F from 9:00pm to 6:00 am. We pile on the blankets (and the cats) and sleep like logs. We find our health is better when our bodies are required to do some of the heating. And our total annual heating costs are around $500 to $550 using the above described systems in a 1200 square foot (3 bdrm, 2 bath) house.

Thank you all again for the responses.

As you've undoubtedly noticed, many of the fine folk who populate this forum live to serve...they're a good bunch.

But it is like the old elevator operator in a downtown Chicago building replied when a certain comedian-type said, "Hey, I bet this job has its ups and downs." The operator calmly answered:"That's not so bad, but all the jerks in between can cause some problems..."

I've often wondered what he meant by that, exactly....

mg

[alaska961]

Not so sure if I can or know how to post images on here, but trust me when I say I am NOT a lumberjack. I will look into finding a place with muliple heat sources....hey I will try them all until I find the right combo

[ElkHunter]

Originally Posted by alaska961

Not so sure if I can or know how to post images on here, but trust me when I say I am NOT a lumberjack. I will look into finding a place with muliple heat sources....hey I will try them all until I find the right combo

When looking at places you might keep in mind places to keep that firewood.

I've seen people stack it up to the roof, right against the siding. Great way to get your house burned down. No good way to protect it in a forest/prairie fire. One guy in town cut and split 6 cord in anticipation of winter. About the time it got real cold, the police stopped and explained to him that the ordinances in that area said you have to stack wood behind, or along side of the dwelling. He had stacked it against the front chain link fence. (Which I thought was stupid because people would walk by and grab a chunck or two).

Security. My dad, always thinking, built a wood box in one wall. You could lift the top (hinged) and load it with wood. Go inside and next to the fireplace, in the wall was double doors. Great, you could just open the doors and get wood on a cold night. Trouble is, he forgot to put a lock on the lid outside and burglars broke in through it.

Wood should be kept dry. If you don't have a woodshed (I remember those fondly), then at least tarp it. Remember that snakes like to crawl up between the stacked wood and lay in there. You'll see people going out to get an arm load of wood and they got one chunk with them. They use it to knock on the pile when you get close so the critters will leave.

Just food for thought.

I keep my wood stacked very neatly. Every stick of 3 cords is exactly how I threw it in the pile as I took it off the splitter. Looks like a pirimid.