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I’ve recently moved to a house with a wood burner / back boiler and I can’t wait to replace it. It’s made me appreciate what a huge upgrade natural gas boilers

I’ve recently moved to a house with a wood burner / back boiler and I can’t wait to replace it. It’s made me appreciate what a huge upgrade natural gas boilers were. I spend a minimum of 15 mins a day chopping kindling, fetching wood, starting and feeding the fire. It’s not cheap and it’s not warm! It’s been fun and makes you appreciate your consumption more but the novelty only goes so far!

xupybd 5y ago
I grew up with a wood fire. I love the sound and feel of the fire, but I'm done cutting wood. First you have to buy the wood. A truck load of wood in the driveway means hours of stacking wood and cleaning up. Then to start the fire you need kindling. If I get home at 7pm after a long day of work I don't want to have do this just to start heating the house.
bacon_waffle 5y ago
I also heat with wood, but quite like the occasional breaks from the computer through the day, and sometimes cooking on the wood stove. Here, the obvious alternative is a heat pump rather than a natural gas boiler, and I suspect the total cost of wood heating is a bit lower than with a heat pump.
- danans 5y ago
  > I suspect the total cost of wood heating is a bit lower than with a heat pump. According to this article from 1993, it was a toss up in terms of cost savings then: https://nasdonline.org/1359/d001154/do-you-waste-money-by-heating-with-wood.html https://nasdonline.org/1359/d001154/do-you-waste-money-by-he... Since that time, heat pumps have become much more efficient at a wide set of operating temps, and the cost of wood has gone up, so it's unlikely that a wood stove is cheaper to operate, unless you have your own forest, and are willing to fell trees and chop and dry firewood yourself.
  - Retric 5y ago
    Wood stove tech has also increased quite a bit though it’s still relatively rare to see 85+% efficiency. Access to free firewood is one topping point, but depending on electricity can be a serious issue in some areas.
    - bacon_waffle 5y ago
      Yep, exactly, it's very much a situational decision. And to be fair, cost wasn't my primary concern in deciding to use wood heat, but as above I don't think it was a silly decision. I've got one of these https://pyroclassic.co.nz/ https://pyroclassic.co.nz/ - it's not a new design but is quite clean (it's usually impossible to tell if a fire is going by looking at the chimney) and efficient as far as these things go. The lifetime cost of the equipment itself must be lower for an efficient wood stove+flue than an efficient heat pump, in both dollars and environmental impact. The initial install cost here in NZ is a little bit higher for the fire, but annual maintenance (flue sweeping) is something an average homeowner can do in an hour or so, where heat pumps need regular cleaning from the homeowner, and are supposed to be checked on by a technician periodically. The fire can reasonably be expected to last half a century with a few minor repairs. When it eventually does need a full replacement, that's just some steel and ceramic - no electronics, refrigerants, or plastic involved. Electricity here is expensive - last bill was NZ$0.42/kWh - and wood isn't so much. My last batch of primo firewood was IIRC NZ$100 per tossed m^3, and yes that takes some time to stack and such (firwood warms you twice!), however there's also a fair bit of free wood to be had. To use round numbers, say the heat pump is 250% efficient making heat, and the fireplace is 50% (after writing most of this, I see that fireplace is claimed to be 74% efficient). That tossed m^3 of firewood is about 0.2 (stacked) cords and contains about 1170kWh energy from some quick searching, so $100 in firewood gives 586kWh heat in to the house. The same heat from a heat pump would've cost $98.45 - the difference is a decent pint or two per year in heating the house... But, the biggest argument is that you don't actually use a heat pump in the same way as a fire. It takes a while for the fire to start cranking out heat, so I only build a fire if it's worth having one going in an hour or so. If I had a heat pump, I'm sure we'd have it turned on in the morning as well as evening, so it would be used to put out substantially more heat than the fire does. Heat pump cooking isn't really a thing either...
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
zdragnar 5y ago
I love the boiler we have, but it is an old pre-gassification boiler amd simply is too inefficient. New boilers are way more expensive than is worth it, so we have switched entirely to high efficiency indoor wood and pellet stoves. I miss the smell of the oak from the old boiler, but not the smoke or absurd amount of wood we were going through.

xupybd 5y ago

I grew up with a wood fire. I love the sound and feel of the fire, but I'm done cutting wood. First you have to buy the wood. A truck load of wood in the driveway means hours of stacking wood and cleaning up. Then to start the fire you need kindling. If I get home at 7pm after a long day of work I don't want to have do this just to start heating the house.

bacon_waffle 5y ago

I also heat with wood, but quite like the occasional breaks from the computer through the day, and sometimes cooking on the wood stove. Here, the obvious alternative is a heat pump rather than a natural gas boiler, and I suspect the total cost of wood heating is a bit lower than with a heat pump.

danans 5y ago
> I suspect the total cost of wood heating is a bit lower than with a heat pump. According to this article from 1993, it was a toss up in terms of cost savings then: https://nasdonline.org/1359/d001154/do-you-waste-money-by-heating-with-wood.html https://nasdonline.org/1359/d001154/do-you-waste-money-by-he... Since that time, heat pumps have become much more efficient at a wide set of operating temps, and the cost of wood has gone up, so it's unlikely that a wood stove is cheaper to operate, unless you have your own forest, and are willing to fell trees and chop and dry firewood yourself.
- Retric 5y ago
  Wood stove tech has also increased quite a bit though it’s still relatively rare to see 85+% efficiency. Access to free firewood is one topping point, but depending on electricity can be a serious issue in some areas.
  - bacon_waffle 5y ago
    Yep, exactly, it's very much a situational decision. And to be fair, cost wasn't my primary concern in deciding to use wood heat, but as above I don't think it was a silly decision. I've got one of these https://pyroclassic.co.nz/ https://pyroclassic.co.nz/ - it's not a new design but is quite clean (it's usually impossible to tell if a fire is going by looking at the chimney) and efficient as far as these things go. The lifetime cost of the equipment itself must be lower for an efficient wood stove+flue than an efficient heat pump, in both dollars and environmental impact. The initial install cost here in NZ is a little bit higher for the fire, but annual maintenance (flue sweeping) is something an average homeowner can do in an hour or so, where heat pumps need regular cleaning from the homeowner, and are supposed to be checked on by a technician periodically. The fire can reasonably be expected to last half a century with a few minor repairs. When it eventually does need a full replacement, that's just some steel and ceramic - no electronics, refrigerants, or plastic involved. Electricity here is expensive - last bill was NZ$0.42/kWh - and wood isn't so much. My last batch of primo firewood was IIRC NZ$100 per tossed m^3, and yes that takes some time to stack and such (firwood warms you twice!), however there's also a fair bit of free wood to be had. To use round numbers, say the heat pump is 250% efficient making heat, and the fireplace is 50% (after writing most of this, I see that fireplace is claimed to be 74% efficient). That tossed m^3 of firewood is about 0.2 (stacked) cords and contains about 1170kWh energy from some quick searching, so $100 in firewood gives 586kWh heat in to the house. The same heat from a heat pump would've cost $98.45 - the difference is a decent pint or two per year in heating the house... But, the biggest argument is that you don't actually use a heat pump in the same way as a fire. It takes a while for the fire to start cranking out heat, so I only build a fire if it's worth having one going in an hour or so. If I had a heat pump, I'm sure we'd have it turned on in the morning as well as evening, so it would be used to put out substantially more heat than the fire does. Heat pump cooking isn't really a thing either...

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

zdragnar 5y ago

I love the boiler we have, but it is an old pre-gassification boiler amd simply is too inefficient. New boilers are way more expensive than is worth it, so we have switched entirely to high efficiency indoor wood and pellet stoves. I miss the smell of the oak from the old boiler, but not the smoke or absurd amount of wood we were going through.