76 replies to this topic

[NeilPearson]

jasserEnv, on 18 December 2011 - 07:33 PM, said:

Something interesting that I just read about too is that human urine is also good for the plants because it is high in nitrogen. The combination of ashes and urine is supposedly very beneficial to the gardens. It may seem a little gross but if you can save a flush and help the garden, that is a good combination.

http://www.scienceda...90902112750.htm

I still think that if I go pee in my neighbors garden, he isn't going to appreciate it much.  Maybe printing out that article and giving it to him would change his mind..... hmmm probably not

[MakingCents]

I love to burn firewood.  OUr fireplace is in the basement so when we have fires it warms the entire basement.  The only problem we have then is that it makes the rest of our house feel even colder.  SO it's nice when it's on but when it's time to go to bed it's freezing!

[Shortpoet-GTD]

MakingCents, on 19 December 2011 - 08:54 PM, said:

I love to burn firewood.  OUr fireplace is in the basement so when we have fires it warms the entire basement.  The only problem we have then is that it makes the rest of our house feel even colder.  SO it's nice when it's on but when it's time to go to bed it's freezing!

Sound like you need more insulation.

[Pushhyarag2000]

In India, most cooking and hot water boiling for bath depended on firewood extensively until about three decades plus. It's become rare now for two reasons: more and more people have switched to LPG stoves for convenience and second, firewood is scarce, expensive and messy for many households. But there is belief that food cooked on firewood flames tasted the best. I can vouch that too. I can reminisce some of that from my childhood when mother's cooking was mainly with firewood. There are many other traditional uses of firewood burning for auspicious occasions. Some small town & rural house holds still have those old fashioned firewood boilers.

Camp fires with firewood in out of town holiday inns are the most enjoyable for the young and old alike! Can never miss any opportunity of one!

But there seems to be awareness now to reduce use of firewood as a counter measure at preventing deforestation.

[sculptor]

Pushhyarag2000, on 20 December 2011 - 04:54 AM, said:

... food cooked on firewood flames tasted the best. I can vouch that too. ... .

I had forgotten just how good meat tastes when cooked over wood fires.
Then, my son Michael served in the peace corps, and married a kichwa woman from the amazon basin in Ecuador.
She preferred cooking over wood-fires, and soon, we all began looking forward to those meals.

now, we'll build a fire outside(weather permitting) for some of our meals, and in the cold of winter, I'll load the stove with fruitwoods, or smoking woods, and cook small venison steaks in the flames

the stove is in the (what we call) sub-basement(right off the kitchen and 4 steps down))-----and heat rises----and heating with wood is messy, so we contain the mess out of the main living and work areas,
and we leave the door to the kitchen open all winter long

this past week, the DNR ranger let me gather 4 pickup truck loads of firewood, (a bit over 2 cords) so I've spent the non-cutting time working on the chainsaws----(sharpening,cleaning, tuning up, etc)

love the smell--------------

[MakingCents]

The biggest problem I face in burning wood is I dont know where I can store it.  I live in a condo so I don't really have any land to store it on.  That leads me to have to store it in the house which I don't like because of bugs and stuff.  Even though I've gotten over that situation and jsut live with the bugs I can't get wood in large quantities... wish I could come up wiht a solution.

[Sustained Living]

msterees, on 09 December 2011 - 07:46 AM, said:

Does anyone here burn firewood? I have a small wood stove and a fireplace and like to burn wood in them from time to time. It seems to help me keep my thermostat on a lower setting. It was also nice to have that backup source of heat when my heat pump went out recently. I'm not sure if it is any cheaper to burn firewood tho because it also seems to be expensive. Is there anyone here who cuts their own firewood or grows bamboo to use for heating?

I use a mixture of chalk, vinegar, and 99% rubbing alcohol .. it burns clean and I don't need to vent it so I have no drafts in the house.  It burns in a iron fireplace in my living room with a metal grid gate and a blower fan behind it.. it heats up the metal grid and the blower diffuses the heat around the house.

[Sustained Living]

Sustained Living, on 22 December 2011 - 12:04 AM, said:

I use a mixture of chalk, vinegar, and 99% rubbing alcohol .. it burns clean and I don't need to vent it so I have no drafts in the house.  It burns in a iron fireplace in my living room with a metal grid gate and a blower fan behind it.. it heats up the metal grid and the blower diffuses the heat around the house.

oh yeah its super cheap too.. its like .10$ to make enough to burn for 4-5 hours +

[karmaman]

We use wood heat as our only source of heat. We have a small parlor stove in the center of the house that came with the rental, and now that we've fixed it with a grate it works well. It keeps both floors warm very easily. Our friend has an outdoor wood furnace he built that is less work - he loads it up with wood once a day and a themostat controls the blower and runs the heat through his central air system.

[MakingCents]

Is burning wood more 'green' than using electricty or gas?  It can't be much more cost efficient if it even is.  We easily burn $3 or $4 worth of wood in one evening when we have a fire in our fireplace so seems to me that would be more than our gas bill is in a month.

That coupled with the fact that to burn wood you have to cut down trees to GET the wood.  

Which is generally considered the most efficient and economical way to heat a house?  Electric, gas or wood?

[mariaandrea]

I don't know which is more economical. Some of the new wood burning stoves are highly efficient.

The one disturbing thing about wood fires is the pollution. I really love a wood fire and would happily live in a house using only wood for heating, but the particulates in wood smoke are really bad for people with lung problems like asthma, bronchitis, emphysema, etc. When the air is stagnant here, there's a burn ban because it's so bad for you. There's a trade-off with most kinds of energy.

[Shortpoet-GTD]

MakingCents, on 22 December 2011 - 07:19 PM, said:

Which is generally considered the most efficient and economical way to heat a house?  Electric, gas or wood?

Good question.

Gas=gas fracking=hundreds of chemicals used to extract can leach into water supplies.
Electric=more often than not, it's from coal.
Burning wood=depleting resources.
The best answer, imo is to have an energy efficient home that keeps the very little heat used-in.

[jasserEnv]

For efficiency, I would have to say electricity is tops regardless of how it is generated. This is based solely on physics without any politics. Even though many generation plants are burning coal, the efficiency of their operations is definitely higher than individual wood stoves would be. At the same time they transport bulk amounts of coal instead of all the vehicles hauling small amounts of wood around. In other cases, electricity is from nuclear and hydro and these are definitely more efficient than coal. The only losses are transmission related and those are far less than losses from any vehicle transportation. All that said, we do still need to move to alternative energy and far greater efficiency in our homes.

As far as economics, natural gas is often cheaper but that is because the costs such as fracking pollution and climate change are really externalized from the costs that anybody is asked to pay. So, while you save money, you are doing it at somebody/something else's expense because the costs are not all accounted for.

[sculptor]

"Which is generally considered the most efficient and economical way to heat a house? Electric, gas or wood?"

every situation is unique
my house is all electric, and the local supplier wants people to invest in alternate sources.
so burning wood when it is really cold, and the other all electric houses are using lots of electricity to stay warm (peak capacity) helps myself, my neighbors, and my electric utility co-op

and i only burn dead wood which would decay and feed termites who out-gas methane which is a much more potent greenhouse gas than CO2-----------
but
my wood stove is much more efficient than a fireplace---maybe not as efficient as a rocket mass heater
maybe?
I plan to build one for a test this next year
burning wood efficiently has it's own learning curve-----many people who have the occasional fire, waste a lot of heat by damping down too soon, and emitting lots of smoke, or leaving the dampers open too long, wasting a lot of heat-------for them, maybe gas or electric is a better choice

also, buying and maintaining chainsaws, a truck, a splitter and designing a structure to optimize a single heat source all enter into the mix

so, making cents
in answer to the posed question
gee i don't know

[msterees]

Sustained Living, on 22 December 2011 - 12:04 AM, said:

I use a mixture of chalk, vinegar, and 99% rubbing alcohol .. it burns clean and I don't need to vent it so I have no drafts in the house.  It burns in a iron fireplace in my living room with a metal grid gate and a blower fan behind it.. it heats up the metal grid and the blower diffuses the heat around the house.

I had never heard of these before. What do you put this mixture in? How do you light it? Do you buy the chalk in bulk, and if so where do you get it? Sorry for all the questions, but this is very fascinating.

[Sustained Living]

msterees, on 23 December 2011 - 08:09 AM, said:

I had never heard of these before. What do you put this mixture in? How do you light it? Do you buy the chalk in bulk, and if so where do you get it? Sorry for all the questions, but this is very fascinating.

Well I have a larger size house, about 2500sqft or so in Florida.. so I generally use this from January - March.  We have two custom built non-vented fireplaces, which consists of a long deep crack through the center that you load with the material.. This material will burn out of control and quickly if you allow it to burn freely.  So placing it and packing it into the crack is required.  to light it you simply burn it a little with a lighter and it will slowly spread until its fully burning.  It puts out around 9,000 - 10,000 btu's of heat that is fully clean burning, there is other additives that slow down the burn and raise the BTU's but i prefer not to use them.  a fan sits behind the fireplace and as the metal grid heats up around the fire place the fan comes on a spreads the heat through the house.

You can add vegetable oil to the mixture before it solidifies to give the fire a crackling sound.. as the oil heats up in the mixture it burns and pops.  I buy the chalk in bulk it usually costs more for the shipping than the actual chalk lol ... so finding a local source is important, baseball and football fields use it so I would ask them where they get it, amazon also sells it.

The mixing goes like this 1 part chalk, 1part vinegar, 9 parts 99% rubbing alcohol, and a little vegetable oil if you want.  you put 1 part vinegar into a jar or mixing container then add the chalk slowly.. this will make a chemical reaction that will release co2 as a product(so do it outside), then bring everything back inside after all the chalk is mixed and settled and you will see a liquid floating on top, you will need to reduce this by 1/2 1 of 2 ways, let it sit and evaporate for a day or so OR put it in the oven at 200 or so degrees until 1/2 the water is gone.  I prefer letting it just sit and evaporate a little for one day.  you add a tiny amount of vegetable oil and mix, then measure out 9 parts rubbing alcohol you have to get the mixture right cause if not it will get soupy and thats not good.  pour the rubbing alcohol into the jar and mix it quickly as the chemical reaction will happen over the next 10-15 sec causing it to create a gel.  when its fully gelled put it into a mason jar and place a lid on it and store it.

[Sustained Living]

but seriously be careful with this dont go burning down your houses cause then ill feel bad

[MakingCents]

I think the suggestion to keep a well insulated house is a good one.  Perhaps some environmentalist PHD student should write a thesis on the most efficient and environmentally friendly way to heat a house, then we would all know the true answer :)

[Sustained Living]

MakingCents, on 23 December 2011 - 07:33 PM, said:

I think the suggestion to keep a well insulated house is a good one.  Perhaps some environmentalist PHD student should write a thesis on the most efficient and environmentally friendly way to heat a house, then we would all know the true answer :)

Extremely well insulated house with vapor/moisture barrier and lots of plants(not a lot of people know that certain plants give off heat as well) couple of flame gel heaters or passive solar but that doesn't help at night are THE Cheapest way to do it without using power

[Shortpoet-GTD]

Sustained Living, on 23 December 2011 - 10:31 PM, said:

lots of plants(not a lot of people know that certain plants give off heat as well)

Links for that statement?