Heating My House With Only a Fireplace
We live in northern Wisconsin in a 40+ year old ranch home. Read here about the wood burning stove that we can now heat our home at temperatures down to zero degrees F! 
The wood burning stove pictured left heats our house thanks to the new blower system and many improvements in insulation I made this fall, documented on this blog and on my site SaveHouseHoldEnergy.com. Also, you will find a host of other resources for saving money while on a budget on this site, including a page on how I cut my oil hot water bill nearly in half, along with a homemade solar shower I constructed.
The stove is in our basement on the finished side. We live in a fairly modest 1200 square foot mid-sixties era ranch home with another 600 square feet of (somewhat) finished area in the basement. Our basement was always very cold so we decided to put in a free standing wood stove. The stove worked great, but much of the heat tended to stay in the basement, too much at times.
And our upstairs was not really getting much heat. To send more heat upstairs, I put in a floor grate (pictured on left) a few years back. This helped somewhat but still did not deliver a lot of heat. The way to get more heat upstairs was to install a blower run on a thermostat. The blower was purchased at Home Depot online and is nice in that it is fairly quiet. This blower is designed to be part of a 6″ stove vent pipe. The thermostat was purchased from kkontrols.com and works incredibly well. This is the same thermostat that is used in controlling temperatures on large greenhouses I see listed in seed catalogs. This blower will turn on, and stay on, as soon as heat builds up and will turn off, and stay off, when heat levels diminish. About the hardest part of rigging this whole system up was fishing the 14-2 wire through my finished basement ceiling to connect to a power source. For safety sake, consult or hire an electrician when installing this system.
[...] Vote Heating My House With Only a Fireplace [...]
I like the story and info. I too have a wood heater but it’s upstairs and god awful hot sometimes. I use three $20, 1500 watt electric heaters for back up. I liked the article on making six inch walls out of 4″ walls. I am in middle Georgia but a 6 inch insulated wall woud be real awesome here in the long run. I got rid of the gas furnace and water heater and installed a small electric instant water heater. I am totally electric now and my electric bill winter and summer is less than $99 per month. That is far below the bills of the past. I think $250 worth of firewood will get to March next year. Wish me luck.
tks
6″ walls would probably help with AC costs as well as heating. I am no expert on AC however as we only need AC about 1 or 2 weeks a year up in N.WI!
[...] panels – Pies – Comedy – Laughter – repairs – improvements – I remember the time – skills – honed – Heating My House With a Wood Burning StoveHow I can heat my home with only a wood burning stove in zero degree temperatures.Re-tagged with: [...]
According to my own analysis, thousands of people in the world get the loans at well known creditors. Thus, there’s a good chance to receive a consolidation loan in all countries.
great post my friend, very nice. congrats! if you have some time, take a look on my page, is linked to my name
pretty useful information, men , congratulations, if you want i have some related topics on my web page, my url is linked to my page.
Today, gas fireplaces are available in every style and size imaginable to fit your every decorating need or whim. From classic marble to rustic wood, you can find it all in a gas fireplace.