I've been playing around with all sorts of ideas over the past several years. It started by building a 48 sq ft temporary room. Was looking to see if I could get myself set up so I could have body heat and stray electricity as my only sources of heating the room. Had it wrapped with R-60, but not the ceiling. After a couple of years I decided it was to big and dropped down to 32 sq ft. This time I put the insulation on top as well. It helped me get closer to the final goal. It still didn't get me there but it was closer.
Then several years back I saw Paul's posting about reducing your
electric heat bill by 89%. I read it and realized I was still sitting in way to big of room, given what I was actually using for floor/ceiling space in the room. I tore the 32 sq ft room down and replace it with a, roughly, 50 cubic ft room. I spent one night in it before moving in with a friend of mine, full time live in caretaking him for 2.5 years. I knew from the one night I slept in it, I didn't like the hammock hang. I needed the 8 foot length, minimum, for proper hammock hanging(I have slept in hammocks full time at home since fall of 2006).
With occasional opportunities to escape and make my way to my house over the 2.5 yr stretch I ended up tearing the room down and putting the 32 sq ft room back up. This time I added more insulation, besides the R-60 rolled insulation, I also took the sheet insulation out of the ceiling above the main room and put it around the walls and ceiling of the 32 sq ft room. I also wrapped the room in plastic from the floor up. Now I was sitting at the closest to real world environment I could hope for, outside of the room. Last winter I checked, with nothing on in the house and me not living there, on the coldest morning of the winter(-8 to -10F) it was 26 degrees on the kitchen sink. This winter on the coldest morning(-20F) it was 7 degrees on the kitchen sink(pretty much covers 90% of the local winter conditions around here). Without taking the room outside I knew I wouldn't be able to get much closer to checking out how warm the room would stay. It held up exceedingly well.
In the past I would get home in the evening and the room would be 36-40 degrees and I would turn on the heat and warm it up to around 60. Now I get home the room is sitting 48-52 and I turn on the light and the laptop and the room warms itself up to 60 within 1-1.5 hours, no extra heat source. By the time I go to bed it will be up to 68-70 degrees. I never used to see much above 64-65, if I could even get it that warm in the past. Now when I wake up in the morning it is usually 56-60 degrees and plenty of times even up around 62-64, with nothing for heat in the room from the time I go to bed until I wake up in the morning. Only my body heat is keeping the room warm. I used to wear a stocking cap all the time, this is the first winter I have lived at the house where I haven't put one on while inside. Several times I have sat in the room with nothing more than a t-shirt on. There is no draftiness, unlike in the past and the floor stays warmer as well.
Prior to this winter I was thinking of putting a compost barrel in the house and trying out the idea of compost heating. I'm glad I didn't since it would have skewed my findings otherwise. Now I am thinking a lot about trying to set up a
wood chip pile beside the house and plumb in heat from the wood pile for next winter. I'm wandering if I could get away with heating the whole house with a wood chip pile or not. I know the area where I am looking at putting the pile would give me roughly 5.5-6 feet height before I would get up to the bottom of the window. It would also give me around 7.5-8 feet width between the edge of the house and the edge of the old chimney(right beside the edge of the window). I was figuring something like 3-4 foot deep for the third dimension. I'm figuring since I would be using it as the winter compost pile, for getting rid of human waste and food scraps I would take some of the many window panes I have and build a box over it to keep the snow off to help make it more workable during the winter months. I'm already guessing wood chips would be less workable than regular compost(darn hard to move that stuff around when its frozen).
How do you determine what size pile you will need for heating a given area?
By the way, the current room, I'm using around 1-1.5 kW per day, everything included(laptop, light, heating and cooking). It is amazingly efficient. If I made one big change to the hammock, for the most part, anything above 10F, and maybe even 0F(outside temperature), I could away without any heating system at all in the room. I'm only using a food tray warmer as the heat source as it is. I have it placed right underneath my butt when I'm in the hammock.
The house itself is 468 sq ft, one floor, right now with no insulation in the ceiling throughout the house, other than the 32 sq ft room. I know the walls in the front room(directly connected to the planned wood chip pile location) has probably around R-26 in the walls. The main part of the house, where the 32 sq ft room sits, has insulation, but I'm not sure how much, the floor is uninsulated, other than the 32 sq ft room.
