Nora Melley wrote:We live in a house built in the 1920's, in New Jersey (suburban Philadelphia). We bought it a couple of years ago. We have an oil burning furnace that was installed in 2004, and we installed a wood burning stove in the dining room / kitchen last year. We have been having a lot of trouble with the heater, and it seems like it might be time to replace it - but I would really like to get away from oil. There's no natural gas on our street. Geothermal would likely be problematic, as we are on a creek and the township probably won't issue a permit. My long term goal is a rocket mass heater in our living room to heat that half of the house, but we need to do some renovations first (knock down a wall to combine the tiny living room with a tiny bedroom). That isn't likely to happen soon.
Energy systems tend to confuse me. Give me a plant or animal any day. Perhaps there is an easy solution I'm missing? Or maybe it's an impossible problem. But if anyone can solve it, all of the smart people on the permies site can.
I am about in the same boat, and while I have hundreds of acres of forest for
firewood, for this Tiny House a woodstove would just be too much on the main floor. And clearances on a woodstove are substantial, cutting into my tiny house sized home where square footage is at a premium. Even if I did have a woodstove put in, I am left having to attend it all winter. It was a real issue on Christmas and Thanksgiving; my wife and daughters were visiting the in-laws and I was babysitting a stove and eating at the Happy China Buffet because it was the only place open on Christmas.
So Katie and I talked, and I think we are going to replace our oil burner in this 1930 house (ours does not work), with a pellet furnance in the basement. They come with a half ton
feed bin so the unit can go days without filling, feeds automatically, provides steady heat as needed, etc. A pellet furnace can be hooked right up to the existing duct work. And unlike a woodstove that would require a back up heating system for when people are not at home...a pellet furnace would not. That saves me quite a bit of money alone. Since it would not be on the main floor, it frees up room in the house, but allows us warm floors, and we would not have to worry about the fire dying if we forgot to fill the firebox.
Now I like pellets except for buying them, so the self-suffeciency comes in by growing my own corn. I only use 3 tons of pellets a year here, so I will need to dedicate about half an
acre to growing corn, but I have all the equipment to do that. Since I would feed my sheep the chopped up corn stalks, it would mean the cost of growing the corn could be written off my taxes. It would also mean some labor growing corn and harvesting it, but I no more then it would take in putting up firewood.
I live in Maine so I like options, and the pellet boiler my father has...A-Maiz-Ing Heat, can burn
wood pellets, corn or coal. I like that, so if I did not have enough corn one year, I could jut burn boughten wood pellets, or burn coal. Now he has a Pellet BOILER, but the sme company makes a Pellet FURNACE, and so the latter is what I am going to buy.
