HEATING WITH WOOD CAN SAVE MONEY, BUT...
Something different this time. As you may know, the Rutland Herald has several associated publications, among them the Rutland Business Journal, for which I also write. Recently, I got three articles in too late for the publication schedule, so they won't run with the upcoming holiday special. But I want the businesses I talked with to get some exposure, with the permission of my editors, I'm publishing the three pieces on this blog (this is the third and last). SHOP LOCAL!
BUYING A WOOD STOVE OR FIREWOOD CAN BE
TRICKY, BUT CAN SAVE ON HEATING COSTS
You don’t have to go through complicated calculations to know whether heating with wood could save you money, because the Vermont Department of Public Service has already done that job.
At www.publicservice.vermont.gov/pub/fuel-price-report, the September prediction for the average cost of fuels from October through March put wood heat (logs and chunks) lowest in cost, at $13.64 per million BTU’s (buying a ton of green wood and letting it dry before using it). Wood pellets, which until a few years ago were only available to large-scale buyers, took second place for cost-conscious homeowners, at $19.59 per million BTU’s, followed closely at $19.79 by coal (which is arguably nature’s pelletized wood).
Rounding out the September list were natural gas at $21.38, fuel oil at $23.19, kerosene at $26.25, propane at $32.16, and electricity at $39.01. Of course these calculations do not include the value of time saved and spent doing something productive, the value of safety, or the value of peace of mind (if you have a home generator, for example, propane can run it as well as the furnace).
But since people who work in Vermont’s forests are responding to high oil prices by oiling up their chainsaws and trucks, we’ll concentrate here on some considerations for buying stoves and wood. Keep in mind that the sources cited are examples, not suggestions. The old advice “caveat emptor” (Roman for “you better shop around”) still applies.
The first decision in heating with wood is whether to go with regular firewood or pellets. For some people, step one should be a trip to the local bookstore or library, because even those who don’t expect to repair their own equipment can benefit from a certain amount of scientific knowledge.
The availability of fuel shouldn’t be a consideration in choosing which wood heat road to travel. The Green Mountain State has many firewood dealers thanks to its forests and forest products industry; and pellets are now a sideline at many hardware and home improvement stores (Garland’s Agway and Home Depot, for instance, sell them).
Shortly we’ll look closer at some firewood sources. But let’s start with the stove-sellers.
Rutland County is fortunate in having several well-established wood heating appliance stores, as well as hardware stores and used equipment dealers who carry stoves for the most part suitable for less intensive uses. Starting with one close to the Rutland highway crossroads, Country Stoves on Woodstock Avenue has kept its fires burning for nearly 30 years.
That was the word from owner Alan Currier, who carries both stove types. For conventional wood heat, he emphasizes the Vermont Castings and Pacific Energy stoves, while recommending the Vista Flame for pellets.
As the name “Vista Flame” implies, there’s a glass panel through which the fire can be watched. “All stoves today have glass,” Currier said—something customers have found more satisfactory all around than an open fireplace, which can lose as much heat up the chimney as it produces.
One minor satisfaction in buying a woodstove is that American manufacturers are making top-quality, state-of-the-art products. At the Stove Depot in Clarendon, owner Center Merrill prefers two brands emanating from Pennsylvania--Harman and Morso—and he has both chunk- and pellet-burners.
These employ the “reburn system,” Merrill said. That is, the gases the initial burning produces are passed over hot coals and given another chance to burn before leaving the stove.
The Public Service Department’s calculations used efficiency figures for all the heating modalities, 60 percent in the case of firewood and 80 percent for pellets. Merrill said his reburn units have been shown to gain 67-68 percent efficiency, and he believes that with ideal dry wood, the figure would be more like 75 percent.
At the Hearth & Cricket Stove Shop in East Wallingford, owner Daryle Thomas said the Quadra-Fire stoves he obtains from Washington State have for 20 years topped the list of the cleanest-burning woodstoves. The “Quadra” in the name refers to a design that circulates air through four distinct burning zones, utilizing the fuel so efficiently that it would be nonsense to add a catalytic converter (they used to be available to add to stove exhaust pipes, too).
Yes, he has pellet stoves, too, Thomas said. Though they might seem new to some people, “pellets have been used for about 18 years or so.”
You need to have a well-designed system, Thomas said, which to his mind includes a double-walled stainless steel chimney (he likes Metalbestos) running up through the interior of the house. He shakes his head when he sees concrete or stone or brick chimneys going up on the outside of houses, because they will take so long to heat up that creosote will form every time someone starts a fire.
And regardless of what anyone tells you, “you can’t burn green wood,” he said. You can use a lot of the wood’s energy boiling off the water in the wood, then you are burning dry wood.
That’s the sort of awareness a homeowner needs to heat with wood, Thomas said. And it can be hard work stacking and storing and carrying it, and sometimes there are messes to clean up.
But if you can handle all that, he said, “it’s remarkable how low-cost wood is.”
Long-time wood users may be reading that and thinking, “Where’s he been? Wood can cost five times what it did 20 years ago.” But lots of things cost more, and firewood can still be a good buy—if you know what you are doing.
Like buying hay or horses, buying firewood can be tricky. It comes by the cord, but a cord is officially a pile of four-foot logs four feet high and eight feet long—and firewood comes cup up or, for those who like chainsawing and splitting, in log lengths. A “face cord” is more like a third of a chord—it’s four by eight of pieces shorter than four feet—and “seasoned” wood could be very green if not split or if from the bottom of a heap. White birch and oak and both “hardwood,” but oak has far more heating value because it’s denser.
Thomas’s advice was simple: buy from a dealer who has been in the business for a while.
There’s one more big choice to make: between Colton Enterprises kiln-dried wood and other wood. Ray Colton, who said he’d “been at it for 25 years,” runs a business in Pittsfield that produces about 8,000 cords a year.
About 6,000 cords of that spends time in a building heated with miscellaneous bits of wood on hand, and when it emerges, it’s DRY. Wood is “hygroscopic”—it attracts water—so wood stored outside dries to about 20 percent water, even under cover (says The Encyclopedia of Wood Heat). Colton Wood does better than that.
Cheap, it isn’t. Locally, Colton sells it for about $220 a cord, but has to tack on transportation costs for trucking it elsewhere ($265 for Rutland). Seasoned is $190 locally, and green $160, both cut and split.
But the kiln-dried wood is in demand, and three Colton trucks go “about everywhere in Vermont.” And out of state: nearly 70 percent of the wood goes to dealers who serve the Boston market, and in turn charge $450 a cord “bare minimum,” he said.
Colton Enterprises has put together some interesting infrastructure for handling wood, such as a carbide circular saw blade that can cut 1,500 cords before it needs sharpening, and a two-acre paved area on which “seasoned” wood is put to dry. But like all the wood sources contacted, they buy mostly from loggers, who have crooked or too-small or wrong-species wood that lumber mills won’t buy. Logging is dirty, dangerous, heavy duty work, and anyone who heats with wood should think of those men in the hills and thank them.
The Mendon-based Killington Firewood Service has been around since 1977, slowly expanding to serve customers within about 20 miles, said Lane Wilbur. He said a big part of their success has been extra steps to keep people happy.
If someone orders 16-inch wood, they toss out the short pieces and any that won’t stack well, he said. The wood is kept in four by four by four piles, but they add another six inches on top to make sure the customer gets a real cord. Sometimes suppliers bring in loads with a high percentage of less desirable wood, and to make sure no one gets a delivery in which weaker species predominate, they mix the logs so everyone gets the same mix.
Killington Firewood Service sells green and seasoned wood for $185 a cord, and dry wood for $220, Wilbur said. “I haven’t had anyone complain” in all their years of deliveries, he said.
Mendon is also the home base for B & B Firewood. Larry Bridge said they’ve been doing firewood for “going on 15 years,” selling to Pittsfield, Killington, Rutland, West Rutland, Clarendon, Shrewsbury, and of course locally.
They have three delivery trucks, two of which can bring two cords and one that hauls one cord, Bridge said. They sell cut and split, green or dry, usually mixed hardwoods that loggers bring off the hills.
Yet a third Mendon source is Johnny LaPlante, who “just started two years ago.” He sells firewood that’s been seasoned a year, cut to a customer’s preferred length (12 to 24 inches), and is all split--when he isn’t busy with his Morgan horses.
In addition to getting loggers’ tops and rejects, LaPlante has identified another reason why there’s a lot of firewood available: the big windstorm last spring. “I’ve never seen so many trees down in my life,” he said.
Hubbardton has Don Hanson, who said he owns 76 acres there and probably has 15 cords of firewood to cut up and sell. Most of the wood he has processed is 16-18 inches long, and he can sell it split if people want.
“There’s nothing beats wood heat,” Hanson said.
That’s a very partial list. Consult the classified ads to find others, or ask a neighbor who heats with wood. If you live near a lumber mill, ask if they sell “slabs,” the rounded parts of logs that can’t become lumber. Remember what Vermont author Don Mitchell once said: when God farmed Vermont, he raised trees, and given the slightest chance, He goes back to doing it again.
