Question

Can heating your home with wood save money on heating bills?

Answer 1

Heating your home with wood can save you money if you're able to get most of your firewood for free.

If you have to buy wood at $250.00 to $300.00 a cord each month then you'd likely be better off heating with natural gas if it's available.

Heating with wood even when buying firewood is certainly much cheaper than heating with heating oil or even sometimes propane.

Heating with heating oil can cost as high as $4,000.00 to $6,000.00 per year but wood heat would cost you probably $1,500.00 per year depending on size of home and cost of firewood.

If you have natural gas available and have to buy wood then use natural gas as it's likely cheaper to heat with natural gas than wood.

But if you have propane or oil only available for heating then wood would be cheaper but requires some work.

Answer 2

Another thing you should factor in when deciding on heating your home with wood is that you may not be able to heat your home with the wood stove during high winds because smoke can blow back into your house.

I burn mostly with wood stoves but even right now the wind is blowing hard at 30 MPH and wind is gusting down my wood stove pipe and blew some smoke inside my house so I had to put the fire out until the wind calms down this evening.

They make wind caps for wood stove pipes but sometimes you still get some wind blowing back down into the house.

Once the wind calms down I'll be able to burn the stove again but not right now so it's electric heat for now until I get the gas furnace installed hopefully next winter.