Home Ownership Burning wood to heat your home can be economical if you have the right equipment and materials.

Estimating whether a wood burner will improve your energy picture requires knowing your current fuel costs, the cost of wood, the kind of wood available and the efficiency of both the proposed wood-burning system and your existing system.

Ideally, wood fuel should light easily, burn slowly and leave piles of long-lasting coals. Dense hardwoods like oak, maple, hickory, ash and birch best fill this description. Unfortunately, these desirable species prefer the temperate climate in the southern regions of Ontario, Quebec and the Maritimes. If you live anywhere else, you're out of luck.

To calculate whether it's worthwhile switching to wood for some or all of your heating

requirements, compare the cost per kW.h for the different alternatives. The accompanying tables of wood heating values and energy values for different fuels give you the numbers to plug into our energy formula.

Divide the cost per unit of energy by the number of kilowatt-hours (kWh) per unit of energy, and multiply by the efficiency of your heating appliance to produce the cost per kilowatt-hour of that heating method.

To calculate the heating value of wood, multiply the theoretical value for wood (12 450 kW h/cord) by the density of your wood species. Then use that heating value and the cost per cord of wood to work out the heating cost.




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November 20, 2008