Real world heating cost

[Dean Lofthouse]

What do you reckon the costs would be to heat your home via logs ?

 

Once my burner is lit, it burns 24 hours a day. Over night it burns on tick over and also when no-one is in the house we have it on tick over.

 

I,ve been keeping tabs on how much we use and I reckon if we had to buy our logs, it would be cheaper to run on gas

 

I estimated £10 per day in logs to heat our home

[Woodworks]

"What do you reckon the costs would be to heat your home via logs ?"

 

About £800 on our selling price of £95 per cube.

 

I am running our ground source heat pump at the moment so I have more logs to sell as it works out cheaper.

 

Logs are not a cheap way to heat a home unless you get them well below going rate or for free compared with mains gas.

[detritus21]

We do 24/7 in winter. Logs we can do about 10-15 quid a day, on my prices, depending on how hard we burn it. The difference is we burn alot of coal. Running on coal i reckon costs 15-18 a week at the depths of winter. We were spending the equivelent on gas but for only 3-4 hours a day and the house was freezing. Wood would be expensive coal not as much.

[Amelanchier]

Last time I worked it out I was half that Dean but then we rarely run ours 24/7 and we are mid terrace. Still, I imagine the next owner of the property will switch to oil with a month...

Edited November 6, 2013 by Amelanchier

[scraggs]

I am currently using about 2 barrow bags a week, that will go up when it gets really cold, so whatever the cost of that would be, I would think it's about £8-10 when it's going full pelt a day if I had to buy them in, if it wasn't free I would definately be using gas as the issue I have is no back boiler so we rely on the fan to blow the heat around the house, which it does very well but the bathroom at the far end of the house can be a bit cold sometimes, so I have a bath after everyone else and by then it has warmed the room up a bit

Although I have to go and collect the cord and put petrol in the saws, it's a considerable saving that I am very gratefull of.

[New Forest Firewood Co]

I don't think anyone would be leaving their gathering on 24/7 and would deffo switch off when nobody's in.

 

I put my gas boiler on as little as possible and switch off when I go out and overnight.

 

I have 2 open fires that eat wood but at least 1 is lit whenever I'm in the house in the winter and 2 when it's really cold. I go through about a wheelbarrow (piled right up) every two days when it's cold, more if I'm in a lot. 10 wheelbarrows are about 1m3 so approx £100 worth of logs.

 

I wouldn't want to have to buy them now but conversely if I had loads of money I wouldn't be doing logs and I could probably afford to buy them!

[Tom D]

Same here dean, prob cheaper on gas, we burn about 30 cube a year, so £1500 at my prices, that would buy me 2-3 tanks of LPG. Although as the price of gas goes up the logs seem a better bet.

[magwick]

We live on a wide beam boat. We spend £100-£200 a month on diesel for the central heating plus if we had to pay for logs about the same on logs/coal.

It's a constant battle to keep the damp out.

[TGB]

It's interesting to read, that most of the few posting so far, would not heat by logs if they had to buy. Does this then indicate, that most people who but logs, are either paying through the nose for their primary heat source? Or that the wood burner is just a quaint accessory, that they feel gives a degree of rustic charm and incidentally, also heats a room when one has visitors?

[New Forest DEAN]

This is similar topic to another thread - I think wood burners are definately a luxury, unless you have no real choice. Everyone thinks they are lovely and cosy and good value (wood grows on trees, it must be cheap!), but don't factor in the cost the stove, installation, maintenance etc. And then the logs aren't cheap if you buy them ready split....

 

Gas (especially a combi condensing boiler) is the cheapest by a long way - our last house annual bill was about £400 for about 6 hours a day.

 

Oil in our new house (a bit bigger) was £300 a month!!! So got rid of the oil boiler..

 

Wood for 5-6 hours heating a day, 5 months over winter is costing about £500 total - but I do all the ringing and splitting, which is a huge amount of work (plus chainsaw, petrol etc). If I spent the same time on a paying job, I could easily pay for oil instead. But I enjoy chopping wood....at the moment...If I had to buy ready split it would be very expensive, probably as much as oil or more.

 

We also do the kettle and some cooking on the stove.

 

Our hot water comes from solar thermal (not PV) on the roof and provides for April to October - still getting a couple of showers in November.

 

We do run a 'cool' house though, not hot.