Is Wood Heating Right for You?

Image Gallery Heating your home with wood can make you more self-reliant and save you money, too. ISTOCKPHOTO/CHRISHAYWARD

Wood heating has many advantages. Wood is a renewable fuel, it’s widely available in many parts of North America, and in some situations, heating with wood can save you money.

If you’re interested in wood heat, right now is the best time to explore your options for a woodstove or other wood heating system. Because spring is the slow season, wood heat retailers may sweeten the deal to get your business this time of year.

But before making a purchase, be sure to research your options and seek out good advice. This will be time well spent, because it can help you avoid costly mistakes. Wood heating isn’t for everyone, but with a little research and planning, you may discover that it’s a great option for you. Here are a few things to consider when evaluating your options.

Calculating the Costs and Benefits
In many cases, heating with wood will save you money, but this is not true for everyone. If you live in a forested rural area and can do some of the processing of the wood yourself, you can save some money — especially if you already have a truck or trailer and are handy with a chain saw and splitting maul. But if you have to buy split firewood and have it delivered to your suburban home, you probably won’t save much.

To get a rough idea of the cost savings, you can try various online tools, such as this fuel cost calculator. However, no calculator can give you a completely accurate figure for how much you will save. Most can’t figure in supplementary heating, in which only a portion of the conventional fuel cost is displaced. Nor can they take account of the time you would devote to all the tasks involved in wood heating.

After all, if you paid yourself minimum wage for all the cutting, splitting, stacking, fire stoking, ash removal and so on, the savings would quickly evaporate. So even if your main motivation is to save money, also consider if the other benefits appeal to you—the ones that seem to sustain the most successful users of wood energy. If you enjoy physical work and a regular routine, and if you would like to be more self-reliant and less dependent on fossil fuels, than wood heating might be for you.