Wood Burning Furnaces

If wood is your fuel of choice, a wood burning stove or furnace may be the way to go. Before you choose wood, make sure that you do have good and easy access to your fuel. In cooler climates, the average home can expect to use up to 10 cords of wood to stay warm through the season. A cord of wood is 128 cubic feet of cut wood that is stacked tightly. To put this in perspective, picture a stack of wood that is 4 feet deep, 4 feet wide, and 8 eight feet tall (about normal ceiling height), and expect to use this much wood up to 10 times annually. Are you going to buy your wood, or are you going to chop your own? In this case, remember that this wood needs to have time to dry out in order to burn properly. Is the property a full time home, or just a getaway cabin? The greatest advantage to wood is that it does not need to require any electricity at all. Even corn pellet burning furnaces do need an electrical power source.