I'm still curious as to what happens when you go away for a week or two in the depths of winter?

Sounds like a hassle to me, but i'm very lazy

I dont know as we are not intending to. I guess we would just let the fire go out and set each room at say 18C and the baseboards would kick in for those two weeks to maintain that. We are lucky in that this house is well insulated and holds heat well. We have the baseboards to heat the basement, they are set at 18C and hardly seem to be on to maintain that.

Aaaaah i thought it was wood heated only, non of that new fangled electrickery.

5 Cords we went through on our only venture in wood only heating. Wood ran out by the end of feb and so did we.

The house looked nice in the pictures, as did the logs, but then I suppose they all do.

I suppose I should have said that four cords was for a terrible winter and that I eventually beat the high quality log man down to $300. I managed one winter on a single purchased cord but that was when there were high winds bringing trees down all over.

ah yes, the baseboards are still here, just all except the basement are turned off. We had to pay a monthly plan amount to NS Power based on last years elec use, and now we had a lovely $1k credit sitting with them which we just spent elsewhere

I was a little worried as we ran our pool pump ALL summer and had lots of lights at Christmas and we still overpaid, bless the woodstove!

That's really the only effective way to use wood heat isn't it? Have a back up such as electric baseboard heaters, hot water radiation etc which is usually turned down low or off.

The other lesson learned for me is *always* heat your basement. (and insulate it too). Otherwise it acts as a massive heatsink. We have hot water radiation and programmable thermostats in 4 out of the 5 zones in the house. The basement though is set to a constant 18-19C.

Agreed on the need for back up but not electric baseboard heaters. IME, of houses and motels, electric baseboard heaters smell, creak in the night, set fire to things and cost a fortune to run.

I expect next time we'll go for wood with a propane furnace.

definately, I am so not in love with the baseboards but am glad I have a backup, should we need it. Having said that they are of course useless in a power outage

So are the gas furnaces, as they almost all require a fan to move the air or exhuast

Ditto my hot water radiation. No power to the furnace & circulation pump = no heat. I imagine it would be possible to provide enough emergency generator wattage at reasonable cost to power this - and the well pump. But, we really haven't had the history of extended power outages to make it seem worthwhile.

I've looked into this and depending on what you want to power it can vary from about $400 for a small 4kw generator gas/natrual gas/propane that will keep you ticking, upto about $3000+ that will auto switch and keep your air con and everthing else running

I live in Nfld. Don't need aircon Yes, those costs seem in the right order. As I say, it's not something that we've felt the need to invest in thus far. Mind you, now we have a family it might be worth of reconsideration.

I'm giving some thought to a small portable, but converting it to natural gas and using a remote starter setup