How much wood?

[Medusa]

We have oil heating and took advantage of the cheap oil prices during lockdown to fill up our tank. The heating tends to be on an hour in the morning during winter and for a couple of hours at night. We also have two wood burning stoves in the dining room and lounge and use these to heat the house when the heating has gone off as required. The biggest stove in the dining room will heat the kitchen and upstairs somewhat when its lit, the lounge stove is smaller and is used mainly just to heat the lounge and we dont always feel the need to light both stoves. We are lucky to get free pallets (lots of them), but pallet wood burns fast and so this year we bought a load of dried logs as the pallet supply dried up during lockdown. It seems to have gone colder, fast this year and I am worried that we will run out of wood before winter/early spring is over and the stoves arent required. My usual answer to my question would be as much as possible, but is there an easy way to work out an estimate of how much wood we need?

[Bosworth]

I have a simple metric my dad taught me:
- Shit wood (pallets and scrap) = 0.5 units
- Good soft wood = 1 unit
- Pretend logs = 2 units
- Hard wood = 4 units
- Coal = 9 units.

So how much you need depends on the above energy density x heat required.

2 large wood burners will chomp through a cubic metre of pallet wood in a couple of days, versus a 30kg sack of coal.

[Medusa]

Only just noticed this Bosworth. Thank you.As only one of our stoves is multifuel, I will be buying a couple of bags of coal. I didnt actually realise how much warmer coal would keep us than wood. Important lesson learned!

[korolev]

There are variations in coal too. 100+ years ago the Royal Navy used to ship Welsh coal to their coaling stations around the world as they reckoned they could get another 1-2 knots out of it.

[jansman]

There are variations in coal too. 100+ years ago the Royal Navy used to ship Welsh coal to their coaling stations around the world as they reckoned they could get another 1-2 knots out of it.

It will be a moot point after April 2021. Sales of bituminous coal will be severely restricted.You won 't be able to buy pre bagged coal,only open 50kg sacks ,delivered by a fuel merchant.That situation will last for two years,until existing stocks are gone.After that,it will be smokeless- which is Anthracite,basically.

Coal,in whatever form,packs a punch! It is energy - dense,and facilitated the industrial revolution,replacing wood ( which was depleted badly). Coal production peaked in 1919, replaced by an even more energy dense fuel - oil!

Now we are hoping to substitute fossil fuels,as coal did wood,and oil did coal; With renewables. Which still rely on fossil inputs for manufacturing and maintenance.

Its been a still few days weatherwise.Today Ratcliffe powerstation fired up ( it is a coal station that is on death row) and we all commented " the wind turbines have stopped turning. " The beauty of the remaining 'Black Stations' is that they can fire up and bridge the power gap when the wind don't blow,and the sun don't shine.And now we are in a cold snap.

And the government want to power tens of millions of cars with electricity? Yeah right.

[pseudonym]

Its been a still few days weatherwise.Today Ratcliffe powerstation fired up ( it is a coal station that is on death row) and we all commented " the wind turbines have stopped turning. " The beauty of the remaining 'Black Stations' is that they can fire up and bridge the power gap when the

I wondered what that cloud was driving back from Oakham to Melton.

[ForgeCorvus]

How about This as an alternative to "Evil Polluting Fossil Fuel burners"(AKA normal cars)..... And its Carbon neutral, which sparky-boxes aren't.

I wonder what the MPP (Miles-Per-Pallet) is?