[Greenbuilding] wood heating: fuel consumption/HDD

[Reuben Deumling]

I measure hours of stove use as follows:
start: lighting the fire
end: when the coals are such that I would normally add wood, but because
I've brought the indoor temperature up to where I want it, I don't

Although this method fails to take account of plenty of variables, I've
found it to match up well with other parameters I track. By this method I
consistently use a cord of wood in 500 hours of stove use, even though I
burn different kinds of wood. I've found this method simple and robust, but
given how differently I'm heating this winter than last, I may learn
otherwise....

As for historical HDD database, I went here to get mine:
http://www.ocs.orst.edu/page_links/climate_data_zones/local_data/heat_degree_days/6751hdd.html
http://www.ocs.orst.edu/page_links/climate_data_zones/local_data/heat_degree_days/6751hdd.html
That won't help you in Maine, but I suspect similar data could be found for
other regions. I think I did a google search, but it has been a while, so I
don't remember exactly.

Reuben Deumling

On 11/2/07, Corwyn <corwyn at midcoast.com> wrote:
>
>
> On Nov 02, 2007, at 09:57, Reuben Deumling wrote:
>
> > I burned my wood stove for .33hrs/Heating Degree Day during the
> > Oct-May heating season last winter. I'm already doing much better this
> > year, without even adding much insulation, which is my medium term
> > goal, of course. Anyone else calculating this sort of thing?
>
> I keep track of logs per day, and daily temperature highs and lows.
> But that data is pretty suspect.  I am not sure how I would measure
> hours of wood stove use.  How do you do it?
>
> Proper data would probably be pounds of wood, moisture content of wood,
> and measured local degree-days.  Perhaps one day I will get inspired to
> do that.  Anyone know of an easy to get historical degree day database?
>
> I will, of course, put in my plug for BTUs/Degree-day as a useful
> metric, and remind people that a on-line calculator for such is
> available at my website: http://www.greenfret.com/metric.html
>
> Thank You Kindly,
>
> Corwyn
>
> --
> Corwyn
> Kermit didn't know the half of it...
> http://www.greenfret.com/
> corwyn at greenfret.com
>
>