Question about wood burning for heating home

We are considering putting in a wood burning furnace, the kind that sits outside of your home. Problem is I have no idea of what it costs to buy a chord of wood or even where to buy it. Does anyone know???

A cord of hardwood runs about 55.00. I know there are several ads in the Lakeshore shopper advertising wood for sale, just make sure it is hardwood and not softwood. I know you can by slab wood at Porters lumber mill on the St. John's road and they do deliver it. I know the outside furnace type uses bigger pieces therefore you probably wouldn't want small pieces. I know Mill's Orchard also on the St. John's road has wood for sale and they also have one of those outdoor furnaces so they could tell you what you need. I keep hearing that natural gas is going up alot so you will save money heating with wood. We have a wood insert and it heats our whole house and we had it professionally installed so therefore our homeowners insurance didn't go through the roof. I love wood heat it feels so good on those cold winter nights.

Thanks beatrice! Getting an outdoor wood furnace that hooks up to our existing duct work is a definate consideration for us since they say the average home heating bill will be going up $600 this winter. Beatrice, if I may ask, how many chords of wood do you burn during the winter? And about how many square feet is your home? Ours is a 2,000 sq ft house.

If natural gas is going up like they say and a lot of people switch to wood the price of wood will go up also. The law of supply and demand ,I got it and you want it ..then you pay . I think money is more wisely spent on conservation i.e new windows and more insulation . etc.

I have an outdoor furnace and we burn anywhere from 20-30 cord of wood a yr. We usually start it up the last part of Sept. middle of Oct. for the kids and we also have our hot water tank hooked up to it also so in the winter the burner is heating our water and not the electricity. I love our system. Our house is about 1600 sq. ft.

I have an outdoor furnace and we burn anywhere from 20-30 cord of wood a yr. We usually start it up the last part of Sept. middle of Oct. for the kids and we also have our hot water tank hooked up to it also so in the winter the burner is heating our water and not the electricity. I love our system. Our house is about 1600 sq. ft.

Free, go out in the bush and cut some tree's down

Haywire, thanks for the info, very interesting. Do you still keep your utilites (gas or oil etc) hooked up for times when you are away? I find that normally when we go away it is not during the winter months due to weather conditions so someone is always home as we work different shifts. We do have some friends who have 70 acres, most of it in tree's and we would be allowed to go cut on their land. Seems to me we'd take dead tree's, help to clear out their bush by taking what is already down and dry. Unless of course there are some tree's they'd want removed that are standing, then we could pile that up in chords here and let it dry for a few years. Either way, free fuel for the furnace minus our labor and time. But it beats sitting on the couch watching television.

Does anyone know, or Haywire, do you know where to buy an outdoor furnace system that is in Canada? The information we got is from the U.S.

We still have our propane hooked up for back up only in case we are gone and the furnace goes out but most of the time we have a family member come over once a day and load it up for us.
There are some people around the area that do sell them but we have a Wood Doctor. We had went to a show in London about 4 yrs ago and seen them there and my hubby did a lot of research on them before we actually got one. If you need a number I can try and get you one. There is a couple in the area that sells the Wood Doctor. The company is located in the east. I'm thinking they are in Nova Scotia.