How many others attempt to heat their entire home with a fireplace and/or wood burning stove?

I use very small fans to circulate the air in the living areas. We are able to heat our 1400 sq. ft. home with about 4 cords of wood every winter. Our basement however, is where all the pipes come and go.

We moved the thermostat on the oil burner to the basement, and set it at 45 degrees.

It definitely can, if it's the right size stove and it can be placed in the right place. I know a guy whose living room by itself is at least 1300 sf and he heats with wood alone all winter unless we get a serious cold snap. Naturally, whatever room the stove is in will probably be the warmest, but the heat will travel.

It travels best if you have relatively open spaces, not a bunch of little rooms, and it travels up most easily. You can assist it with fans. A ceiling fan in a stairwell can do a lot to move heat upstairs and in any room it will even out the heat you have.

Wood stoves don't normally have any ducting. Wood furnaces do. They both need a chimney and it must be in good shape.

Wood heat is radiant heat. It heats objects, not the air, but as the objects get warm they radiate heat too. Many woodstoves will burn for 4 to 8 hours when fully loaded and stay somewhat warm for a while after the fire has finished.

There are several things to consider. The cost of buying and installing the stove can be considerable. If you can manage it for less than $2000, I think you're doing well.

In many places, you need a certified installer to do the work or at least inspect your work. A woodstove in a house the US and some parts of Canada must be an EPA approved model and you probably won't find a used one for free. Your house insurance will probably go up, and it's not smart to fail to inform your insurer that you now have a wood stove.

They can take up a fair bit of room, not because of the stove itself but because of the clearances required to combustible surfaces. You'll need a place to store some wood inside the house unless you want to be running outside in the cold to get more every day. There's mess from having that wood in the house.

You'll also need to store wood outdoors somewhere and if you're in a cold climate that can take a fair amount of space and ideally that space is dry all year. You will spend time getting your wood into storage, and maybe splitting it. There's a saying: he who heats with wood is warm twice.

That's because of the work you do handling the wood. The chimney will need cleaning at least once a year. You can do it yourself if you don't mind being on the roof, or you hire a chimney sweep.

If you can get wood mostly for the time you spend getting it, you can save money on heating after the initial investment is recouped, but if you have to buy wood all the time, it might not be cheaper than what you have now. There are pellet stoves too, which have some advantages. Best thing to do is go to a local wood stove dealer and start checking out what they have, see what's best for your situation.

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