Staying Warm
We have a furnace in our home and we’ve never used it. I fired it up once just to see if it worked and it did. We haven’t used it since. The motor on the furnace uses a lot of power - Not as compared to some things but still a lot for an off grid home. Here are some options for heating:
Old fashioned fireplace
No. Why? they simply allow too much heat up the chimney and use way too much wood. The old fashioned fireplace is really inefficient and can actually pull heat out of your home as it uses already heated air for the fire and lets it go right up and out.
A good wood stove
I'm not talking about the quaint, old fashioned cast iron type that let as much smoke in as out. They can be cute, but for seriously heating your home, not such a good idea. I'm talking about a really good quality air tight model that is efficient and sized for your home. Yes it means getting firewood but that can be a great family outing. There is nothing better than a family that knows how to- and enjoys working together! We use soft wood during the day and hardwood to burn through the night. This has worked well for us. We scout around to find places that are free to cut firewood. If you don’t want to put out that kind of effort, you can always purchase your firewood. Most people have a heating bill through the winter and you can certainly put your budget for that into buying firewood. That would make life easier. Our stove also burns coal, when we bought the stove, coal was $35.00 a ton. Not too long ago I checked and it was $320.00 a ton. It's a great heating fuel but at least around here it has become cost prohibitive.
Non-electric gas furnace
Not my first choice but if you live in a cold climate you can use it to get the heat up to where you need it faster and then shut it off, there are also some days that you may be gone and not able to tend the woodstove. The temperature in your home can drop to an uncomfortable level and it’s nice to get the heat back up quickly without dressing for the Arctic or to keep the house from freezing up if you need to be gone even longer. It can also be good if you are sick and there is no one to tend the wood stove for you.
Pellet stove
This is my least favorite for an off grid home because to my knowledge they all have a fan that blows constantly to keep the flame going, but if your system can handle it, this can be an alternative if you don’t want to constantly feed a wood stove.
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There are other options also I would encourage you to keep an open mind and look into them, many of them are fascinating.
- Solar heating panels; there are a number of ways to accomplish this and many of them you can build and install yourself. Some systems can be pretty complicated and you might need a professional company to design and install it. You can look on YouTube for some great ideas on solar heating.
- Specially designed rooms facing south with large windows. Concrete floors that are stamped and colored or covered with natural stone tile. This design coupled with interior concrete walls for thermal mass can work really well.
- Rocket stove. You can look these up online, try YouTube; some of these are fantastic and again it’s a different way to think.
There are a lot of ways to heat and some are just plain genius. Have fun with this and see if you would be willing to try to do some of them yourself.