Why an Outdoor Wood Stove Should be on Your Radar

I know, I know—it’s not quite mid-July. Why am I breaking the unspoken northern-dwellers rule of pretending winter is a season far, far off in the distance? Why would I bring up outdoor wood stoves when temperatures are still hovering in the 80s and 90s?

One word: preparedness. Being prepared for the upcoming winter season may not be the first thing on your mind the week after celebrating the Fourth of July, but this is the perfect time to get your home equipped for the cold that is coming.

About Outdoor Wood Stoves

Let’s talk about outdoor wood stoves. An outdoor wood stove is a wood burning unit placed outside of the home that that heats via a boiler system. This heat is transferred underground into your home and distributed throughout by way of your furnace blower. Simple, effective, and efficient.

Advantages of Wood Heat

Why would you choose to heat your home with wood rather than a conventional propane, electric, or natural gas option? A primary reason homeowners choose this route is financial. Most of your winter utility bill can be eliminated with a wood burning stove and multiple buildings on your property (think garage or shed) can be heated with one stove. Outdoor wood stoves are therefore an excellent choice for folks looking to heat outbuildings as well as their home in a budget friendly, affordable manner.

Considerations to Make

Some considerations to make when thinking about installing an outdoor wood stove: do you have access to wood? Do you have space to install the unit? And if you live in a suburban area, you’re going to want to be sure that the unit you choose is neighbor friendly. Cheaper units tend to emit more smoke than better models, which obviously becomes an issue when neighbors are in close proximity.

Here at Earth Energy Systems, we want to help you stay ahead of the game and be prepared for each coming season. Outdoor wood stoves are one of your heating and cooling options and we’re here to serve you. From Luck to Grantsburg, Danbury to Siren, Spooner to Hayward and beyond, Earth Energy has all of your Wisconsin heating and cooling needs covered. Contact us today!

Alternative Heating Solutions to Keep You Warm this Winter

With another Wisconsin winter upon us, we’re now settled in for the coldest months of the year. In order to keep our homes cozy and well-defended against the arctic cool, we must be diligent about maintaining our heating systems. Very little will cause more angst than returning home mid-January to find your heating system malfunctioning. If this misfortune knocks on your door, contact Earth Energy Systems for an assessment.

Energy prices are volatile and though you can stymie costs by keeping the thermostat down, this isn’t the answer. With today’s technological advancements, a home can be kept at a comfortable temperature without breaking the bank. At Earth Energy Systems we pride ourselves on the ability to evaluate your home and how you live in it and then strategically use that information to choose the most energy efficient heating system designed specifically for your needs.

Radiant In-Floor Heat

Families typically congregate in certain rooms of their house the majority of the time that they’re home. The family room, kitchen, a child’s bedroom, or the bathroom might be well-used rooms. The spare bedrooms, the basement, and the home office maybe aren’t primary activity hubs, but with traditional heating systems they are kept warm regardless of the bodies present. You pay for that unused heat. Radiant heat is an excellent solution to this issue.

Radiant floor heating is relatively inexpensive to install and offers huge benefits that will quickly pay for themselves. With radiant floor heating, the heating coils used to warm your space can be installed in a variety of ways based on your home’s design. A wall thermostat can be installed in each room to control the heat settings room by room. If you aren’t using a specific room, the heat can be turned down and then adjusted accordingly (or set on a timer) when you need the room warmed back up. In addition, you can have a “weather sensitive control” installed that adjusts the panel temperature to work in concert with the outside temperature which offers additional savings.

Wood Pellet Stove

Another energy-saving heat source is a wood pellet stove. This gives you an advantage because you would no longer be at the mercy of volatile energy prices or power failures. Pellet stoves are also environmentally friendly. Fueled by pellets made from sawdust and timber byproducts (about the size of pencil erasers) you would be assisting in the efforts to recycle waste from industrial timber activities. Pellet stoves can hold 50 lbs. of pellets and can operate for 60 hours on one fuel load. The blowers are whisper-quiet and emit no smoke. Depending on the model you choose, you can have a five-year or limited lifetime warranty on the appliance and have either four heat settings and two thermostat modes (high/low or on/off) or a digital control panel. Pellet stoves are 81 percent fuel efficient and they keep you off the grid.

Outdoor Wood Stove

Yet another alternative heating solution is an outdoor wood stove. A wood stove is ideal for those who have scrap wood sources or the ability to cut their own firewood. Earth Energy Systems offers multiple models, but all of our options are energy efficient: no fuel or byproducts enter your home keeping you safe from smoke, soot, and fumes, and each model is designed to deliver the maximum BTUs. This translates into less time spent cutting wood and filling your stove. Insulated underground pipes move the heated water into your home’s heat exchanger and heating system and you simply control the temperature with a thermostat inside your home.

Whether you need to replace your current system now or are thinking about the future, give us a call. An Earth Energy specialist will come in and evaluate your heating needs. They will thoroughly check your windows, doors, walls, floors, insulation and ductwork and discuss how you use the various areas of your home. That information will be crunched in order to recommend the most efficient and cost effective system for you. Earth Energy Systems serves Polk and Burnett Counties and portions of Washburn and Barron Counties. Our estimates are free and we offer a wide variety of financing options at favorable terms. Contact us today!