Heating & Cooking Forum

What this board is for

Wood stoves, rocket stoves, propane, heating oil, cookstoves, chimneys, and the building envelope that decides how much of any of them you need. In a cold climate the energy a house needs for warmth dwarfs everything electrical it will ever do, which is why heat gets its own board and why almost nobody heats off grid with electricity.

Cooking belongs here too, including the seasonal problem: a wood cookstove that is a pleasure in February makes a small house unbearable in July, and most households end up with a summer arrangement of some kind.

The questions that come up most

How much wood will I burn? A function of climate, building, and how you burn, which is why answers vary so widely. A moisture meter and a season of records will tell you more than any table, and wood wants splitting and stacking a year ahead, longer for dense hardwood.

What size stove? Smaller than instinct suggests, usually. An oversized stove in a small, well-insulated cabin gets run choked down and smoldering, which is the condition that builds creosote fastest and the most common route to a chimney fire.

Will a heat pump work off grid? In milder climates, in a well-insulated house, or as a shoulder-season option paired with wood, often yes. Carrying a northern winter on solar alone is a different proposition, because demand peaks exactly when production is at its annual minimum.

Is an unvented propane heater safe indoors? Not as a primary source in a tight house. Carbon monoxide is odorless, and a modern sealed envelope makes unvented combustion considerably more dangerous than it was in a drafty building.

What a useful answer looks like here

Give the climate, the building, and the appliance: heating degree days or at least the state, square footage and insulation level, the stove or heater make and rating, and the chimney configuration. Heat questions are unanswerable in the abstract because the same stove is generous in one building and inadequate in the next.

On anything involving combustion, clearances, or chimneys, be specific and be conservative. Listed appliances, correct clearances to combustibles, and a properly installed chimney are not bureaucratic details; they are the difference between a heating system and a fire, and insurers ask about all three.

The mistakes that cost the most here

Buying an oversized stove for a small, well-insulated space, then running it choked down and smoldering, which is the condition that builds creosote fastest.

Burning wood that has not been seasoned. Wet wood produces less heat, more smoke, and far more creosote, and a moisture meter settles the argument for a few dollars.

Skipping chimney inspection and sweeping on the theory that the fire looks fine. Chimney fires are the predictable consequence, and they are the reason insurers ask about wood heat at all.

Using an unvented combustion heater as a primary source in a tight house. Carbon monoxide is odorless, and the sealed envelope that makes a house efficient makes unvented combustion considerably more dangerous.

And spending on the appliance before spending on the envelope. Insulation and air sealing pay back every hour of every winter for the life of the building; a larger stove pays back nothing.

Fuel: supply, storage, and the week the road closes

Whatever fuel you choose, the annual quantity belongs in the operating budget from the start, and so does the reality that delivery depends on a driver being able to reach you in winter. A propane tank that runs low in a January storm is a different problem from one that runs low in June.

Wood needs a year of lead time and dry storage with air moving through it, which means the woodshed is part of the build rather than an afterthought. Dense hardwood wants longer than a single summer.

Keep a reserve that assumes the road is closed for a week, because the week you need it is the week the truck cannot get in. And keep the backup appliance tested rather than merely present: one that has not been lit since installation is a plan, not a backup.

Cooking, and the summer problem

A wood cookstove that is a pleasure in February makes a small house unbearable in July, so most households end up with a seasonal split: wood in winter and propane, an outdoor kitchen, or a summer kitchen in the warm months.

Solar cooking is genuinely useful in sunny climates for slow, unattended cooking and useless on the day the weather turns, which makes it a supplement rather than a system.

Electric cooking deserves a note. A kettle or an induction hob is a surge question for the inverter rather than a daily energy question, and on a system with real summer surplus, cooking electrically at midday uses energy that would otherwise be curtailed. In December it is usually the wrong call.

How much of this is regional

Heating demand is set by climate more than by anything you choose. A house in a mild region and the same house in a severe one are different projects, and the number that captures it is heating degree days, which the site report gives for any address.

Fuel availability is regional too. Wood is cheap where you have it and expensive where you do not; propane depends on a delivery driver reaching you; heating oil and coal remain in use in some regions and not others. Each carries its own storage and access implications.

And the rules vary: burn permits, stove installation requirements, and what insurers will accept all differ locally. Post your climate and your county with any heating question.

Safety, insurance, and the part that is not negotiable

Combustion appliances kill people who were careful about everything else. Carbon monoxide is odorless, chimney fires are the predictable consequence of creosote, and both are avoidable with maintenance and correct installation. Fit carbon monoxide alarms wherever anything burns, test them, and replace them at the interval on the label.

Insurers frequently ask about wood heat specifically: whether the appliance is listed, whether it was professionally installed, and what the clearances are. Some will not cover an unlisted or owner-installed appliance at all, and that is worth knowing before the build rather than after a claim.

Nothing in that list is expensive relative to what it protects, and none of it is a matter of preference. It is the part of this board where the answers should be conservative.

The lesson that covers this

Lesson 7: Heat: the system that decides your winter in the free course works through this subject in the order the decisions actually arrive. Match the heat source to the climate and the building, size it to the heat loss, and plan the fuel a year ahead.

The whole course is twelve lessons, free, with no account required to read any of it: start at the beginning if you are new to this, or jump straight to the lesson above if you are not.

Tools for this topic

Most questions on this board come down to a number somebody has not worked out yet. These do the arithmetic and show their working, so an answer here can be checked rather than taken on faith.

• Tools/heat loss calculator: estimate what the building actually demands
• Tools/firewood calculator: work out cords from your climate and building
• Tools/propane calculator: compare propane against the alternatives

How this board works

Posting needs an account, which exists so that answers have a name attached and so that the same person can be asked a follow-up six months later. It costs nothing and it is not used for anything else.

The conventions here are the ones that make a small forum useful. Say where you are, at least to the state or region, because almost every answer on this site depends on climate or on local rules. Say what you have already, and what you have already tried. Give numbers where you have them, and say when you are guessing. And when something works or fails, come back and say which, because the thread is read by far more people than post in it.

Answers here should be able to say where they came from. Experience is welcome and so is a rule of thumb, as long as it is labeled as one. Where a claim is about safety, code, or law, it wants a source, because the reader on the other end may be about to spend money or wire something themselves.

Boards next door

Off-grid questions rarely stay inside one department. A water question is often a power question underneath, and a land question is usually several at once. These boards field the neighboring subjects:

• Shelter & Structures: Cabins, tiny homes, insulation, and building for the long haul in a place the grid does not reach.
• Food & Growing: Gardens, preservation, and food storage: growing and keeping your own food year round.
• Tools & Self-Reliance: Chainsaws, hand tools, first aid, and the skills and kit that keep you self-sufficient.
• Money & Finance: The real cost of going off-grid and how to fund it: honest budgets, making a living remotely, insurance, taxes, and hard...

Asking a question that gets a good answer

The difference between a thread that gets three useful replies and one that gets none is almost always in the first post. Four things do most of the work: where you are, what you already have, what you have already tried, and what you are actually trying to achieve.

Location matters because nearly every answer on this site depends on climate or on local rules, and the same question has different right answers in Vermont and Arizona. What you have matters because advice that assumes different equipment wastes everyone's time. What you have tried stops people repeating it. And the goal matters because the best answer is frequently that the problem should be solved somewhere else entirely: a load reduced rather than a battery added, a parcel checked rather than a design revised.

Numbers beat adjectives. Give the figure where you have one and say plainly when you are guessing, because a guess labeled as a guess is useful and a guess presented as a measurement sends people down the wrong path.

Answering well, and the standard here

Experience is the most valuable thing on a board like this, and it is most valuable when it comes with its conditions attached: what you have, where, for how long, and what went wrong along the way. A rule of thumb is welcome when it is labeled as one.

Where a claim is about safety, code, or law, it wants a source, because the person reading may be about to wire something themselves or spend a large amount of money. Direct-current faults, combustion appliances, and structural decisions are not places for confident approximations, and saying you are not sure is a genuine contribution rather than a failure.

It is also worth saying when something has changed. Equipment, prices, and regulations all move, and an answer that was right three years ago can be wrong now.

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