NEVER Pay The Heating Bill Again (Our Wood Burning System)

Happy day! I estimate that it would cost me over $4,000 to run my electricity, to get propane for that traditional furnace heating system. And we're a lot. This is 2,400 square feet. There's 7 of us and we've got really tall vaulted ceilings. Hear that sound? That's the sound of dollar bills just going off the farms. Going out of my pocket. We've been on vacation, so we had to do that, but I, I got to show you a better way. You said that's leaking? Yeah. Okay. You know, and on top of the cost, it's unsustainable. We're bringing in electricity, propane from God knows where. Let me fix this and I'll show you the alternative. I got one word for you. Okay, okay, seems like it just needed to be snugged up instead of unsustainable off-farm heat sources, I'm going to use renewable on-farm resources. And that is— hit you twice, Josie. You ever heard that saying? Yeah, the dad joker in me has got to say it. Hit you twice, once when you work it up and another time when you burn it. When you want to use my trash, do we not need to make kindling? I don't think so. We use kindling, we burn more wood and less propane. I think it's off. Oh, in this video I'm going to show you not just one thing— this is the heartbeat— 3 things that are making heating our 2,400 square foot home solely by heat despite it being 19 degrees out here. Solely by heat? No duh, solely by wood. First tool in the heartbeat of the whole operation, the main thing, is the wood boiler. This is the Central Boiler 550 Edge, Classic Edge. Uh, turn it on. We're beeping because the bypass is on. We've opened this Oh, that lets smoke go through quicker while you're loading it so you don't get smoked out here. It's a huge chamber. 51 down in the reaction chamber. Well, I think I have to turn this on now. Okay, I've turned it on. I don't know why I'm not seeing any of these lights. Yeah, that's good. Let's shut it, see if that's why. Okay, there goes the fan. Good. Primary burn and the fan is running. The pump to pump the water through the system— I'm going to show you all that in a little bit, but I know we want to get the water in this big old tank before we start pumping it through the system and through our vents to 185 degrees. Right now it's at 54 degrees. I might be having a problem. It's, it's, it's because it's so smoky right now. We could probably reseal it, but But it's just so smoky right now. It gets going and it doesn't leave us. Might just need to be cleaned the sides. I bet you a bunch of smoke comes out of there. Yeah, that shut down when you open that door. Oh, I need to clean this off. Gotta be careful not to, uh, probably gotta clean this seal off, but you gotta be careful not to tear up the thread. Maybe we'll do it when it's slower. That's a lot of smoke. But the cool thing about this is once it gets going, the gasification, it burns that smoke, it burns the creosote, and we won't see any smoke coming out of there. It's super efficient. It's been just a few minutes, it's already to 62. All right, let's show you the second thing that we use to heat with wood, and then we'll come back in a little bit when that's ready to engage. And I'll give you a complete tour of how I— how it works. I was gonna say how I think it works, and yeah, we could go with that because I am no scientist when it comes to the wood boiler system. It's not 100% necessary. Honestly, the wood boiler will heat this entire house, not without the assistance of number 3, but the number 2 thing I'm going to show you, the wood stove insert. There's 2 awesome things about it. One, It takes the edge off. And two, the ambiance is just hard to beat. It's just a little extra warmth over here, away from the thermostat, so it can be warmer over here than it really is in the overall house. And it's super nice to chill too in the evening or in the morning for a little bit of journaling. It's one of the first places the kids come to. We're gonna let this morning fire die out. I'm definitely going to show you how we get that going this evening. Oh, what is this? Also not sponsored, but I do really like this stove. It's the Osburn— O-S-B-U-R-N— Osburn Stratford 2. Austin, you might want to put that on the screen. This is just a simple wood-burning stove. It puts off a lot of heat from— is it cast iron? I guess it's cast iron. Just heats up and just this ambient— there is no heat like a wood stove heat. You know what I'm talking about if you've experienced. It's just really cozy and comfy. It just outdoes HVAC system by far, and it's, it's hard to describe, but you just have to trust me or experience it for yourself on this one. Just a little, uh, simple. The simpler the better for me. No, no, not many moving parts. We lost a little nipple on this early on in the season, and I was easily able to look it up and order one. There's not much can go wrong with it. I don't even think we've cleaned out the ashes yet. It's already the end of January, so maybe clean out the ashes once during the season and then once after the season's over. Not necessarily, but totally nifty, we have a fan. If this was more of a primary heat— and it is in the fall and the spring when we don't really want to run the wood boiler. You don't want to run the wood boiler unless you can keep it going all the time. Oh man, it's hot. I guess there's a third thing we use this for— redundancy. So we use it for redundancy, we use it to take the edge off in the morning and the evening, we use it for our heat sources in the spring and fall, and ambiance. 4 things, isn't it? Okay, what are you all up to? I'm measuring. You gotta hold it. Stop it. You're measuring for sure, but what are you up to? I'm measuring for shelving here. Is it cute? No, you gotta tighten it up. Last year our word for the year was recover, which we have from hurricane. Yes. Don't know if we'll ever fully recover from the loss of her mom, but we're getting there. Um, what, what's your word this year? Organized. Okay. Decorate. Get this house in order. Okay, I guess I could say mine is two words. Yes, dear. Okay, I'm gonna show them the third thing. Third secret. If mine is organizing the farm, are you gonna say yes to that? Can you guess? No, I don't know. Can you guess what it is if I'm going up here with the camera? Oh goodness, I wouldn't go up there. You want to? What are you talking about? I'm so confused. I'm glad organize is on her list. You got to organize my books. All right, where am I showing you? Have you guys guessed it yet? The beautiful one can't guess it. I'm wondering if you can guess it. Guess it. What am I going to show you in the attic? I thought there's a light in here. Oh, hey Justin. Um, can I come out now? Okay, what I want to show you up here is before our house— before our house remodel a little over a year ago. We just used regular insulation, but we sprung for it and we used this foam insulation. And oh my word, we are so much more efficient than we were. We didn't even have these vaulted ceilings. I think some places they're 14, 16 feet tall. We had 7 to maybe 9 feet tall. And we're— I want to say, oh, probably, probably twice as efficient. It's why when we get somewhat of a warm streak where maybe it heats up to in the— even in the 50s during the day, we can turn that wood boiler off, use the wood stove, and that's enough to take the edge off and heat it up in here for the day. And it just keeps it. We're using so much less wood than we used to. Just tell them what you just said, Jonah. I said my word for it is organizing the farm. That's your word? Yeah, you should say yes. Yes. Yes. Good. Oh, instead of yes dear, how about yes son? Yes, yes. I'm gonna be your helper, huh? Let's do it. Funding. Honestly, I thought maybe I'm exaggerating. I asked Perplexity how much more efficient foam is as opposed to traditional insulation. 50 to 100% more. So me saying twice as efficient is probably not that far off. In about 45 minutes, 99 degrees. It's going to take a little bit because it's, uh, it's probably 25, maybe 25, 30 degrees out. We've got to heat up this probably at least 100 gallons of water to 180. That's going to take a little— it's harder the colder it is. So the colder it is outside, the more wood you're going to burn. It doesn't really matter what you have the inside temp on, which means you can be really comfortable in the winter. You can have it really warm. What matters is just keeping that water hot. So it's going to burn based on how cold it is outside, not necessarily how high you have it on inside. You boiler people tell me if I'm nuts and that's wrong, but it seems what's— be what's happening while that heats up. We gotta do some things on the farm. Just thought I'd haul this wood over here and accidentally hit our real fancy— real fancy overhead drop cords for the hot water heaters. The trough heaters. Those are working fantastic, by the way. It was 19, 20 degrees every night we were gone on vacation to Florida. We go in the winter when chores are easier and we get some sun down in Florida. 111. We like these IBC totes for stacking wood. You can, uh, just take it to where you're processing it. You load it into here and then you unload it into the fireplace, as opposed to unloading it and stacking it and then stacking it, stacking again. It eliminates one bit of handling, which can be a killer with burning wood. He bought these IBC totes over, hit the line. But look, we take the plastic bins out of them and keep these cages intact, and they're really great. We've been using the system for years. It's really great. Let me show you a little surprise that happened while we were gone. Hey, hey, those were here right before we left. Oh, here we go. This is fresh. This is 2 days old. Nothing cuter than a baby lamb. Geez, Ike, you've been eating too much. Are you pregnant? Looks like it. Gosh. Okay, here, let's see this little baby. Who we got here? Is this Ryder? This is one of the OG lambs. What, 2018 or '19 lambs? You don't want to move because you're a good mother. You're letting her nurse. Let's tell you everything I know about this thing so far. I've been using it for several years, at least 5. Classic Edge 550 gasification by Central Boiler. We've got it going. To load it, we lift up that handle, it bypasses things, and it's just rip-roaring in there. As I mentioned, it's heating up water. Before we get to how it circulates water, let's do this. I think it's running. I think the reaction chamber is running. I think it is. Can you see that? Look at that. Which are totally easy to clean out. We put that on the pasture, we put that in the garden. We have a low pH soil. We wouldn't want to do that if it's high. You hear that rumbling? That's a fan. That's, that's, that's getting air in there. And it's— this machine is saying, okay, we're not to temp yet, we're only at— what are we at? 127. Let's keep it going. Let's put the fan on the fire. This next number is the reaction chamber. We come down to the bottom of this wood boiler and we have this thermocouple. I replaced it this year. I've been having wood problem— wood boiler problems, I think, since I got that. I suss that thermocoupler was busted in delivery because once I finally figured it out and replaced that this year, this is working fantastic. Now we're at 128. We could probably do this. Let's open up the— where open up the water line. It was shut off, but we had the pump going because if you have water in there and it's 20 degrees outside and the pump's not warm, it's gonna bust. Don't ask me how I learned that. Oh, how'd you learn that? I had to learn that the hard way. Comes with an outlet plug in this pump, on and off switch for the machine. We've got these pipes now that it's gonna start pumping this water through. It goes through there through an insulated cable. Gotta keep these outside. Just realized We may have frozen pipes. No, this is warm. This is warm. Okay, so maybe it's gonna thaw it out, but we're just underneath. We do have some insulation up above, but we're not insulated out there, so this could have froze while we were gone. So this might take a while. You can see the line running there. It runs there, it runs through all these stalls, comes back out right here, and then into our house. Goes above the ceiling, down into here, and into the furnace. We do tap into the furnace fan system. We don't need its gas, we don't need its electricity for heat. We do tap into the ductwork, which is nice because we can just set the thermometer and it adjusts. We have a— I just, I don't know, I'm gonna call it a radiator down through there, through the duct. You can see the, the water. Oh, it's warming up. Okay, it's not frozen. We can turn this on, guys. This is hot. Oh, I wonder if it's hot though because we run in the heat. No, these, these lines are hot. So this is going to start warming up this radiator. The heat goes through and that goes through our vent system. Guys, we're using wood heat with our vents, our HVAC systems. Absolutely amazing. It comes out of the vents just like a furnace heat would. What's for lunch? Tomato burgers, potatoes, and broccoli. Yum. Thank you. Set up their thermostats. Two thermostats. This is the one for our gas electric heat. Set on 72. What we're going to do, we're going to leave this on fan auto. We're going to turn it off, but we're going to leave on fan auto because the wood boiler thermostat needs to run. So you're going to need a Central Boiler rep to install this, or a really savvy electrician, unless you are that and you can do it yourself. So these are communicating with each other. So I'll turn the wood boiler one on the heat. Let's go up a degree just to make sure it's working. And I heard it kick in. I heard it kick in. Let's just go make sure the fan kicked in down here. Oh, love it when things work. It's working good. We are on wood heat now. Say goodbye to the electric bill, at least for the next month until things start warming up again. Now hang in there. We still gotta start this wood stove tonight and just experience that ambiance with me. Our eyes are going down with the sun. You know how when you go camping and you're tired, you actually want to go to bed and go to bed early? Part of that I've found is because you're not doing blue lights. Your eyes are going down with the sun. Nothing like staring into a fire to relax. I got a bag of kindling. Come on, get in, please. Come. There goes— got it. Holding it steady. Mm-hmm.