I live just over an hour north of this place. Until recently I heated my log cabin exclusively with wood.
It takes somewhere between 7 and 9 cubic metres of wood a year to heat about 800 square feet of house. It costs about CAD 1500 for a tandem load of sawlogs plus the cost of fuel and maintenance of the chainsaw and hydraulic splitter plus about 100 hours of labour bucking, splitting, hauling, and stacking. And still there are mornings when I had to break the ice on the dog's water bowl in the kitchen when it's been below -30 C for several days in a row.
You're not going to survive a winter in that part of North America with just "a few scraps of wood" for heat. "A few carloads" is maybe going to take you to Christmas and they'll simply find your thawed corpse during a warm spell in March.
Good points. I also heat with wood in a northern clime, and this seems accurate. I'm a little confused by the units and the costs, though. I cut my own, so I'm not sure how much a tandem truck holds, but am I right that your $1500 CDN load of sawlogs ($1100 USD) is enough for several years of heating? My quick search suggests that a tandem load might be around 12 full cords (44 m^3), and thus be enough for 5 years for you. Is this about right?
It takes somewhere between 7 and 9 cubic metres of wood a year to heat about 800 square feet of house. It costs about CAD 1500 for a tandem load of sawlogs plus the cost of fuel and maintenance of the chainsaw and hydraulic splitter plus about 100 hours of labour bucking, splitting, hauling, and stacking. And still there are mornings when I had to break the ice on the dog's water bowl in the kitchen when it's been below -30 C for several days in a row.
You're not going to survive a winter in that part of North America with just "a few scraps of wood" for heat. "A few carloads" is maybe going to take you to Christmas and they'll simply find your thawed corpse during a warm spell in March.