Heating with wood to save money
Facing the challenge of heating your home this winter
HEATHER SACKETT, News Staff Writer
LAKE PLACID — Dan Plumley has been heating the roughly 1,800-square-foot home he rents in Keene with wood since 1988. He sometimes supplements his basement woodstove with electric baseboard heat.
Plumley, who has a background in forestry, said he typically gets about 60 percent of his wood for the winter from dead and dying trees on the 40-acre woodlot that he manages near his home. Hophornbeam, white ash and sugar maple are the types of logs usually found in his woodpile.
This year, in an effort to save more money, he is trying to get all his wood from the property. Plumley said he begins scouting for dying trees that will become next year’s firewood before the snow is even gone from the ground each spring.
“That requires me to be in the woods a lot, but I like it,” he said. “If you don’t want to pay a high electric or oil bill, you gotta burn wood.”
With a familiar chill in the September air, many local residents’ thoughts have turned to how they will heat their homes this winter.
The U.S. Energy Information Administration predicts residential retail prices for heating oil in the Northeast, will be, on average $3.78 per gallon. That’s up more than a dollar from the 2007 average of $2.73. An average of several Lake Placid area oil suppliers found the current rates were slightly lower — $3.70 a gallon — but it is, after all, only September.
It seems local residents are following in Plumley’s footsteps and leaning toward the renewable resource of wood to heat their homes. According to Nick Lansing, a heating specialist with Hulbert’s Tri-Lake Supply, sales of woodstoves and pellet stoves are up.
“It seems that people are trying to switch to anything but oil,” he said.
A new trend in home heating, Lansing said, are bio bricks. Made of compressed sawdust, bio bricks can be used in any wood-burning appliance and are equivalent to three or four pieces of firewood.
“They are tremendously popular,” he said. “We’ve sold out of two truckloads and sold out the next two that haven’t come in yet.”
This is Hulbert’s first year selling the bio bricks.
Sharon Angulot, co-owner of Lake Placid Rental and Supply, agreed that sales of wood and pellet stoves have been higher than in previous years.
“I’m a lot busier this year than I was in the past,” she said. “We had a big boom in pellet stoves in June when the price of gas went up really high.”
The boom was so big, Angulot said, that the company that supplies her store ran low on them.
“People are not going to get them until November or December. We will get them, but production is at its max.”
By using his 1996 Clayton woodstove, Plumley estimates he saves 50 percent on his energy bill. If all of his wood comes from his woodlot this year, he estimates he will save 60 percent.
“For me to be ready for winter, I want to have five full cords of dry wood,” Plumley said.
According to Bill Izzo, of A Cut Above Tree Service in Keene, the going local rate for a cord of firewood is $255, plus delivery. But it seems the high price of oil affects even the price of firewood.
“For years, firewood was sold for less,” Izzo said. “Those days are gone now.”
Izzo said that a state Department of Environmental Conservation rule that prohibits transporting firewood more than 50 miles doesn’t really hinder his business. The cost of fuel is too high to transport it much farther than 25 or so miles.
“We turn down Plattsburgh deliveries because it’s cost-prohibitive,” he said.
Plumley, who is also director of Park protection for the Association for the Protection of the Adirondacks, is part of the Energy Smart Park Initiative. Plumley said the initiative is looking at the role wood plays in the Park and how to create jobs and economic benefits from it. One option he envisions is a wood pellet manufacturing plant.
“So much about our options to protect and conserve the Adirondack Park are with energy and if we use it or abuse it,” he said.
There is no easy solution to the home heating and energy crisis and hardy Adirondackers may just have to do more of what they’ve always done — stick together to get through the long winter.
At recent town board meetings, Wilmington Supervisor Randy Preston has asked residents to check on each other when the cold weather sets in. He said he is worried that even though need-based fuel assistance programs are available, some elderly town residents may not be aware of them or may be hesitant to ask for help.
“I’m asking everyone to keep an eye out for your neighbors,” Preston said.
For more information about the Jay/Wilmington Ecumenical Fuel Emergency Fund, contact Don Morrison at 946-7192.
HEATHER SACKETT, News Staff Writer
POSTED: September 25, 2008
Photos
Plumley, who has a background in forestry, said he typically gets about 60 percent of his wood for the winter from dead and dying trees on the 40-acre woodlot that he manages near his home. Hophornbeam, white ash and sugar maple are the types of logs usually found in his woodpile.
This year, in an effort to save more money, he is trying to get all his wood from the property. Plumley said he begins scouting for dying trees that will become next year’s firewood before the snow is even gone from the ground each spring.
“That requires me to be in the woods a lot, but I like it,” he said. “If you don’t want to pay a high electric or oil bill, you gotta burn wood.”
With a familiar chill in the September air, many local residents’ thoughts have turned to how they will heat their homes this winter.
The U.S. Energy Information Administration predicts residential retail prices for heating oil in the Northeast, will be, on average $3.78 per gallon. That’s up more than a dollar from the 2007 average of $2.73. An average of several Lake Placid area oil suppliers found the current rates were slightly lower — $3.70 a gallon — but it is, after all, only September.
It seems local residents are following in Plumley’s footsteps and leaning toward the renewable resource of wood to heat their homes. According to Nick Lansing, a heating specialist with Hulbert’s Tri-Lake Supply, sales of woodstoves and pellet stoves are up.
“It seems that people are trying to switch to anything but oil,” he said.
A new trend in home heating, Lansing said, are bio bricks. Made of compressed sawdust, bio bricks can be used in any wood-burning appliance and are equivalent to three or four pieces of firewood.
“They are tremendously popular,” he said. “We’ve sold out of two truckloads and sold out the next two that haven’t come in yet.”
This is Hulbert’s first year selling the bio bricks.
Sharon Angulot, co-owner of Lake Placid Rental and Supply, agreed that sales of wood and pellet stoves have been higher than in previous years.
“I’m a lot busier this year than I was in the past,” she said. “We had a big boom in pellet stoves in June when the price of gas went up really high.”
The boom was so big, Angulot said, that the company that supplies her store ran low on them.
“People are not going to get them until November or December. We will get them, but production is at its max.”
By using his 1996 Clayton woodstove, Plumley estimates he saves 50 percent on his energy bill. If all of his wood comes from his woodlot this year, he estimates he will save 60 percent.
“For me to be ready for winter, I want to have five full cords of dry wood,” Plumley said.
According to Bill Izzo, of A Cut Above Tree Service in Keene, the going local rate for a cord of firewood is $255, plus delivery. But it seems the high price of oil affects even the price of firewood.
“For years, firewood was sold for less,” Izzo said. “Those days are gone now.”
Izzo said that a state Department of Environmental Conservation rule that prohibits transporting firewood more than 50 miles doesn’t really hinder his business. The cost of fuel is too high to transport it much farther than 25 or so miles.
“We turn down Plattsburgh deliveries because it’s cost-prohibitive,” he said.
Plumley, who is also director of Park protection for the Association for the Protection of the Adirondacks, is part of the Energy Smart Park Initiative. Plumley said the initiative is looking at the role wood plays in the Park and how to create jobs and economic benefits from it. One option he envisions is a wood pellet manufacturing plant.
“So much about our options to protect and conserve the Adirondack Park are with energy and if we use it or abuse it,” he said.
There is no easy solution to the home heating and energy crisis and hardy Adirondackers may just have to do more of what they’ve always done — stick together to get through the long winter.
At recent town board meetings, Wilmington Supervisor Randy Preston has asked residents to check on each other when the cold weather sets in. He said he is worried that even though need-based fuel assistance programs are available, some elderly town residents may not be aware of them or may be hesitant to ask for help.
“I’m asking everyone to keep an eye out for your neighbors,” Preston said.
For more information about the Jay/Wilmington Ecumenical Fuel Emergency Fund, contact Don Morrison at 946-7192.
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