Hacker News Reader

"after this only a few nostalgics will occasionally burn wood for "recreation""

Not true unfortunately - here in Germany wood burning has been trending in recent years, even though alternative means of heating are readily available. In fact most house owners probably equip both - gas/oil heating for the baseline comfort and wood for the coziness.

View on HN

Same is true in parts of the US as well. Here in Maine, it costs 3.80$/gal for heating oil, but you can get wood for 100$/cord. This means I can heat my house with oil to the tune of about 3k/year, or wood for 400/year.

I can only hope that this trend will go hand in hand with development of better wood burning stoves that pollute less.

I'm a bit amazed by how efficient my wood boiler is -- I can run it for several hours off a few logs, while maintaining about 175 degrees in the boiler. On a good day, I end up burning less than a log an hour to heat my entire house, including the water heater.

You might be interested in this wood heater design: http://www.richsoil.com/rocket-stove-mass-heater.jsp

Reply on news.ycombinator.com