Just had an oil fill-up

[Skinny Shooter]

Our fuel oil tank for the studio took 230gals at $3.199/gal and the price was $735.77 :eek:
The delivery guy stated it had been $3.35 and recently came down.
After we put a pellet stove into service there is still a full tank of fuel oil left-over for the house from last February.
We estimate that we will burn about 3.5 tons (at $204.00/ton) of pellets at an approx cost of $700 for the entire winter.
We have two tons stored under roof out back and will be getting another ton after Christmas.

Wood would be nice (and I prefer it) because I can get it for free but have limited time to cut, split and stack wood for a sole source of home heat.
That's a lot of firewood for the winter.
I do have a woodstove in my forge and don't even burn through more than a cord over winter.

[skeet]

Just bought a couple of Pellet Stoves out here in Wy. Pellets are at about 180 a ton. Just built a garage and put one out there so i can finish it off in relative comfort. Put the other in the basement of the house. Heat the basement and the floors are warm upstairs too. The house has electric baseboard heat. Very efficient liquid/gel based heaters but we mostly use the wood stove. We'll burn about 4 cords in a normal year...but the wood here is mostly pine/spruce/cedar. I have been cleaning up some cottonwoods my neighbor killed a few years ago. 6 trees and they all have about 2 or more cords each. Picking up all that wood that the cleanup crews are leaving around is a great idea. BTW to get firewood in this area..ya go to the forest service people and for about 20 bucks ya get a permit to cut 4 cords of firewood in the National Forest. All dead trees ..some are already cut down and dry. Mostly beetle killed trees i guess. Pellets are much easier to deal with though. Meaning to ask Is Shyda's still in operation?? Hunker down and stay warm guy..winter is here ya know?

[multibeard]

Crooks here get as much for furnace oil as they get for diesel out of the pumps at the gas station. Road diesel has at least 40 cents road tax.

I burn wood except for when I am out of town. I haven't had my fuel oil tank filled in years. It is a little low now so I will just put in enough road desiel to get me through.

Problem is I still have a cord or so of wood split and stacked on the property that needs to be hauled home. Too much snow right now tro get in and get it.

One of my buddies has an outside wood funace. He is burning cob corn. He raises corn so he can grow his own fuel that way if it works out and doesn't have to shell it this way.

[Skinny Shooter]

Carl, are you cleaning the chimney more than usual burning that pine and spruce?
Shyda's is till going strong. :)
Btw, this should be good predator hunting weather but won't get out this week due to work and training nights at the station. I did find a Mossberg 935 turkey gun that cabela's had accidently marked down $40 to $489.00. oops, its now mine. :D
Mounted a reddot Comp M and am itching to get it out.

multibeard, an outdoor furnace seems like a great idea. Did he need a special conversion to burn corn cob?

[multibeard]

He just shovels it in.He may be burning some wood along with it. I will try to remember to ask him at coffee in the morning.

I see they are installing an outside wood furmace at a house north of town today.

My neighbor and I have discussed putting a big one in between our houses to heat both of his houses and mine. Sure would be easier than ptting wood down in out basements. Plus less wood splitting.

He is putting a new well in next summer that will be hooked up to both of his houses with a provison for me to hook up to it when my well goes bad.

Dang it is great to live in a small town where neighbors are NEIGHBORS.

[skeet]

Surprisingly the coyotes are running all over the place here. I saw a large pack of them the other evening about 4 PM. There was 10 of 'em making the biggest racket you ever did hear. I wasn't close to the house as i was out cutting wood and when I was walkin howm they started in to howling so I went over the hill to take a look. NO gun and they were not over 40 yds away. And I almost always carry my 45. They looked at me for about 10 seconds yapped a couple more times and took off. Oh well! maybe next time. Not having much problems as i usually burn the ash and cottonwood with it. Hot fire and keeps the chimney a bit cleaner. The ash is great wood. Glad to hear Brian is still kicking along. Hate to see small gun shops go out of business. The guys back east where I was are really scrambling to find shooting stuff. In the small area where I was I probably had 80% of the reloading business and probably 40-50% of the clay target business too. Hope the 935 works out for ya. Let me know how it does as i was contemplating one for duck hunting on the rivers here. If it happened to go overboard I wouldn't worry as much about the mossy asI would if it was an SBE

[Skinny Shooter]

Hey it shoots 2 3/4" hi brass too. :)

[Swift]

Yeh oil prices are out of control. We are a wood burning family and use the furnace as back up. Takes me about 3 cord per year to heat our place a year. Between what I cut for free and the $100 per cord delivered I try and stay ahead at least a year.

So I guess my heating bill is about $400 per year.

[fabsroman]

We use natural gas and I am expecting to pay $250+ a month right now and we only live in a townhouse. When we buy a single family home, I am definitely putting a wood stove or two in the place.

[multibeard]

Originally posted by Skinny Shooter
multibeard, an outdoor furnace seems like a great idea. Did he need a special conversion to burn corn cob?

I talked to him this morning. He had trouble with the ear corn not burning up completely so he has been burning it with some wood so he just has ashes not junk left.

Went over to a taxidermist friends today to do my grandsons turkey fan from last spring. He had let the fire in his out side wood furnace go down so that the 12+ inches of charcoal burn up that had built up in the bottom of the stove.

[Lilred]

First off, I gotta give multibeard a big ole howdy..hope MI is treatin ya well :p ;)
And, iffn ya got a wood-burnin furnace outside, ya might as well hook up yer hot water to it too. It's really not that difficult as it may sound, and even if you don't run it to the house, when the power's out, it's nice to have a big tank of hot water waitin fer ya.
I been burnin wood all my life and wouldn't trade it fer nothin. We do have propane heat here, and use it for backup only...but I can say we aint never hardly used it.
We should count ourselves lucky that we can heat our homes..it's a tough thing to do fer some folks...esp. as high as oil is these days.

[multibeard]

HOW ya doing Red?

I am heating my house with a little ole wood stove with a blower down in the basement. I think almost all of the outdoor frunaces are also hooked up to the domestic water systems.

It is my neighbor that is talking about putting in a big outdoor furnace and splitting the cost and wood supply.

I still don't have all my wood hauled in from the property as I didn't want to disturb the three whole deer I saw on my 30 acre property. Now it is all I can do to bust my way in with my 4wd due to the snow, let alone haul a trailer in and out with wood. Hoping for a January thaw.

If you decide to go to Disney World some time I can probably hook you up with your old freind Boehr.LOL I think he might be driving a bus down there since he retired and moved to Fla.

Little private joke about lilred not being literate enough to understand the Michigan dog hunting/training laws. The natives can't understand our stupd regs let alone a tranplant.

[Lilred]

LOL! I had all but fergot bout that fool...retired and drivin a bus in Florida. He's livin the American dream...:rolleyes:
I know what his problem is...he just never got a good ole fashioned butt whoopin...really..how many folks do we all know that just needs a butt whoopin and then they'd be fine lol :D

[Dan Morris]

Originally posted by fabsroman
We use natural gas and I am expecting to pay $250+ a month right now and we only live in a townhouse. When we buy a single family home, I am definitely putting a wood stove or two in the place.

Dang son, my entire utility bill for last month...elec/gas...was only
$118.00 on a 2800ft house....course, we keep it about 65.
Dan

[petey]

Dan,

Glad we're paying the same in the Appalachin basin as you are in Colorado. My gas bill is compairable with about the same size house (heating upstairs, not basement) , average about 65-70 degrees and no more. If we need more, I supplement the living room with wood in the fireplace.

Sometimes I can get that room up to 75 degrees just by burning wood. I have that room on it's own zone for that reason (and the fact that it's got a loft with 16' ceilings and skylights to boot... not the best for keeping heat in such a large space.

That'll all change once they spud that well on my property in the spring. My lease is up early summer and the gas company I signed with confirmed at least 1 well on my property by springtime. I burn up about 150-170,000 cubic feet in a year. I get 300,000 (free gas) per year off the well and 1/8th royalties or 12.5 % after lifting costs. If she's a boomer or is a good oil producer, it could pay my mortgage too. I'm not expecting that much from royaties, but it could be a good one. They planted 50 wells within 2 miles of my place this summer, (mostly a promoter company). My neighbor's one well that's closest to me is a good gas well, with no fluids. He's getting some hefty royalties. Another 1/4 mile down the road is more of an oil producer not so much gas.... being in the drilling business, I know that even 5 acres away from a great well, may produce a not so good well depending on the sandstone payzones. BTW these are shallow wells around 2100-2700 ft

Free gas will be good, but at close to $100 per Bbl of oil and $7 per MCF of gas could be good. Even an average well for the area that produces 300 MCF per month could put $250 in my pocket each month. How's that for a kicker?? Get free gas, then get a check for more than you would have paid for gas you use?? Initial 3 month flush could get me up in the thousands on roayalties, so I'm all for them planting 1 or 2 or however many wells they want on my tract of land. Looks pretty promising :D

That's why you won't find my complaining at the pumps. Yeah I may gripe a little, but I can't produce natural gas and or oil and make money off of it, then turn around and complain when I have to pay for gas to put in a vehicle. That would be a bit hypocritical I think.

[fabsroman]

Petey,

If I'm not mistaken, I remember you complaining about fuel prices a year or two ago, but I could be wrong. Funny how things are when the tables are turned. The oil and gas companies are no longer terrible price gougers when you are making making money off of them. Honestly, I am the same way. If I can make money off of it and it isn't morally reprehensible, I am all for it.

Dan,

My heating and cooling bill on my townhouse is rather pathetic. I keep the house at 68 during the winter now because of the baby. I used to keep it at 65 and we would just wear sweaters in the house. I refuse to let my daughter be cold though. Anyway, the townhouse is 1,600 sf with 4 stories above ground. The electric bill during the worst months of the summer is around $250 a month. Electricity is about $60 a month during the winter with the gas bill being around $250. Believe me, it is utterly nuts.

Maybe, a new house with 1/3 of it underground (i.e., basement), might not be that much more expensive to heat and cool than the townhouse. However, I am still planning on using wood stoves in the basement and first floor to cut back on some of the costs. I have already been doing calculations of how much it will cost in diesel fuel to go and cut the wood per trip with a truck bed and 10' trailer of wood per trip, and it comes out a lot better than paying $250+ a month for heating. We can keep the windows open during the summer.

[Dan Morris]

Counselor...another reason to get out of the east coast
Dan

Also, that wood needs to dry for about a year!

[fabsroman]

Even though I'm a CPA and an attorney, I'm not brain dead when it comes to wood, fires, cutting wood, and manual labor in general. I grew up the son of a construction worker/handy man that is an Italian immigrant. I was out using a chain saw as soon as I could hold one and not cut off my leg with it. Before that, I got to haul wood around and hold up logs while my dad cut it. In the first house I can remember living in, my brothers and I had the privilege of carrying wood from the driveway, all the way up the 15 plus steps of the driveway to the backyard, and then up another 20 steps in the backyard to the top of the hill by the shed. We had plenty of wood. I still go with my dad on occasion and cut wood; however, we go less often now and things are a lot quicker because I take my F-350 and a 10 foot trailer and my dad takes his F-150, log splitter, and chainsaws. Back in the day when we didn't have any money, we were splitting wood with an axe, a sledge hammer, and metal wedges. Life is much better with the splitter and it is worth the $1,000+ my dad paid for it. Now, in one trip we can get enough wood for him to get through the winter, and then some. By the way, when we were younger and my dad was cutting trees for money, we were cutting them in 100+ degree heat or 30 degree cold. My dad had a knack for picking the hottest or coldest days for doing the wrong work. On one job, we were cutting bricks with a wet saw and mixing cement when it was just barely above freezing. That was wonderful. My brothers and I often kid my dad about our payment back then (i.e., a sandwich, a coke, and a snickers bar, and on special occasions we got the 7-11 2 hot dog special with our choice of fixins).

If it wasn't such a pain for me to move out of the area (i.e., two licenses to practice law, my CPA license, my client base, and most importantly my family), I would be out west in a heart beat. I wanted to go to school out in Colorado, but my parents just couldn't afford it, and they might have also been worried that I would have been riding my bike too much instead of studying.

Anyway, I am stuck here for a while, but I mentioned to my wife that maybe we could buy a farm in South Carolina, Georgia, or Florida so that we can vacation somewhat closer to her parents. Of course, this was just after seeing 100's and 100's of ducks on the way to her parents' place from the Tampa airport. It will be much easier to sell the farm idea on the east coast to my wife versus something out west where neither of our families are located. Wish me luck.

By the way, I thought that if a wood stove was burning hot enough, it would even burn green wood in moderation. Am I right or wrong?

[Dan Morris]

LOL, I'm talking about initially getting the fire going...ifn it's already burning, the green will work fine. I've just let mine season for a year before using.
I've got a feeling if you'd have gone to school out here you'd have never left. Course, people are different.... I emigrated from Texas to Colorado 35 years ago and have never looked back...took the failures with the successes.
Hey, you and yours have a safe and merry Christmas! What's Santa bringing daughter?
Dan
:cool:

[skeet]

There are certain woods that just don't NEED to be seasoned a year. Some that probably need more. Wild cherry and ash come to mind as ones that will burn pretty shortly after being cut..and split. Especially if they are cut after the leaves fall off the trees. Sour gum is one that probably needs to be cured for more than a year...under cover as it will rot in the open. It also is almost impossible to split. Burning wood for more than 35 yrs has taught me that when cutting this years firewood up...to cut the trees down for next years. Course I had my own woods back east. Out here in Wyoming I have been cutting some fire killed dottonwood for the stove. Burns good but the trees are somewhat large with the rounds being 30-50 inches in diameter. I load them in the trailer with the loader on the tractor. I also have about 40 cords of fair sized Russian olive to cut. Burns good but it really does need to be dried for at least 6-8 months. Merry Christmas y'all!!:D :D

[fabsroman]

Dan,

My training partner who was a year younger than me went to school in Boulder, Colorado, where I was trying to go. He is still out there 15 years later. Something tells me that if I had gone to school in Colorado and stayed, either my mom and dad would have moved out there, or they would have gotten a divorce so that my dad could move out there if my mom didn't want to.

Now that I am married, moving out west will be even harder because my wife has a 30 minute drive to the mall requirement for where ever we live. Funny thing is that she does not shop that much, if at all. I can count the number of times she has gone to the mall this year on one hand. Heck, I probably went to the mall more than she did this year.

After we figure out our house situation, the next thing on the list will be rental property and a farm. I'm going to be busy for the next decade or three.

We are currently at my in-laws, and my daughter's stack of presents is the largest stack of them all. I got her a personalized ornament that say's "Arianna's First Christmas" with a picture of a baby rattle in the middle and "We Love You, Mom and Dad, 2007" on the bottom and I got her a personalized picture frame. She already has plenty of toys, but I am sure that she is going to get even more of them this Christmas from her 3 aunts and 4 uncles, all of which are single except for 1 pair. She will also be receiving a sizeable contribution to her 529 college plan from her mom and dad.

I'm sure I'll post this again, but Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to everybody.

[petey]

Fabs,

I'm sure at the time I was complaining I didn't have a lease signed and didn't also work for a drilling company ;)
By the way, my company sure doesn't set the NIMEX prices... gotta thank those wonderful stock traders in NYC... Wanna blame someone..then blame the traders that run the prices up to $100 per Bbl and over $7 per MCF of gas. My company is publically owned, buy yourself a couple million dollars in shares are you can help control the costs..course if you had that much invested, I'm sure you'd be just like the rest wanting a quick turn around and want the prices to increase... buy low sell high, isn't that the rule?

Naw really.. we have no control on the prices, just drill and feed into distribution or supply. We have to pay for transportation on many pipelines even from our own parent company! Pretty ludacrice if you ask me. The whole infrastructure is quite amazing, and the prices aren't determined by some president of a Country or CFO of a big oil company.... just by those white collar dudes that wanna earn a quick turn from what I gather. I know we make our dollar off what the stock market says the oil and gas is worth ;)

Anyhow...hope ya'll have a wonderful Christmas!

[fabsroman]

Petey,

I'm not complaining about gas prices because I think they will lead to innovation and a cleaner environment. Honda is ready to release a fuel cell vehicle in 2008 that will run on hydrogen and only emit water. If that car actually works and is feasible, they should outlaw gasoline like they outlawed leaded gasoline. If the rest of the manufacturers cannot keep up, they should be SOL. It really pisses me off that Ford will not be ready to introduce a fuel cell vehicle until 2012 at the earliest.

Some days, I ride 50 miles on my bicycle just for fun. I'm pretty sure I could build up a commuter bike, put some racks on it, and ride to where ever I need to shop at. Trust me, I'm really thinking about it. Not because I cannot afford the gas, but because it seems to be the right thing to do.

I am also willing to bet that the $150K my wife and I have in mutual funds is somewhat invested in oil companies. So, I do have a little stake in it already.

As far as the guys on Wall Street are concerned, I agree that they are to blame for the price of oil, but they are only basing their prices on what they think the world is going to need. Trust me, they don't want to get stuck holding a ton of expensive oil futures when there will be very little demand for the oil because they will have to sell low and lose money. Time will tell how this works out. I almost invested money in ArcherDaniels for ethanol, but decided against it. With that said, I'm going to check out that stock price after I review the board.