Heating the Home

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I am posting a picture of our house so that you can get to know us better and also see what you can heat with an OWB, or specifically a Hardy H2. My house is 3000 sq ft. and it sits on 6 acres in northeast Ohio...in what is known as "the Snow Belt" to us Buckeyes. I bought this house off the bank for a good price but had to put a lot of time and money into it to make it livable.
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We live in farm country and out here the houses are pretty far apart. My closest neighbor is probably 400 feet up wind from my Hardy. What made me start looking for alternative heating was the propane company. There is no natural gas line out here in the sticks and most other farmhouses heat with oil or propane. My first year with propane was interesting. When I signed the contract with Mr. Propane, I was given a 500 gallon tank they placed next to my barn and with that, I was to keep an eye on my gauge and call them when it read 20% full...easy enough. What I didn't know was whenever that bottle truck backed up my driveway, that beeping noise coming from it signified to all my neighbors that I would be $500 poorer once the truck left. Wow! Propane is expensive...and that was when we first moved in this place...when propane was $1.19 gallon. On top of the house's high propane usage, we kept the house cold...so cold we should be in jail for child abuse...well...not that cold but you get the idea. I didn't want to just grin and bear the gas bill if I could do something about it. This is what drove me to seek an alternate way to heat my house and eventually to installing a Hardy OWB. As you can tell by this blog, I have been very pleased with the results. Now, with propane going for up to $2.68 a gallon, I don't know how we could make ends meet and heat the house at the same time. With the Hardy, not only can we save money on our heating bill, there was also a major improvement in quality of life. We now live in a toasty warm house and the kids have stopped complaining about seeing their breath when they wake up in the morning...just joking. On top of the "free" heat of the OWB, we keep our house as warm as we like. We have total disregard for the thermostat setting and never worry of the monthly bill coming in the mail. What a life!
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This is a recent photo of our house...taken during this most recent cold snap. We have about a foot of snow on the ground. This picture was taken about half way down the driveway and if you look to the left of the house, you can see the woodshed and my Hardy H2 sitting proud. You can see how I stack the wood in front of the Hardy to serve as a windbreak and snow fence. I show you this to get a perspective of what I am heating and how far away from the house I installed the OWB. You are looking East in this picture.
Smokin