Costs of heating a yurt

[katherines3]

I am considering a yurt purchase and wonder what you can tell me about

heating

costs. I ask because I live in a place where winter seriously communicates the need to find a way to be warm, but I work 10 miles away during the day. I can stoke up a wood stove so there will be hot coals when I get home, but there will be no one there except the cat to keep it going until then. If I keep some minimal level of alternative

heating

going during the day so that I have a bit of comfort when I greet the cat (not to mention her comfort of course!), will I have created a ginormous monthly energy bill? I have only begun to explore alternative heating sources, but have thought about propane. I will have electricity on this site, and hope to power some of that with solar. Appreciate any and all advice!

[yurtninja]

I would recommend an outdoor dual fuel wood/propane furnace. When you're home, you can burn wood, but if you're away from the house for a while, the propane will kick in to maintain a steady temperature.

[hierony]

A lot depends on the details of your potential yurt build--size &

insulation

, heat source. A yurt is a pretty light structure, so it has little mass to hold heat. Add in the high-to-moderate leakiness and you're right in guessing things will cool off pretty quickly. Getting reasonable amounts of

insulation

and getting to a reasonably tightness (but not absolutely air tight) will help a fair deal, but a continuous heat source is definitely essential.

My yurt is moderately air tight at the moment (need to seal up around the door some & get the platform lip a little more continuous plus add a little insulation). We're just starting to get freezes--it gets cold inside overnight! I've just an electric space heater & some propane heat at the moment. The single electric heater was enough for maybe 40's/50's, but isn't cutting it with 30's--the 1500 watt ones only actually pull ~1000 watts once they're going, so I'll probably double it up (beware pulling too much current!). The propane burner puts out 15-25k btu & heats things up decently on low & quite nicely on high--but it's not vented so I don't leave it on overnight/unattended. A kerosene burner might work too or a fancier vented propane space heater (temperature-regulated controls are a big plus).

I'll actually be building a masonry heater in the next month--a small one, end up ~1500 lbs & around 10k btu output. It will put out heat continuously off of one to three firings a day. But you have to make sure your foundation/platform can hold the weight & large ones can be expensive. A lot of the expense is the labor & more/fancy hardware, so making it yourself can save tons.

For the amount of wood used in a season, there's a thread on the forums where people give their general location, yurt size/type/use, & wood usage. If I remember, it varied from a few cords to 10 or more. There's also this thread: http://www.yurtforum.com/forums/yurt...-cold-515.html

[Jafo]

I have the Ideal Steel stove from the Woodstock Soapstone Company:

http://www.woodstove.com/ideal-steel-hybrid

You can load this stove up and crank it down and keep the yurt warm for an easy 12 hours until you get below 20 degrees F outside and then the time shortens as the temperature falls.

If I were you, I would look to one of those ventless propane heaters with a thermostat that would kick on once the temp gets to like 40-60 degrees just to make sure you never have an issue with pipes freezing, etc.. They run pretty cheap compared to some of the alternatives out there and the fuel lasts forever until you use it.

[katherines3]

Originally Posted by yurtninja

I would recommend an outdoor dual fuel wood/propane furnace. When you're home, you can burn wood, but if you're away from the house for a while, the propane will kick in to maintain a steady temperature.

I will check into those. Do you have experience with one, and know about avg. costs of propane? Thinking about a 24' yurt.

[katherines3]

Looks pretty sweet! Do you happen to know someone who uses a ventless propane heater? Curious about costs of running it.

[katherines3]

Very helpful! Thank you!

[Bob Rowlands]

Never heard of dual fuel wood/propane furnace with thermostat. More details? Thanks for the tip.

[hierony]

Originally Posted by katherines3

Looks pretty sweet! Do you happen to know someone who uses a ventless propane heater? Curious about costs of running it.

You're best bet for getting annual propane usage is probably to call up the nearest propane delivery service and ask them. Yurts run a bit colder so you might use roughly the same as a typical house (bigger but better insulated). You have the cost of getting a tank (5-500 gallons) plus filling it up however many times a year (once or twice if the tank is sized correctly). Propane costs vary a good deal by region, season, and year.

[Jafo]

Originally Posted by katherines3

Looks pretty sweet! Do you happen to know someone who uses a ventless propane heater? Curious about costs of running it.

If you are just talking about using it to keep a 24 yurt warm between wood stove fuelups (while you are away), I bet you could get away with a 40 pound tank every month or two. Here, that is about $25 to refill right now in NY. I had a friend who used to run one for supplement heat in a back room of a bar he owns. He went through a 20 pounder every 2 weeks in the winter, but that was the ONLY heat there was in there at night.