When it comes to heating options these days an old favorite has become a new contender. After years as a rustic throwback to some earlier age, home wood fired boilers are back on the scene, offering a real alternative to the home user.
This is for a few reasons. Home heating furnaces can be powered by many fuel sources, but many of these are becoming expensive. Natural gas seems to keep on rising, fuel oil seems subject to all sorts of seasonal whims and the decisions of the oil producing nations of the world. Wood, on the other hand can be sourced from sustainable forests and can work out pretty cheap. It can even be bought in a more convenient pellet form.
The other great thing about wood is that it does not produce CO2 greenhouse gases over a whole grow, harvest and burn cycle. It turns out that it is an environmentally friendly heat source - maybe it will be the fuel of the 21st century. Although you do have to keep planting new forests to keep, or ideally increase the total volume of wood available.
Modern wood boilers have come a long way. Pot bellied wood stoves were notoriously inefficient with heat leaking out all over the place. Not so nowadays. We can now buy units that are really well sealed to make the best use of the heat the wood gives off. Look out for stoves that have the underwriters seal of approval though, since these things need to be well made to withstand the heat they generate.
So if you are looking to change your heating system and are not too keen to be beholden to the price changes that effect fossil fuels, take a look at wood.