Ruth,
Do you heat exclusively with wood?  What kind of stove do you have?

Leland:

 

No, I'm not Ruth.  But I may have something to contribute.

 

Inlaws from NH and MA have heated exclusively with wood. 

 

The one in NH, with a large 1600's house, used 12-15 cords a wood a year, plus some coal for when they went somewhere.  No insulation except dead mouse nests and no weather stripping on the windows.  It had two fireplaces and 3 cast-iron wood stoves.  They primarily used the wood stoves.  They retired to a smaller house (basically 2 rooms) and used 7 cords a year.  That house was essentially super insulated, but they kept it hot and had a stove that put out so much heat it made the insulation a drawback because they needed to open the doors and windows during all except the coldest days.  It had a "Warm Morning" brand of stove and a standard horizontal cast iron wood stove.  The WM stove was about 2 feet sq. by 32 inches high.  It had a water jacket for hot water, but that was never connected.  With 5 paper plates and 10 sheets of newspaper that stove would  bring the retirement house to  75 degrees when it was 20 degrees outside.  The cast iron stove, the style that  loads from the top or front and is about 2 feet sq. by 3 feet long, would overheat the house with the doors closed under just about any conditions except 15 below.  Its redeeming feature was that it took normal-sized wood, instead of that tiny crap that the WM stove accepted.  I think that there is a big disconnect between having an insulated house and heating with normal-sized fire wood.

 

The inlaws in MA had gravity hot-water baseboard heat and a wood-fueled boiler in the basement.  This boiler is a monster made from 3/8" steel plate and pipe heat exchangers.  I'd would say that it is immobile, except for the fact that it wasn't built in place.  It was pretty efficient because it only took 6-7 cords of wood to heat this normal size ranch-style house.

 

I supplement heat with a wood fireplace that isn't very efficient. Burning the wood inside is a  better use for the wood than leaving it rotting on the ground.