Heating while no one is home?

[klhandler]

Originally Posted by Jafo

Where you from in upstate NY? I am near Boonville..

We are in Rensselaer County, but hope to get up to Washington County. The rural atmosphere lends to more relaxed building codes. There are some yurts up in the town we are looking to buy land in, and they said they've had no trouble from the town. As long as the platform was not cemented into the ground, it would be temporary. They lived there a few years with no one bothering them. Fingers crossed the town overlooks us too!

[Jay Aimes]

I too currently heat with wood, alot of wood. I'm looking at a corn stove to adress the same issue. But, we also grow our own corn. making it much more economical. A couple passes with the combine and thats our heat for the year! Aprox 5 ton. It will also burn wheat and rye grains. Just an option.
Stay warm

[hierony]

If you are just worried about pipes feezing and you have electricity, a space heater (800-1500 watts) could potentially keep a small area warm enough. Otherwise there are tape heaters/water pipe heaters (20-150 watts) that would keep just the pipes from freezing.

Other than that, I'm really surprised people haven't tried to pair small masonry heaters/thermal mass rockets with the radiant

insulation

that many yurts come with. The yurts have minimal thermal mass compared to traditional buildings, fires burn better/cleaner at the higher temps ceramics allow. Masonry/rocket heaters would fit perfectly there: high thermal mass in the heater continues to radiate the heat gained from small, hot burning fires for many hours afterwards. Only drawback is typical high cost of masonry heaters (but simple, small sizes can be ~$3k; or go DIY for thermal rocket heaters) and heavy weight on the platform (easily acheivable with a little design work).