As I’ve mentioned
before, we heat our home in the winter time with wood. Since I grew up with wood heat, I believe
this is the best way to keep warm in the winter. I feel that I am extremely fortunate to have
landed a husband who is dedicated to the use of wood heat and actively seeks
out sources for wood at every opportunity.
I may have already told you that Charming and I can be driving around
the neighborhood or the state or the country and see someone’s sizeable stack of
firewood and he will either stop to stare enviously at it or crane his neck to
get a good view of it as we drive past it.
His affinity for firewood is so strong that I jokingly call it “wood
envy”.
Wood heat
definitely keeps me warmer than electric heat or a heat pump. I have lived in houses that were heated with
electricity and worked in offices that were heated with heat pumps. Neither of these options ever really kept me
warm…kept me from freezing, yes, but never really comfortably warm. There is also the associated cost of heating
with electricity or oil. This past
winter, our area was very cold and the oil and propane trucks were making
regular monthly stops at all of our neighbors’ houses. We, on the other hand, only had one fill up
during the entire year and that was just to top off our 250-gallon tank. The heating bill for our entire house for the
year was $125! When you consider that
the price of oil in our area was over $4/gallon, that’s quite a bit of
savings. The only time the furnace came
on was on nights when the outside temperature fell into the single digits.
According to
Charming, it helps tremendously to have a “catalytic” stove. According to him, as long as the wood is
“clean”, you can burn any type of wood.
A lot of people won’t burn pine wood, but we burn any kind. With a catalytic stove, there is also minimal
soot build-up in the chimney. I’ve seen
Charming clean the chimney and the build-up is a very thin film that flakes
right off with little effort.
There is some dust
and dirt that comes with using a wood stove.
However, in order to minimize that problem, we bought a small hand-held
vacuum that we keep near the stove for quick clean-ups whenever it’s
needed. I also made Charming a big
canvas bag with handles made of nylon webbing to carry the wood in from the
wood pile. This helps to keep the wood chips contained. The cost of making the
bag was around $10. Similar bags sell
for $50 - $100, depending on the size.
Charming often comments that his “wood bag” is one of the best gifts
he’s ever received. (Of course, he says his
second favorite gift was a set of plastic shower curtain rings that cost $1 at
the dollar store…He didn’t like the fancy flower-shaped metal hangers that I
had paid $10 for at the department store.
Bless his little heart; he’s like the baby who prefers playing with the
box instead of the toy.)
Spring is the
time of year when Charming goes on the hunt for wood…much like some people in
our area search for mushrooms in the spring.
He is currently helping my brother out on a construction job. As it happens, the owner of the property has
a lot of downed wood on his property. He
offered to let Charming cut wood because it helps him clear his property. Free heat for us, cleared property for the
property owner. It’s a win-win
situation!
I would be the
first to say that heating with wood is not for everyone, but for us it’s the
most economical and warmest way to heat our home. I will also say that there is absolutely
nothing as wonderful as settling down for a 2-hour nap during a snow storm in
front of the wood stove, covered with a warm quilt, with my Charming husband lying
beside me and Max the Wonder Dog curled up at our feet. Pure, warm bliss!
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| Our catalytic wood stove with handheld vacuum for tidying up small wood chips and debris. (The stove has a ledge where I keep my soap stone foot warmer and bread warmer...both have quilted cloth bags to put them in before use.) |
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| Charming's first load of wood for the season. We will need about three more loads of this size to last through the heating season. (This wood will "season" for a year before we use it.) |
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| Charming's prized wood pile...he stacks it in a particular way. (I am allowed to hand him the wood from the wheel barrow, but not allowed to stack the wood... past avalanche of wood..."Oooops...Did I do that?") |
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| Continuation of the prized wood pile...this one on the short side of the shed. This year, we used all of the wood on the 3rd side. |
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