Heating With Wood

Reader Contribution by Robyn Dolan 
Published on February 15, 2011
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How nice it is to turn a knob and be warm. How expensive! How grateful we are to have finally installed a woodstove at the homestead. Our first several years here were all about keeping the thermostat low and bundling up. Admittedly, heating with wood can be alot of work, especially when you cut your own firewood. But there is nothing else that takes the chill off like a toasty fire in the stove or fireplace. An added bonus is that the teapot placed on top of the hot stove will stay warm.

Wood heating is most practical if you have a wood lot, live near the forest, or have another nearby source of wood. We live near the forest, so heating season starts in April or May as soon as wood permits go on sale. We make a trip to the Ranger Station and buy our permit, which runs about $5 a cord. A cord is a neatly stacked pile of wood measuring 4x4x8 feet. We then tune up and sharpen the chain saw, gas up the truck and head out to the woods. There are limitations here as to what we can cut, we usually just go for trees that are dead and down. We get alot of cedar and juniper this way and enough pine to get it started burning. Cedar and juniper are good, hard firewood choices as they tend to burn hot and for a long time compared to pine, which is very soft and burns fast, which is good for starting the fire.

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