Being a life long city boy I’m always a little impressed when I come across people who heat their home with wood burning furnaces. Well, I should say people who aren’t Amish as if your Amish that’s expected. What impresses me is not so much that people still do it, but that you can store enough wood to be able to heat a house through the winter. At my last job there was a guy who had a combination wood/gas burning furnace. He would burn about a cord of wood a season. He primarily used wood, but would switch it to gas if it was going to be extra cold during the day or he was going to be away. That’s the other aspect that I wonder about: how to keep your pipes from freezing. Obviously in that case he had a backup. Does everyone who has a wood burner also have gas or oil? I don’t know. I’ve never looked into it.
I picked up a load of firewood from a friend today. I’d asked him before if he knew where I could get a good price without buying a whole cord, which I would have been unable to store. He told me just to come by his parents place and take what I wanted. So I took a CRVs worth. I only have the little fire pit, but that should be enough to get through the winter, depending on how bad the winter is. If it’s not mind numbingly cold I’ve found that a snow covered camp fire can be fun. Hell, two years ago Turkey Fry was entirely outside and the fire pit was going all day. My mother also had a tree taken down and the wood saved so I’ll have some wood for next year too.
Of course this means that I’m going to have to finishing building the wood box I keep meaning to build. We always seem to decide to have a fire the day after it rains. Guess I have my project for next week.
Infinitely Expanding 