Heating with Wood Heat

We have heated with wood since 1978. Since 1983 we have used wood as backup to our passive solar heating. My husband was born and raised in Florida and he says if he has to work outside in the cold, he’s going to be WARM inside. So our house is between 75 – 85F year round. And nothing makes you warmer than wood heat.

History of Our Stoves

We rented a house in 1978 and were allowed to have our first woodstove. It was an All Nighter, bought new. The thing we remember most about this stove was that it NEVER burnt all night. Also it was too small for the house it was to heat.

Our first stove in our new passive solar heated house in 1983 was given to us. It was a Sevca. This house was small, just 16’ x 18’, 1½ stories, but heavily insulated for the time. This stove never burned very well. It burnt too cold due to the large upper chamber and there was always creosote buildup in the chimney.

It was replaced in 1986 by this Round Oak. This stove was lovely, but its steel sides did not last long.

It was replaced with this old Vermont Castings Resolute. This heated the little house just fine.

In 1990 we put the 20’ x 24’, 2 story, addition on, using many, but not all (I WAS going to have West and North windows!) principles for passive solar heating. We bought a new Vermont Castings Defiant Encore to heat this area.

We had to replace the catalytic on it every 2 - 3 years and they were expensive. Some of the moving parts for dampers also needed replacing. This stove never burned really well, probably because it needed an 8” flue and ours was 7”. It also used to creosote the chimney badly. But we used it until 2011 when it had too many broken pieces to warrant repair.

It was replaced in the stove buyout that Massachusetts was doing to replace inefficient woodstoves. We were able to afford a new Pacific Energy stove with this program.

It burns very well as it needs a 6” flue. Once we replaced the cheap firebricks with some quality ones, the maintenance on it is very low. The gasket on the door comes loose but that’s easily cemented back on.

I built a woodbox that held newspapers, kindling, small wood, and logs.

In 2015, the Fuel Assistance program had a stove replacement buyout and we were able to get this plain version of the same Pacific Energy stove we had upstairs to replace the 30 year old Vermont Castings Resolute.

This stove burns too well, and as you can see we had to install a damper in the stove pipe to slow the draft. It tends to build up deep coals in the back that we must pull forward to burn down.

Wood for the Stoves

When we were younger and healthier, we would collect wood wherever we could find it. We had a 1949 Ford F5 dumptruck. It had a flathead 8 engine that went and my husband found a Chevy 307 engine for it. He changed the bellhousing so it would line up with the Ford transmission. He loves Fords because parts interchange for years.

He hauled wood from all over this part of the state with this truck. After a few years of this, we were starting to be able to find wood close to us that we didn’t have to cut trees down to get. Someone offered us cords of wood for $5 cord and we moved many, many cords of this from less than a mile away.

We built a ramshackle woodshed out of split telephone poles (another thing we traveled all over collecting) and used sheet metal after a few years of using stacks with sheet metal coverings. It held about 5 cords. We had a splitting area next to it.

The experience of not having to cut down trees led us to the company we use now. We get truckloads of log length hardwoods every other year. To do this we had to move the wood area to the other side of the yard, in an unused part of the front pasture.

The wood we found for ourselves would be whatever was offered, but only hardwoods. The truckloads are a much nicer mix of oak, white and gray birch, cherry, and maple. There’s the occasional hickory and ash also.

My husband split it by hand for many years. He would always use a tape measure and sidewalk chalk to mark the 16” lengths he preferred for the stoves. He would split big chunks, and smaller stuff for starting fires.

In 1994 we had access to a lot of free lumber and beams and we decided to build a real woodshed/garden shed/trash shed. It holds about 9 cords.

In 1999 we both got really sick with chronic illnesses. He developed arthritis from his illness and we got him a woodsplitter.

With the Vermont Castings stoves we could go through up to 8 cords a year. We’d only burn the cellar stove if the temps were near or below 0F.

My husband builds custom deepsea fishing rods ( http://www.turnerscustomrods.com/ ) and does restorations on antique rods. In 2015 he expanded his shop into the whole cellar of the small side of the house. Because he was working down there most days, he would keep the stove going, something we had not done since 1991. The Pacific Energy stoves use about 5 cords, even with the steady burning of the cellar stove. It’s the upstairs stove that doesn’t get burned as often now.

We also keep iron pots on the stoves with water in them to humify the air. Wood heat is notoriously drying. Just ask our antique wood furniture…

So this is our experience of 40 years of burning wood for heat.

Credits:

Sevca by Shea Gunther