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I'm a 62 year old retiree. My wife was raised in the Chicago suburbs and is a banker. In 2000 we bought a house and 20 acres of oak, cherry and hickory forest that sits on the high ground looking down into the Fox River Valley in north central Illinois. It was built in 1952 and the gentleman that built it designed it with under floor radiant heating and a wood burning furnace. It also has a sun porch with a Heatilator fireplace and large fireplace in the living room. After his death in 1984 the house had a couple of owners who moved the old furnace aside and replaced it with a very cheap LP hot water furnace. Two years ago we installed an HS Tarm Excel 2200 dual fuel wood/LP furnace. When the house was built the plan included a wood chute that goes to a wood storage room next to the furnace. The room is 11x12x8 and we usually put 4-5 cords down there at a time. Heat storage is mass provided by a brick 3 chimney stack and walls / ceilings that are 1 inch of concrete over expanded metal lath. We put an addition on the house and used the same heating design. The floors in the new part are stone to add to the mass. We re-roofed, re-sided and insulated over the last 10 years and the house is pretty tight. We heat about 4000 sq ft of living space and another 2000 sq ft of basement and crawl space.

We have 7 Pyrenees, most of them given up by previous owners for various reasons. A couple of pasture pet horses and a miniature mule round out the animal life that we feed.

I'm a reader.