Waiting to go to bed!

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I wait to go to bed every night! Load the stove at the end of the day and surf the internet for a while as the stove heats up and is ready to be turned down for the night.

I have been burning wood since I was a kid, so it's part of the morning routine. I also work from home a lot, so no big deal to feed it.
 
Yes, usually because of what I think Hogwildz called "newburneroverfiddlingwiththestoveitis"...paraphasing here, but it was funny and spot on. I have gotten a lot better at getting things going properly, and giving the stove time to do what it wants and needs to.
 
I have a thermometer in our bedroom. It's upstairs the furthest point from the stove in a 2000 sqft colonial. 0 or below outside, It was 54 in the bedroom when I got up the next morning. Cranked the IR back up again and brought the heat up to livable range by noon. I too have the advantage that when I'm not on the road for work I work from home. I can build the fire and work on the laptop in front of it. It's perfect. Last night I cooked both of us out! Temp was in the 20's and I was burning like the last month of below 0.
 
I'm not sure I would deem indoor temps from 54 to being cooked out as perfect - or taking the morning to get up to livable. I might find myself living alone if that was the situation here. Main thing though is happiness, so as long as you're there all is good.
 
You are correct! The wife was gone those days. I keep a much more even hand on things when she is here! BTW she loves the look of the Mahogany IR as well as the heat!
 
When it's this cold for this long, every solid object, including the walls of the house, are frozen and just keep sucking the heat out of the room until the outside temperature warms up. The frost line of the ground here has now moved deeper than historic levels, and municipal water mains are freezing and breaking all over the state, to say nothing of household pipes that have never frozen since they were first put in.

Looking at the forecast, I'm only seeing one more day of below-zero overnight temps here next week, thank God. I'm just trying to figure out whether to burn my remaining supply of firewood over the next week or so or pay the oil company now and use the firewood spread out over a month or so this spring.
Use the wood now and stall on the oil as long as possible. I hear an indefinite warm up is right around the corner and you could be saving that wood for nothing. Besides, once that wood is gone, you deserve to rest and let the oil handle whatever nominal heating needs are left this season!
 
Use the wood now and stall on the oil as long as possible. I hear an indefinite warm up is right around the corner and you could be saving that wood for nothing. Besides, once that wood is gone, you deserve to rest and let the oil handle whatever nominal heating needs are left this season!
That's what I think every other day. The other days, I remember how weary I am of the weeks of fighting the cold with a stove that isn't quite up to it, loading and reloading and hauling and lugging and... So I've decided not to decide. When I feel like using the stove, primarily on weekends when I can enjoy lounging around it and can keep an eye on the burn cycle, I use the stove. Other days, I let the boiler do the job. We've got one more (knock on wood) below-zero night coming up tomorrow night, and after that, it should be a piece of cake.

This stove does a great job keeping the house warm in normal VT winter temperatures, but we've been consistently 10 to 20 degrees below normal for about the last six weeks, and that's too much for it. I wore myself out with the anxiety of trying to keep the temperature up with just the stove, and you know how it is, once I gave in and got some more oil for the boiler, it's a temptation I can't resist very well to just relax and let it take care of things.
 
That's what I think every other day. The other days, I remember how weary I am of the weeks of fighting the cold with a stove that isn't quite up to it, loading and reloading and hauling and lugging and... So I've decided not to decide. When I feel like using the stove, primarily on weekends when I can enjoy lounging around it and can keep an eye on the burn cycle, I use the stove. Other days, I let the boiler do the job. We've got one more (knock on wood) below-zero night coming up tomorrow night, and after that, it should be a piece of cake.

This stove does a great job keeping the house warm in normal VT winter temperatures, but we've been consistently 10 to 20 degrees below normal for about the last six weeks, and that's too much for it. I wore myself out with the anxiety of trying to keep the temperature up with just the stove, and you know how it is, once I gave in and got some more oil for the boiler, it's a temptation I can't resist very well to just relax and let it take care of things.
I understand. Best of luck to you. Probably best to just do what you feel. Happiness in life is first and foremost!

Have wanted to move to the Burlington area for years and just haven't been able to bite and do it. I love winter and I love snow but your testimony helps keep my feet firmly planted :cool:
 
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I understand. Best of luck to you. Probably best to just do what you feel. Happiness in life is first and foremost!

Have wanted to move to the Burlington area for years and just haven't been able to bite and do it. I love winter and I love snow but your testimony helps keep my feet firmly planted :cool:
Well, it's an unusual year, following a somewhat less brutal but also unusual year. I sure hope we don't have another one of these any time soon, but the Weather Gods do what they do when they feel like it. We haven't had all that much snow, just the cold, and only for a bit over a month, though it seems more like years right now. The cold here in winter is generally very dry, so single digits don't feel as cold when you're out in them as the much warmer winter temperatures do where i used to live outside Boston, with its humid winter winds. So really, the only problem is interior heating, which a bigger stove and/or a better insulated place than mine would take care of even in these temperatures.

I'm way out in the country about 50 mi SW of Burlington and don't get up there very often, but it sure seems like a thriving, vibrant, very enjoyable small city to live in or near. Ideally, one would live in the nearby countryside and work in town and have the best of both worlds.

This is just a wonderful state to live in on so many different levels, not least being the utter magnificence of spring when it finally bursts out, an almost overwhelming gift after such a long winter. In the meantime, I just ordered another box of SuperCedars...
 
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Well, it's an unusual year, following a somewhat less brutal but also unusual year. I sure hope we don't have another one of these any time soon
Seems like this may be the new normal; I think I may get a bigger stove and stack more wood. _g
 
Seems like this may be the new normal; I think I may get a bigger stove and stack more wood. _g
What's just maddening is that this year, I had told my supplier I wanted to get in an extra cord just in case after the misery of last winter, but he talked me out of it, presumably because he was having trouble fulfilling the demand from everybody who was spooked last year. I was one of his first customers and have sent him a fair amount of business for his chimney and stove install services, as well as buying a lot of his firewood, so I'm pretty sure I can get away with pressing it this year,. and I fully intend to. Whether it's really a new normal or not, the weather and climate people hereabouts don't seem to know, but the firewood in my stacks is never going to go to waste if I get more than I need. I would love just once to get to the end of the heating season with something more than punky scraps of low-BTU crap lying around and the living room furniture starting to look good for the stove!
 
Well, it's an unusual year, following a somewhat less brutal but also unusual year. I sure hope we don't have another one of these any time soon, but the Weather Gods do what they do when they feel like it. We haven't had all that much snow, just the cold, and only for a bit over a month, though it seems more like years right now. The cold here in winter is generally very dry, so single digits don't feel as cold when you're out in them as the much warmer winter temperatures do where i used to live outside Boston, with its humid winter winds. So really, the only problem is interior heating, which a bigger stove and/or a better insulated place than mine would take care of even in these temperatures.

I'm way out in the country about 50 mi SW of Burlington and don't get up there very often, but it sure seems like a thriving, vibrant, very enjoyable small city to live in or near. Ideally, one would live in the nearby countryside and work in town and have the best of both worlds.

This is just a wonderful state to live in on so many different levels, not least being the utter magnificence of spring when it finally bursts out, an almost overwhelming gift after such a long winter. In the meantime, I just ordered another box of SuperCedars...
My brother lived in Northfield. Beautiful area but I'd need to be closer to Burlington to get the WAF :rolleyes:
 
My brother lived in Northfield. Beautiful area but I'd need to be closer to Burlington to get the WAF :rolleyes:

Mumble, mutter, mumble-- OK, I give up. What's "the WAF"?
 
Wife Approval Factor, usually related to or used in the context of a masculine choice of wood stove not being up to par with the femanine status quo. Wow, I sound misogynistic...<>
 
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Wife Approval Factor, usually related to or used in the context of a masculine choice of wood stove not being up to par with the femanine status quo. Wow, I sound misogynistic...<>
I get it. One definitely does have to accommodate the concerns and preferences of one's life partner or it ain't a real partnership.
 
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