are you from a family that burned wood or did you start the tradition for your family?

I grew up in a woodburning home and was responsible for keeping enough wood in the house to keep the stove burning and swore that I would never heat with wood as an adult!!...When I got a price quote of $4.15 per gallon for oil this past spring I suddenly changed my ways of thinking.

grew up in a woodburning home and had to stack/split/stock the wood. Wood was delievered split, but usually too big to my pops liking for the freestanding fireplace..

25 years ago Almond was $125/cord delivered. Today it is $300/cord and they want you to come pick it up. So scrounging has been an adult thing. Good thing I just got on a list with a tree surgeon and he drops off free cords of wood when I give the OK(even tells me the type of wood so I have the option to decline).

pioneer

we didn't have a fireplace or stove growing up. in my teens my parents had a vacation home with a fireplace and they didn't use it because it "would create a mess".

Never burned wood before in my life, before this year. Grew up in a natural gas furnace home. I started burning wood this year because of high oil prices. I have enjoyed the wood stove so much this year I feel like I have been cheated my whole life using a furnace. I used to be a grinch in the winter, my most hated noise was the furnace fireing up. I even adjusted the thermostat so that when it was 66 it read 68. If my wife kept the door open too long letting the dog or bringing in groceries in I was yelling. Now I feel a weight has been lifted off my shoulders, I don't care if the door is left open, when its 70 in the house and my wife says I feel cold I just throw in a few more logs to get it house up to 72 or 74. Everyone in my house loves running around in shorts and a t-shirt all winter. I will never heat my house any other way again.

Mike

I am #7 of 7 children and as far as I know, my parents never "burned". I have a brother (#3) that has been burning for about 15 years AND my best friend since 3rd grade has been in the tree cutting business since we were about 17yrs old. Heck I was his very first employee 'way back when'!

I saw oil headed toward the upper stratosphere last fall and decided to go ahead, hedge my bets and bought a QF 4300. If you were to chase my posts around this forum, I've been saying for a month or two that "I have yet to burn 1/2 a tank of oil yet this year".

Whelp, I went into the room where the oil tank is last night and the truth of the matter is, I think I MAY have bured somewhere around a 1/4 tank of oil this year so far. Oil came WAY down, after I bought my stove but I think I still made a very smart investment .Although it's a bit more work than I planned on, I'm glad I made the choice to go this way. I'm telling you... I think I watch about 1/4 of the 'winter' television I used to and I realy glad about that!

Okay, I'll stop rambling now....

Growing up, the fireplace was just for special nights and I, along with my mom always loved it.

I went to college and one of my roommates introduced me to wood burning. his parents house and there Maine house were both heated with wood. I could not believe the heat output from a fire contained in a 3ft by 1ft by 1ft box. Informing my mom of this amazing devise she purchases and installed a wood stove in the garage for me when I was 18. Some say its unsafe, I say the nights I spent working out in the garage hanging out with good friends on a cold night were far safer then some of my other friends who took on more careless hobbies.

I now have my own house and will be putting a stove in for next season. the pellet stove is just not the same.

BrotherBart said:

When my dad was growing up wood heat was all they had. We never had it growing up and when I started heating with wood in 1977 he was convinced that he had raised a mentally retarded son. He thought that any central heat and the thermostat were the greatest inventions ever.

At 61 and after lugging a bazzillion splits I am starting to agree with him.

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LMFAO. You sure that isn't a Gazillion?
Import yourself a Russian housekeeper to do the grunt work!


My family being all from PA, were all coal burners from the starting days.
Ma & Pa were oil users when we lived near Philly. Then they went back to coal when they moved back up to the sticks.
About 9 years ago they switched to propane HW. I was always oil living near Philly, and have been wood since the first fall of 06 since moving up here in the Summer of 06.
Now trying to decide if I want to run 2 stoves, or go with a Garn or such.
Got to think ahead for when I get to be around 61ish and have also loaded a Gazillion splits, or is it a Bazillion?

Grew up with two fireplaces in the house. The upstrairs fireplace was never used. The downstrairs fireplace was used occasionally, but not often. It was a huge fireplace and I would love to sit and watch the flame. My father converted the fireplace to a gas log fireplace and I didn't like that at all.

My house has one fireplace and I used it for 17 years as a fireplace mostly on weekends. I just converted to a wood insert and can't be happier with the total wood burning experience.

BrotherBart said:

...he was convinced that he had raised a mentally retarded son... At 61 and after lugging a bazzillion splits I am starting to agree with him.

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I'm beginning to agree with him as well, BB. %-P

Maybe 2/3, 1/3 about for me, I'd say, when I was young. My folks' house had gas heat. It was an under-the-floor sort of thing without a fan, so between the living & dining rooms was a metal grate in the floor that you could see the gas flame burning beneath. Yes, I fell on it and burned my fingers. More than once. We also had a conventional open masonry fireplace, which was nice to sit by. One of my chores was to empty the ashes from the bottom of the chimney through the outside cleanout door, and I actually enjoyed making some sort of game out of that. I still have the little shovel I used. My grandparents used nothing but wood for heat and cooking back then, and so when I visited them (which was often, as they were just ~30 miles away, and my parents just loved the times when I wasn't around) it was my job to stack and carry wood, split kindling, and to stoke up the big cookstove in the kitchen early every morning. I remember pretending that I had to get a locomotive up to pressure and ready to roll ASAP, as the enemy was closing in and we had to get our train the hell out of there. I can't start a fire without remembering that. I still find burning to be fun sometimes, always a nice thing to sit back and enjoy, but the work involved takes a toll. Rick

I grew up in an old 1800's leaky farm house only heat was and still is wood. Old wood furnace with convection heat with ducts, I called it the octopus. Old parlor stove in the living room area upstairs. Heating the farm requires running both stove during the height of the season to keep warm. My grandfather cut split and stacked in the dirt basement 14-15 cords, and I of course had to earn my keep and swore I would never touch a stick of wood when I was and adult. Now I cut my own 5-8 cords, his 14-15 cords and split them both as well, needless to say I don't end up with much idle time. I must be mentally ill because I seem to love it to some degree even after working in the woods all week long.

I grew up in a natural gas heated home. My parents grew up in houses heated with coal. My wife grew up in an oil heated home. Even if you go out to all our brothers and sisters, aunts and uncles - not a wood burner in the lot. We are the odd ones without central heat who split wood all summer. Of course, we were the only ones not complaining about the high cost of heating their house this winter. We just smiled and complained about how it can be hard to sleep when the house is at 78.

I grew up with wood heat and we cooked on a wood cookstove. We harvested all our own firewood. We cleared land for pasture so felled trees with an axe and bucked with a swede saw. Later we got a chainsaw and a buzzsaw.

Growing up we had a house that came with a woodstove, my father "tinkered" with it. He would run it out of almost "recreation" then so much for the heat. All the homes we lived in growing up were oil fuel heat.

So no but I'll propably start the tradition.

I grew up with oil heat and now we also have oil heat. Right now, we are using the fireplace with a blower and having good results but have a stove install pending. When I was a kid Dad had a barrel wood burner in his garage. He got a real kick out of being able to work in the garage on his snowmobiles in the dead of winter wearing only his t-shirt. We had a small rubber ball hung on a string from the ceiling rafters meant as a 'stop' for the car that was normally parked in the stall where the stove was. It was interesting watching the rubber ball dry up each heating season because it was too close to the wood stove! After Dad & Mom passed away we had to sell the house and remove the barrel stove due to new regulations. I kept the door and it is now in my flower garden. I think my sis took the last rubber ball - it looked like a prune!

Shari

we moved up from florida to the southwest virginia area when my dad was hired at a paper mill which was being built here (he was a career papermaker) in 1973 being from the sunshine state , we didnt do a lot of woodburning for heat, just to keep the "skeeters" away, anyway , dad bought a sears "ben franklin" stove midway through our first winter here as the old house we were renting was frigid and the electric heat was pitiful at best, you stayed warm with the franklin even when you didnt burn it , just keeping it in wood was a major chore.
we moved into a home he bought in 75, the mill was up and running by then for a while the house had an oil furnace and it was quite comfortable compared to the roof with wind we moved from.

an interesting sidenote to my story, the mill being built like all mills of its type , welders are needed to do this, frames to put up , boilers and pipes to be installed and welded up, about the same time we moved here , a fellow named bob england (a welder from east tennessee) and his family (his sons were welders as well) also moved here, hired by the mill to help build it.
one day a fellow who also worked there came to bob and asked him if he could build him a woodstove, bob said yeah , we could do that , and they discussed the cost for doing so , the price was enough steel to build 2 stoves, the guy would get one and bob would keep the other as he wanted one for his workshop at home. the 2 stoves were built and others followed, what grew from that was england's stove works.

my dad bought one of the subsequent stoves a couple years later, and we have been a woodburning family ever since. that stove dad bought , still functional, residing in his woodshop, we put a newer one in a couple years ago but the old unit is still soldiering on , heck , the blower still works.

as for that first stove , bob's son ron still has it , we have it stored for now , awaiting its new home in the Amherst County historical museum when its completed, the stipulation for the unit going there , it has to be installed in a functional setting , so on occasion ,it can be lit and burned. personally , i hope i get to be in on the install, would be an honor for me.

so, yeah , im from a woodburning family, in more ways than one.

BeGreen said:

No wood heat in the house that I grew up in. It was modern times and we had a central hot water system. But at heart my Dad was a firebug. Taught us how to make fire cans when we were kids. When they moved into a smaller home to retire they had a fireplace and used it frequently.

No garden either, but most all of the children are gardeners, go figure.

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What is a 'fire can'?

Shari

i am #7 of 7 kids too,we always had a wood stove,moved into an apartment around 20 stopped burning,bought a house 2 yrs ago with 2 fireplaces burning again.

I grew up with electric baseboards, but always a decent woodpile either for the fireplace, or the tiny cast-iron stove in the family room. My father grew up with a wood/coal furnace and although he'd never heat with it now, he had fond memories. We camped a lot, too. I learned how to split and stack, and light a fire, even brush a chimney. When I bought my house, it came with the stove. I had to use it 24/7 for a month during the first year when the oil furnace failed, (and my son was 4 months old), and got hooked. I have a gas furnace now, so I think of the wood as supplemental, although I love everything about it. It's really only worth it if it's free and easy to get.

BeGreen said:

Shari said:

BeGreen said:

No wood heat in the house that I grew up in. It was modern times and we had a central hot water system. But at heart my Dad was a firebug. Taught us how to make fire cans when we were kids. When they moved into a smaller home to retire they had a fireplace and used it frequently.

No garden either, but most all of the children are gardeners, go figure.

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What is a 'fire can'?

Shari

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A paint can with holes punched in it for ventilation. Put a long wire handle on the can. Fill it with kindling and light. Then use the wire handle to swing it around in a circle. The wind from swinging sets the kindling ablaze. Looked cool when done at night. Quite the light show.

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Ah, sounds like a redneck sparkler! (No offense meant!) Sounds like a Dad with a great imagination!

Shari