Furnace firing countdown

I think that this is the right place for placing this little fun post.

For many of us our wood heat is not our primary heat source. This is especially true when the temperatures plummet and the wind begins to blow.

We have not had terribly cold temps yet but in any other year (see other posts for long saga of getting even a small stove in our home) we would have flipped the switch already on our electric furnace to get us through a few nights and the odd day. As of today it is October 25th and we have not done anything but have the furnace fan running to circulate the air. We are keeping the main level of our home at 70 or higher and our basement where the stove is installed has been averaging 75-80. Of course there are corners of our home that are lower and that is what sweaters and slippers are for.

I must note as well that we have only been burning box elder and elm that is bordering on punky. We have not touched the good elm and we certainly have not brought in any very solid Ash wood. We are saving the good stuff for the colder temps. We also have not been running the stove hard at all as we have only really stuffed the stove once to get it really rolling. For Christmas I will ask for a stove top thermometer and a moisture meter .

So now we are counting the days as a bonus that will shorten our winter power bill. Every day we do not need the elements on our furnace is a one day less we are paying on our hydroelectric bill.

How is everyone else in the same situation as me doing on this?

So it is now November 11th, our Remembrance Day in Canada, and we have yet to flip the switch on our electric furnace elements.

We are still burning our weaker firewood such as Box Elder and Elm that has some punkiness to it.....

And we are still more than warm enough.

I am still kicking myself for buying as small a stove as we did but it is definitely making a difference.

We will still have relatively nasty hydro bills in December-February but our little Drolet is making the winter shorter.

So we finally had to give in a bit today and flipped the switch on the elements in our furnace.

Because we were away much of the day I came home to a pretty chilly house and decided that I had proved the point.

We know that if we are at home we can get away without the furnace firing down to at least -10 celsius on a cloudy day.

If it is sunny that threshold drops dramatically due to our South windows.

If, and I say IF, we had an insert in our upstairs fireplace we would be good to a much lower temperature overall.