How to get the other half on board???

[Mike M.]

My soon to be wife hates my habit of wood heat. Its been cold in Wisconsin and I have been burning two stoves for a few weeks. She hates the interuptions (getting up to adjust air control), swings in house temps, cold house in the morning, ect. I try to explain the benfits but it just doesnt work. She grew up in apartments with free heat. It was always 80 at her place. Any one...simalar experience...ideas?

 

[begreen]

Hmm, maybe delay the wedding? <ducking>

j/k. Two stoves to maintain does get old. Maybe swap out the 1450 or 1402 for a Blaze King Princess so that she doesn't need to feed it.

 

[Mike M.]

Well she has started a few fires, however her idea of a fire is one small split burning which really does nothing to heat the house.

 

[weatherguy]

Maybe get one BK King and you won't have to spend as much time fiddling and loading.

 

[Laurent Cyr]

Show her how much electrical you are saving from heating the stoves.

 

[begreen]

Well she has started a few fires, however her idea of a fire is one small split burning which really does nothing to heat the house.

That's understandable if she is new to burning. My guess is that she is intimidated by the process and anxious at causing a fire. This is going to take baby steps, patience and confidence building if it's going to work. FWIW, my wife still prefers to add a few splits at a time and will never pack a stove full. This is after many years of burning. No problem, I'm happy she is involved even in her own way.

 

[Lumber-Jack]

Which is more important to you?

If you are fanatical about wood burning as some of the guys in this forum are, and she hates it, I'd say you are off to a rocky start. Part of married life is making concessions, you better talk about it and see if you can come up with some sort of agreement.
I'd be happy to give up wood burning if my wife would agree to pay the heating bill. Thing is my wife generally enjoys our family days out wood cutting, and she loves the warmth of the wood heat way more than I do. In fact one of the little disagreements we've been having lately is how warm she likes to keep it in the house. I like it cooler, she likes it hot.

 

[Mike M.]

Thanks...we have talked about it. A new house may be the ticket...of couse with one stove.

 

[tcassavaugh]

my wife and I have been married for twenty years. she had never heated with wood until meeting me. I was raised on wood heat. back in 92 when we were dating, she had an opportunity to get a small jotul 602 and she asked if she should get it.........it was free....I told her to get it. we used it that year when the power went out for 5 days after an ice storm. it heated the house and we cooked on it. needless to say, it stayed burning the rest of the winter. she was never a big fan of wood heat through the years, mostly because of the mess it can cause if you don't keep it picked up. last year, she mentioned how nice the wood heat was, after spending a couple of days at our daughters house. we've been through a few stoves along the way and its taken awhile, but she can run the stove like a trooper now and she wouldn't be without it and she still has her little 602....its not hooked up but she's hung on to it. give her time and don't get upset with her comments. involve her when you can and she may come to understand the finesse of heating with renewable fuel.

 

[bluedogz]

Well she has started a few fires, however her idea of a fire is one small split burning which really does nothing to heat the house.

Mrs. Blue felt the same at the outset- VERY worried about messing with fire INSIDE the house, and thinking 'it's not THAT cold, so just one split.'

I had success by getting the stove started, for example, before leaving for work. Then, I set up a full load of wood in the rack next to the stove. Then, about 6 hours later, I called her and said, "hey, stuff all that wood in the stove, would you?" After a couple episodes, she started responding, "hey, the coals seem a little deep; maybe we should wait?", and then, "I know it's only been 5 1/2 hours, but the stovetop is only 450, so can I load it?"

The punchline was when I showed her the electric bill, which had dropped from $1000+ to $250.
That said, two stoves is a PITA. That's probably not helping your case.

 

[PapaDave]

She grew up in apartments with free heat.

Yeah.....probably not.
More than likely, it was being paid for in the rent, she just didn't know it.
Nothing's free.
New, well insulated house, with an appropriately sized BK, and life will be good.

 

[jatoxico]

Set (or get) programmable thermostats and use them so that when you are home the temp never falls below what you are both comfortable with. Then heat with wood when you can. Furnace won't kick on unless there's a call for it, your (she) is not a slave to the stove and I bet pretty soon she gets to liking it being nice and warm not to mention the savings.

 

[Nick Mystic]

This could be more serious than you think. How you heat your house is a pretty big decision when you live in a cold state like Wisconsin. Unless your fiance can find something rewarding enough about heating with wood you could have an ongoing point of conflict. I had a good friend who got into wood burning and had a really nice setup, but his wife didn't like the mess it made in the house even though he was pretty meticulous with keeping things ship shape. When I visited them she did a lot of complaining and I wouldn't have been able to live under such conditions on a daily basis. As a psychologist I'd recommend you pay close attention to two things and use them both to win her over. First, listen closely two what she voices as her biggest concerns and try to develop a plan to address them as much as possible. Second, pay attention to what she likes about the wood stove heat (if there is anything) and try to maximize those things. For instance, if she mentions she's a bitty chilly, get some more heat going out of the stove as soon as you can without any griping. Perhaps you can sit down with her and talk the wood heating issue through and share your thoughts on why you enjoy heating with wood and listen to why she doesn't. It sounds like you'll already listened enough to mention a couple things in your OP. Maybe there are some additional, unsaid things, that she's holding back on for some reason and those could actually be the real cause for her dislike of heating with wood. Good luck.

 

[weatherguy]

My wife was against it for years, when oil rose sharply she agreed to a pellet stove, it didn't heat the house as well as she thought it would and eventually agreed to get a wood stove. Now that the house has never been warmer in the winter and the oil bill is 1/4 of what it used to be she's ok with it. May help that I only have one stove and I do get long burn times, if I didn't I could see her waiting for me to go somewhere and I'm holding her up trying to get the stoves set, that probably wouldn't go over well.

 

[Woodreb]

I'm the "other half" at our house and I was the one who wanted the insert as a better form of heat than an open fireplace at our house. I got tired of how cold we use to keep the house during the winter months with electric heat.

It sounds like she does like it warm if it was always 80 at her apartment. Have you both talked about what it would cost to heat the house to 80 with oil/propane/electric (whichever you have)? We never kept the house as warm as it is with the wood stove because of the cost.

 

[Lumber-Jack]

We were over at some friend's house and I was talking with the husband about getting firewood. He mentioned he just recently had been over at another family's house where him and his son were helping them cut and stack firewood. While we were talking about this his wife who happen to be listening, piped up that she couldn't understand why so many people waste there time with all this firewood stuff, and that it seemed like a lot of unnecessary work. I guess her point of view it made sense to her since her husband was the breadwinner in the family, and she was a stay at home wife. They didn't heat with wood, but if they did she could see that it would likely have some effect on her work load at home, however the fact that her husband's income was being gouged by big electric heating bills didn't really seem to mater to her.
Something we have to remember is that there is only a very small percentage of people that wood heating appeals to, most people would like to think we have progressed past such a primitive way of heating our homes. It's kind of like hunting, some people are really into it, but most people would rather go to the supermarket to get their meat. There's not many people who really want to go out and actually shoot and gut their own chicken or cows, and even fewer wive's who would be happy if you brought home a dead chicken, threw it on the counter and said, "There you go Honey, pluck n gut that, and cook it up for supper".
Probably a lot of women see wood burning the same way, you bring home a bunch of dusty old logs, cut em up and say, "There ya go honey, heat the house with that."

 

[jatoxico]

Probably a lot of women see wood burning the same way, you bring home a bunch of dusty old logs, cut em up and say, "There ya go honey, heat the house with that."

I agree. to the OP if she's wary, starting off with wood as your main or only heat source might freak her out. If she's not used to it she may even be a little afraid of using the stove and of having an 800 hunk of metal in the living room.

 

[rideau]

It sounds to me as if those wood stoves are not keeping the house comfortable. If they were she would not be complaining about being cold. So, depending on your finances, maybe the things to do is to do some serious assessment of the home to see whether you can make it tighter anywhere, in case that is the cause of the chilliness.
If there is no problem with air infiltration into the home, then you should probably do a very serious and careful assessment of the needs of your home and what stove would heat it comfortably and easily. Very few people are unhappy long term with wood heat if they can be comfortable and if their stove gives 10-12 hour burn time minimum, and if the stove is easy to run. Always helps if it looks nice n the room, too.

However, you have to look at your finances. Can you afford to change to a new stove? If not, then explain that you want to heat with wood, that you understand the present stoves aren't the perfect answer, that there is a very high probability that with the proper stove the home can be heated comfortably. So, for the time being, you'd like to use the stoves as primary heat, with supplemental backup kicking in automatically below a certain temperature, so she won't be uncomfortable. Meanwhile you can see which stoves would work, and she can pick the one she prefers of those stoves, once you can afford to replace your current stoves. Show her some of the pretty stoves out there, so she can see she has attractive options down the road, if not now. There are good number of good, handsome stoves.
Seems to me that would address her concerns, and yours.

 

[Mary Briggeman]

I tell ya, my husband's a lucky guy - I'm the one pushing for the woodstove to be used more. We're not burning full-time yet but getting closer to that point.

 

[Charles1981]

I wanted to purchase a house with the possibility of burning wood. My wife was very wary of the idea growing up in a house with no insulation in the attic (still doesn't even to this day either!). She was used to a michigan house where everyone had an electric blanket and the gas stove kept the house warm to around 62-64.

I made some pretty outrageous claims that if she let me take care of the stove /wood she would be extremely warm. She and her family were fairly speculative of my claims. Anyway the wife is a 100% convert, and we had the family over for Thanksgiving and everyone is pretty fascinated by how well it works.

I don't know what I would do if we bought this house and my wife refused to allow wood burning. There is no HVAC or furnace. Just electric baseboard and it costs about 400$ a month to heat the house to 65. The wood costs about 100$ a month to heat the upstairs to 72 and basement to 80+

 

[osagebow]

Show her how much electrical you are saving from heating the stoves.

That did it for me. Show her the graph on the elec. bill if it has one. Or talk to friends with a similar setup and no stove. Our old heat pump killed us every winter. Now our electric is 100 bucks a month tops, graph is flat, and she likes to run the stove. Total 180.

 

[bsruther]

Pour two glasses of your favorite libations, pull two chairs in front of the stove, turn the lights down low. Have some good conversation and enjoy the ambiance of the fire.

If that don't work, kick her to the curb.

 

[dmmoss51]

I think the mistake most of us men make in this situation is trying to convince our wives/significant other with logic. I'm not saying their illogical, but most women's brains are programmed to make decisions based on emotions whereas most men's are programmed for logic based decisions.

With that being the case how does she feel about the warmth factor? If you can make her feel the difference in warmth she gets from the wood stove vs. the thermostat, then you might be getting somewhere.

In my own instance after the first few fires when we started burning wood, my wife couldn't wait to come home on a cold day and sit near the stove. She'd ask me to fire it up.

One day when I was away from the house for too many hours to keep the stove going, she got cold. You should have heard the excitement in her voice when she had told me she had made fire (picture a female version of Tom Hanks in castaway).

The emotional connection was created and she is 100% on board.

I still do most of the work related to the fire but she wouldn't want to go a winter without it.

EDIT: something else I thought of concerning your "interruptions" is practicing running your stove so that you are not making too many adjustments and burn in cycles so you are not adding wood that often. I think in your OP you said you had burned wood for a while so you probably know that the stoves shouldn't take much tinkering once you're up and running.

 

[gyrfalcon]

I think the mistake most of us men make in this situation is trying to convince our wives/significant other with logic. I'm not saying their illogical, but most women's brains are programmed to make decisions based on emotions whereas most men's are programmed for logic based decisions.
.

ARGGGHHHH! And also UGH.

 

[dmmoss51]

Sounds like when Tim Allen gets done talking with Wilson