Greetings all
This is my first post in this forum so I better make it a good one. lol
I just started seriously heating with wood again after a very long sabbatical. I guess you could say most of what I knew about burning wood was old school. Things have changed a bit since I last heated with wood, and I suddenly found myself trying to learn, or re-learn a lot of stuff about new clearance regulations, EPA certifications and fire insurance requirements.
Last march we took possession of an older house and spent all spring and most of the summer renovating. From the beginning it was my plan to install a wood stove so I could save a little on heating bills and keep the house and family warm if ever there is an extended power outage, but by the end of the summer I was running short of cash (and energy) and was thinking I would let it go for one winter and just let the newly installed heat pump handle the cold.
Problem was, even though the main part of the house, on a crawl space with a second story, was all very easy to heat (or cool) , there was one large room (14ft x 24ft) with 10 ft ceilings which sits on a slab and the heating duct vents had to be installed from above going though the attic. In the summer it was great, the heat pump, which acts as an air conditioner in the summer, blew the cool air down from above and cooled wonderfully, but when the cooler weather came in the fall and the floor started to get cold, it was obvious that this room ( the floor especially) was going to be uncomfortably cold when the thermometer started to really drop. Long story short, I decided to install the chimney and stove right away. I ended up getting a Regency F2400 and installing an inside, straight up 19 ft metal chimney.
Ok, so what does all this have to do with burning Fir and pine? There doesn't seem to be much talk about burning fir and pine in this forum, and as indicated, this all happened later in the fall and I didn't have a lick of wood to burn. I suppose I could have bought some somewhere, but to me buying wood kind of defeats the purpose of saving on those power bills, also I enjoy going out in the bush and getting wood and have two young boys with lots of energy that needs to be focused.
Fortunately I live in an area (Southern BC) that has plenty of forests and lots (and I mean lots) of free dead standing Pine and Fir. To get it though one usually must drive up in the mountains somewhere, and this is much easier to do before the snow starts accumulating. We had already had a couple snow falls before I was able to even start getting our wood, but a warm spell melted most of it at the lower elevations. My first trip out netted me a load of lodge pole pine (just over a cord by my figuring). On two more trips to higher elevation I brought back a couple more cords of Fir this time. The day after the third trip it snowed like a banshee and pretty much concluded my wood gather for the year.
Now! to test out this new stove. Would it heat the whole house? Will three cords be enough for the winter? These were questions that remained to be answered in my mind, but then I started reading crazy things on the internet about seasoning wood for two years (or more). Years ago when I burned wood to heat my house I always cut the wood (Pine and Fir) in the fall that I would burn that winter, I never had a problem, but now with the internet we often get overloaded with too much information and sometimes we end up wondering if we are doing things wrong????
I had always assumed that the dry standing wood I had burned before was (for the most part) dry enough to burn that same season, but maybe I was just burning wood that was too wet?
Ok, I decided to get a moister meter to check my wood and see just what sort of moisture was in this freshly harvested wood.
Well, I'm happy to report that after splitting and sticking that probe into dozens and dozens of pieces of wood I could only find a few pieces of fir that read a moister content of over 20%, and they read about 23%. My instinct told me these pieces would read high, as they came from the base of a very large, old dead fir tree. Curiously, this old dead fir tree also had some of the driest wood readings (15%) from the wood that was cut from the top portion of the tree. Most of the readings from all the other wood fell anywhere between 16% and 20%. All the new school stuff I'm learning tells me that's just fine, so I guess I will continue to collect my wood the "old school" way and dismiss the idea of trying to store 3 years worth of wood in my city sized lot. LOL
Now as for how the stove and wood are performing? I have to say I am quite happy.
We have had some cold weather here so far this winter, colder than we've have had in years.(-25 C , -13 F) This meant that we had to be diligent about keeping that fire going at times, and it was nip and tuck getting through some night without the heat pump kicking in, but we did it. Only once did the furnace kick in in the morning and it was more a mater of negligence than a failure of the system. (nobody stoked the fire before going to bed) Other than that it has been relatively easy to keep the entire 1500 sq ft house heated (rather warmly I might add) with this new stove and cheap, plentiful Fir and Pine. And as for the large room that sits on a cement slab that would have otherwise been the coldest room in the house? Well it turned out to be the warmest (some say hottest
) room in the house.
It took us (my family) 3 enjoyable days to collect and split (well most of it) the 3 cords of fir and pine, if this turns out to be enough for the winter I will consider it to be a bonus, if not maybe next year I'll spend another enjoyable day in the mountains with my family, either way it's been fun, and there ain't nothin better than sitting around with family and friends in front of a warm fire on a cold winter night.
Anyway that's my story, great forum, thanks for reading.
This is my first post in this forum so I better make it a good one. lol
I just started seriously heating with wood again after a very long sabbatical. I guess you could say most of what I knew about burning wood was old school. Things have changed a bit since I last heated with wood, and I suddenly found myself trying to learn, or re-learn a lot of stuff about new clearance regulations, EPA certifications and fire insurance requirements.
Last march we took possession of an older house and spent all spring and most of the summer renovating. From the beginning it was my plan to install a wood stove so I could save a little on heating bills and keep the house and family warm if ever there is an extended power outage, but by the end of the summer I was running short of cash (and energy) and was thinking I would let it go for one winter and just let the newly installed heat pump handle the cold.
Problem was, even though the main part of the house, on a crawl space with a second story, was all very easy to heat (or cool) , there was one large room (14ft x 24ft) with 10 ft ceilings which sits on a slab and the heating duct vents had to be installed from above going though the attic. In the summer it was great, the heat pump, which acts as an air conditioner in the summer, blew the cool air down from above and cooled wonderfully, but when the cooler weather came in the fall and the floor started to get cold, it was obvious that this room ( the floor especially) was going to be uncomfortably cold when the thermometer started to really drop. Long story short, I decided to install the chimney and stove right away. I ended up getting a Regency F2400 and installing an inside, straight up 19 ft metal chimney.
Ok, so what does all this have to do with burning Fir and pine? There doesn't seem to be much talk about burning fir and pine in this forum, and as indicated, this all happened later in the fall and I didn't have a lick of wood to burn. I suppose I could have bought some somewhere, but to me buying wood kind of defeats the purpose of saving on those power bills, also I enjoy going out in the bush and getting wood and have two young boys with lots of energy that needs to be focused.
Fortunately I live in an area (Southern BC) that has plenty of forests and lots (and I mean lots) of free dead standing Pine and Fir. To get it though one usually must drive up in the mountains somewhere, and this is much easier to do before the snow starts accumulating. We had already had a couple snow falls before I was able to even start getting our wood, but a warm spell melted most of it at the lower elevations. My first trip out netted me a load of lodge pole pine (just over a cord by my figuring). On two more trips to higher elevation I brought back a couple more cords of Fir this time. The day after the third trip it snowed like a banshee and pretty much concluded my wood gather for the year.
Now! to test out this new stove. Would it heat the whole house? Will three cords be enough for the winter? These were questions that remained to be answered in my mind, but then I started reading crazy things on the internet about seasoning wood for two years (or more). Years ago when I burned wood to heat my house I always cut the wood (Pine and Fir) in the fall that I would burn that winter, I never had a problem, but now with the internet we often get overloaded with too much information and sometimes we end up wondering if we are doing things wrong????
I had always assumed that the dry standing wood I had burned before was (for the most part) dry enough to burn that same season, but maybe I was just burning wood that was too wet?
Ok, I decided to get a moister meter to check my wood and see just what sort of moisture was in this freshly harvested wood.
Well, I'm happy to report that after splitting and sticking that probe into dozens and dozens of pieces of wood I could only find a few pieces of fir that read a moister content of over 20%, and they read about 23%. My instinct told me these pieces would read high, as they came from the base of a very large, old dead fir tree. Curiously, this old dead fir tree also had some of the driest wood readings (15%) from the wood that was cut from the top portion of the tree. Most of the readings from all the other wood fell anywhere between 16% and 20%. All the new school stuff I'm learning tells me that's just fine, so I guess I will continue to collect my wood the "old school" way and dismiss the idea of trying to store 3 years worth of wood in my city sized lot. LOL
Now as for how the stove and wood are performing? I have to say I am quite happy.
We have had some cold weather here so far this winter, colder than we've have had in years.(-25 C , -13 F) This meant that we had to be diligent about keeping that fire going at times, and it was nip and tuck getting through some night without the heat pump kicking in, but we did it. Only once did the furnace kick in in the morning and it was more a mater of negligence than a failure of the system. (nobody stoked the fire before going to bed) Other than that it has been relatively easy to keep the entire 1500 sq ft house heated (rather warmly I might add) with this new stove and cheap, plentiful Fir and Pine. And as for the large room that sits on a cement slab that would have otherwise been the coldest room in the house? Well it turned out to be the warmest (some say hottest
) room in the house. It took us (my family) 3 enjoyable days to collect and split (well most of it) the 3 cords of fir and pine, if this turns out to be enough for the winter I will consider it to be a bonus, if not maybe next year I'll spend another enjoyable day in the mountains with my family, either way it's been fun, and there ain't nothin better than sitting around with family and friends in front of a warm fire on a cold winter night.
Anyway that's my story, great forum, thanks for reading.
! i say if the wood has tested dry, BURN IT.i continue to do like you done before, cut and split my pile the year before. i have never had a problem but i do make sure and sweep the chimney a couple time a year (i like to error on the side of caution esp when it comes to fire inside my house!!) good luck with your new appliance, WG
