Buying house with wood stove

[faultymechanics]

Hi all,

This is my first post on this forum so hopefully I'm doing this in the right place.

My wife and I are closing on our first home and inside is a wood stove that we're 95% sure the owners are leaving with us (they're moving to Florida so I don't think they'll have any use for it). I know very very little about wood stoves and was hoping to get some info.

From the disclosure we know the chimney is lined and was last cleaned in 2019. I'll attach a photo in hopes it could maybe be identified but the house itself was built in 1925 so I have no idea when the stove was installed. Also knowing the current owners I'm fairly confident they wont have a clue either. I apologize the photo is a bit distant, it's all we have currently.

Any information on the stove would be great as well as tips for a new owner.

Another concern is where to stack and store the wood. There's no good location with an overhang besides the porch and I'm a bit concerned about stacking the wood against the house since it has wood siding and is a wood construction house...though maybe that isn't a concern.

Considering how much snow we get up in Bethlehem, NH I don't really want to use a tarp to cover the wood if I can avoid it.

Thank you so much for your help, I'm very excited to have a wood stove. Since moving to the North Country five years ago, I've always wanted a wood stove for heating.

 

[Tron]

Can't say anything about the stove, but I also don't stack my firewood along the house. I only have a small stock for daily use at the house, the rest is in these things, in case that's viable in your yard. They don't mind snow.

Firewood drying and storage in cheap silos

All, As this storage method seems largely unknown here, I'd like to introduce it. It's really cheap and dries wood perfectly. You just need a sheet of construction remesh (heavy duty, size can vary but I used 8*20'), some nylon rope and a tarp. The remesh is rolled into a tube and tied close...

www.hearth.com

 

[Dataman]

Wood don't care. Put Big tarp over it. My 1st year in house with Blaze King King. I would bring up to porch what I needed to restock house. I had Wood Hoop for daily quick use. Invest in some good Gloves. Ones with long sleeves for putting wood in stove (Welder Gloves work great)
https://www.acehardware.com/departm...mG1EBDaz4LwobPmd_ihoCPDEQAvD_BwE&gclsrc=aw.ds

 

[kborndale]

I live on a small (less than 1/4 acre) plot on long island. During the summer my wood (about 3 cords)seasons uncovered behind and on backside of my garage. In October after putting away all the summer stuff I stack the wood on my back patio which is covered. By the time I move the wood from behind the garage to the patio it's cool enough that the bugs are less active. My house has cedar shake siding along the patio and I have never had in issue with bugs in the last 15 years.

 

[jetsam]

Even cedar rots if it's kept wet all the time. A woodpile alongside the house has the potential to make that happen. (It's also bad for the woodpile- they need airflow.)

 

[Ctwoodtick]

Congratulations on the house. I’d definitely hire a qualified chimney sweep to do an inspection. I know that the disclosure says it was swept in 2019 but I’d want confirmation that things are in good shape.

 

[kborndale]

Even cedar rots if it's kept wet all the time. A woodpile alongside the house has the potential to make that happen. (It's also bad for the woodpile- they need airflow.)

Yes, that's why I only have it stacked there from mid October thru April. And the stacks are perpendicular to the wall so airflow is not an issue.

 

[faultymechanics]

Thank you all for the responses and the congratulations. I’ll be a little less stressed after the inspection next Wednesday.

Sounds like I have a couple inexpensive options to stack/store the seasons-worth of wood; for daily use I can use the wood hoop on the porch for easy access as said above.

My concern with the tarp of the stack is when we get a foot of snow and I have to clear it off without ripping the tarp. The silo is a neat idea though; especially with a door below so I can keep the tarp bungeed down.

In regards to the chimney sweep, I imagine that isn’t covered in a general home inspection? Definitely don’t want to burn the house down and we know very little about that stove setup.

 

[Ctwoodtick]

A general inspector will not be inspecting chimney to any real degree- probably not at all. Not a terrible thing to hire a chimney sweep if you still have time in your inspection period. Inspection by chimney sweep could take place after you buy house of course. Any costs would fall on you though at that point.

 

[Tron]

My concern with the tarp of the stack is when we get a foot of snow and I have to clear it off without ripping the tarp. The silo is a neat idea though; especially with a door below so I can keep the tarp bungeed down.

With the silo you don't worry about snow, even if it's three feet. That's nothing in weight compared to the silo itself. And yes, I bungee'd the tarp down so it doesn't flap and the water can run off properly. That works fine as long as the silo is full and the tarp is convex. However, when you take wood out of the silo, at some point the tarp will sag down, becoming concave, and then water will pool in it. And that's a weight the tarp won't hold. So when the wood level drops below the top tiers of the wire, I usually untie the bungees, tuck the tarp into the silo and re-tie them. Easy.
But as you usually only have two half-filled ones (the one you're filling and the one you're taking wood from for the stove), that's not really an issue.

 

[peakbagger]

Hi "neighbor" welcome to the region. I am over in Gorham. I think the stove pros would need a photo up close. There is usually a certification tag on the back of the stove that frequently gives the manufacturer and model. Some folks get confused and think the stove was made by the third party certification firm.

They may be leaving the stove but probably far less likely they left you dry wood. Yes the temptation is to hop into wood burning 24/7 but without seasoned wood you are going to have a steep learning curve. and frustration. Sadly if you are from outside the area you may get exposed to the less than ethical woodsellers market. The good reliable guys rarely need to advertise and they have long term customers that buy year after year. That means a much higher likelihood of getting ripped off by someone listing in the local newspaper/facebook/craigslist/gas station bulletin board. The financial reality of selling wood is anyone that does so can not afford to leave cut and split wood sit two years. Far too many people who need wood are going to pester them to sell it far earlier. Unless they have a kiln, no matter how they represent it, its near certainty its not fully seasoned. Many will buy truck loads of logs and let them sit for six months and then cut and split the wood and let it sit a few months in the sun and call it seasoned, that is BS, the clock doesnt start ticking until the wood is cut and split as wood in logs lose very little moisture. If you have a truck Ossipee Mountain Lumber in Ossipee sells 1/4 cord bags of "odd wood" from their wrapped campground type firewood operation for $150. They have kilns and the wood is generally very dry high quality mixed hardwood wood, its just odd size pieces and odd grained wood that will not split on their automated equipment. It comes on a pallet that they will load into your truck and put a tarp over the top (not the sides) and it works well if you have equipment at home to deal with a pallet full of wood. Of course with cheap oil its cheaper to heat the house with oil until the price spikes. your paln

With respect to storage, you really need to get the wood up off the ground so air can get under it. The easier way is to use wooden pallets that places like Tractor Supply and other commercial businesses may give away. Put the pallets up on some rocks, NH's renewable resource" , preferably in a sunny spot and then stack the wood on the pallets. There are various tricks to keep the stacks from falling over,some use pallets on the ends of the rows connected with ropes running across the stack, others use posts dug into the ground, some brace the posts with diagonals. I personally box in the ends of the stacks by stacking the wood. Now the important part, you have to cover the wood leaving it uncovered is going to stop seasoning and the wood will start to deterioate in few years. Just as important is you need to leave air space over the stacks to let air flow go through the stacks. Do not just cover the stack tight to the top with a tarp. Ideally stack the wood so the top of the stack is sloped and put something on top to provide an air space. A couple of pallets work well. Now if you are in it for the long haul, go to a local preferably none chain hardware store and buy some steel roofing. When roofing is shipped to the yard it comes with some sacrificial panels and many of the places set the sacrificial panels aside as well as scratched and dented panels. Now lay that on top of the pallets with some overhang. You will need to drill some holes through the metal and screw them to the pallets. I get pretty good at "Jenga" pulling wood from under the upper pallets from all sides equally and the upper pallets slowly sink down. Most folks end up with garden shed to keep the all the yard tools and it s usually not hard to add on an overhang to stack wood. No matter what you do, your long term plan should be leave space for tow years of wood usage to be stored.

Incidentally we do not have termites up north. We do have carpenter ants. Carpenter ants do not eat wood but they are attracted to damp and rotten wood. They do not cause the wood damage, moisture does but they gladly will build nests in it. If they find a good nesting site they will travel quite a distance. If you see carpenter ants on and around the house they most likely already have nest established in the house. I have seen them build nests under second story roofs. Generally ant bait gel worked best for me compared to laying down a "zone of death" around the house using the granules. The worker ants eat the gel and carry it back to the nest and kills the nest.

Another suggestion is contact your electric utility and see if you qualify for a home energy audit, if the prior owner did not do it its great deal and cut your overall energy use.

 

[faultymechanics]

Hi "neighbor" welcome to the region. I am over in Gorham. I think the stove pros would need a photo up close. There is usually a certification tag on the back of the stove that frequently gives the manufacturer and model. Some folks get confused and think the stove was made by the third party certification firm.

Another suggestion is contact your electric utility and see if you qualify for a home energy audit, if the prior owner did not do it its great deal and cut your overall energy use.

I knew I would find a few people nearby! NH and VT have a huge love for burning wood!

My wife and I have been living in Franconia for the last few years and St. J before that but we've never had the chance to burn wood before. I've been to Gorham a handful of times for professional development; the north country educational services building is up that way.

While they currently have no wood on the property I'm hopeful a contact my co-workers gave me will work out well. The guy normally charges $200 for a cord of seasoned wood although I know he had a waitlist this summer, we shall see what can be done.

There's propane through the whole house so if needed we can use that but I imagine the wood stove will be much cheaper, especially since my wife and I don't plan to use the second story much the next few years.

Good to know about termites, I figured they'd have a hard time living in this area but carpenter ants I'm familiar with from growing up in Ct. Thankfully the house we're buying had no signs of them, just some ladybugs and a couple stinkbugs but we're working on that part.

I'm a hobbyist blacksmith as well and normally I could fabricate some stuff to help support the silos but unfortunately this new house doesn't have a place for me to smith....yet. Hopefully that changes next summer but for now I'll probably give your suggestions a try.

I will say we are kicking around the idea of switching to Pellets as they seem easier to store in addition to the ease of maintaining heat when we're not home. That being said we aren't very cash heavy and $5k for an install isn't very easy to stomach right now.

Definitely will conduct an energy audit when we move in. I know they currently don't use any led lights in the house so we can certainly improve there! Thankfully the current owners replaced all the plaster and horsehair insulation in the house with sheetrock about 5 years ago so the house is much better insulated; we do still need to seal some windows though as only about 25% of them have been replaced. Some of those original windows leak and in the winter that won't be fun.

 

[peakbagger]

Good to see "local' moving in. These days most folks buying homes are the Covid escapees heading north of the notches . They haven't seen a real North Country winter yet (and may not this winter as its an El Nino year). It will be interesting to see how many for sale signs end up on newly sold homes in April

I had what I thought was a relatively new tight house and still got Eversource to pay for half of $4,200 dollars of upgrades. They made a big difference.

I saw in the news that the Bethlehem tax cow, the Casella landfill, got a 5 year extension.

 

[faultymechanics]

Good to see "local' moving in. These days most folks buying homes are the Covid escapees heading north of the notches . They haven't seen a real North Country winter yet (and may not this winter as its an El Nino year). It will be interesting to see how many for sale signs end up on newly sold homes in April

I had what I thought was a relatively new tight house and still got Eversource to pay for half of $4,200 dollars of upgrades. They made a big difference.

I saw in the news that the Bethlehem tax cow, the Casella landfill, got a 5 year extension.

Yeah we're very excited to start a family in this community. Basically our landlord told us last week he was selling the house we were renting and due to the condition it was in there was NO way we were buying it. Due to the hot market everything is about $100k over-valued and we didn't want to get stuck with a home that constantly needed work...in fact it should just be knocked down. Land is gorgeous though.

My wife and I are both educators, I work at Lafayette Regional School and my wife works in Lyndon, VT at Lyndon Town School. Between my school and Bethlehem Elementary we have some really great school options.

We got really lucky to find this house and put an offer in quickly. As you said all the houses in the North have been getting snatched up with cash offers and inspections waived...I agree, they don't know what they're walking into.

Definitely a bit of a damper on Bethlehem having the Landfill but it isn't near where we live and it did seem to bring the taxes down a bit which is nice. That being said the 100 acre expansion plan was absolutely nuts. We shall see what happens in the next few years. I do love the idea of having trash pickup vs. Franconia which had us hauling our garbage and recycle to the transfer station each week.

How does that energy audit work? I thought they come through and identify where you're losing money and just leave you with suggestions.

 

[Tron]

People are "escaping" north because of COVID-19? Really?
I could understand that they want to leave the densely populated areas, but just "north" sounds a bit silly...

 

[faultymechanics]

People are "escaping" north because of COVID-19? Really?
I could understand that they want to leave the densely populated areas, but just "north" sounds a bit silly...

This area of NH is well know for low population with spacious living space as well as "fresh" air. Bethlehem, NH is one of the towns people escaped through during the tuberculosis crisis in the cities years and years ago.

Additionally if you look at maps we have extremely low case counts up here. I think part of it isn't just the fear of COVID but that something like this may happen again in the future.

 

[Dataman]

If you have squirells they will make their home in the wood pile.

 

[john26]

Looks like a Vermont casting insert I believe a winter warm or winter warm 2. i personally do not have any experience with them I did how ever consider buying a used one and after extensive research I passed on it. Seem like they require a good bit maintenance and did not receive the best reviews. As far as on goes I have an open pole barn in the back of my 1/2 acre lot the sides are open with fence wire around it to hold the wood in. The wood is stacked on plastic pallets seems to dry very well until early winter I bring enough up to fill a 12' log rack under my deck with a tin fastened under the deck joist.

 

[faultymechanics]

winter warm

I believe you are dead on. Looks identical to the one in the house when I googled it. Well that sucks. Just from briefly reading about Vermont Castings it seems like they are not a good stove and so inefficient it wouldn't do much to save us money....maybe we will be switching to a pellet stove this year.

I suppose that introduces the battle between wood or pellets but since we can't harvest wood on our own property (not nearly enough land) it's probably best to just go pellets.....ugh

 

[john26]

I suppose that introduces the battle between wood or pellets but since we can't harvest wood on our own property (not nearly enough land) it's probably best to just go pellets.....ugh
[/QUOTE]
I don't harvest wood off my property either my brother hooked us up with a local tree company they load our trucks and trailers for us mostly oak limbs sometimes truck pieces or other hardwoods if we want it. I also look on local facebook market place for free wood. I have personally split and stacked over 4 cords of oak this year we have probably gotten around 12 cords total most all of it was standing dead.

 

[kborndale]

If you have squirells they will make their home in the wood pile.

I have tons of squirrels and have never had any make a nest in my woodpiles, not sure how they could, there isn't enough room. They like to nest high up in trees where they are safe from predators.

 

[Dataman]

Storage Place for them. Temp Nesting. Our Squirrel nest in the ground

 

[Zack R]

Welcome!

I didn't read the whole thread yet but wanted to make sure you buy a moisture meter and learn how to use it. The biggest frustration to new wood burners is dealing with marginal or wet wood.

Take a piece of firewood, split it again for a "fresh split" and measure the moisture by sticking the metal prongs into the freshly split area in the middle. Below 20% and you are good to go.

 

[Dataman]

Ouch. I just always went by weight. Get it all done by May and in Sep it's dry stuff (White Pine). Usally do year in advance. Glad that part of life is over. Switched to Pellets 2018. Pic was my next years stuff. Bay on left held current year.

 

[peakbagger]

For folks outside the area, Bethlehem NH (yes they postmark Christmas Cards every year ) They claim to be the "highest elevation town in NH" and is just off the interstate that runs direct from Southern Mass. NH is basically cut in two by the White Mountain National Forest and the quick only way through is via two major mountain passes that the locals call Notches. The choice is Pinkham Notch and Franconia Notch. Both used to really slow down travel north but about 30 years ago Interstate 93 was extended through Franconia Notch as a parkway, I think its still the only two way two lane Interstate high way in the US. But it made weekend commuting to southern NH and even the Boston area possible. Bethlehem is just north of the notches and just south of Littleton NH that got a lot of press 30 years ago as the number one small town in the US. Bethlehem was a run down resort town but in the last 20 years its getting a lot more popular with a lot of seasonal home development.

As for the Energy Audit check with Eversource, assuming its your provider. NH Coop also has a program. I think you pay for the Energy Audit and then if you decide to proceed they rebate half the cost of the audit and for all identified upgrades.

Go here to start https://nhsaves.com/programs/energy-audits-weatherization/