how to heat the house "a little"

[branchburner]

Anyone here heat with wood ?
Thermostat OFF, furnace/heat pump/electric coils OFF ?
Whew, 69 F in the room, and it's cold !!?! . No wonder Europeans make fun of us.
Hand(s) please ? Those who really really realy use wood--wood stoves, wood furnaces, OWB---to heat their place. Not "up from" 65 F.

I haven't used a drop of oil in 18 months. But now that I heat only with wood, I'm much more likely to use a fire than a sweater. Why would I bother to be chilly? Fires are more fun than sweaters. Plus, it's MY wood: I scrounged it, cut it, stacked it, lugged. I earn it, so I burn it. It heats me twice. (Ok, who's sig am I quoting?)

Almost all the wood I gather is already dead, so I'm just keeping it from rotting. I also burn a ton of small branch wood that most people can't be bothered with. That's great fuel for a quick warmup on under-sixty-degree days.

On the occasions we get away to the in-law's camp in coastal ME, we almost always have a fire at night, either in the fireplace or the cookstove, unless it's brutally hot. So I'm a 12-month-a-year wood burner.

 

[rdust]

Anyone here heat with wood ?
Thermostat OFF, furnace/heat pump/electric coils OFF ?
Whew, 69 F in the room, and it's cold !!?! . No wonder Europeans make fun of us.
Hand(s) please ? Those who really really realy use wood--wood stoves, wood furnaces, OWB---to heat their place. Not "up from" 65 F. Hand(s) ?

Comments accepted. :bug:

If you're talking about those of us with no back up there are a few but not many. Dennis(Backwoods Savage) relies on his stove for all his heat, he does not have a furnace of any type.

 

[soupy1957]

Hey BranchBurner: They say that the HUGE fires they get in California, are because they had worked so hard to keep the wood from rotting into the soil that there was nothing for the natural burn pattern to do, til the fires were so intense that they became as massive as they are. (Does that makes sense? I hope I explained it right). Essentially, had the dead wood (that was being removed for cosmetic reasons in these high-dollar neighborhoods), been left to rot, it would have aided the natural ecological regeneration cycle better, and would have cut down on the massive nature of the fires that eventually DO develop.

In essence, I understand your burning of dead wood, .............just commenting on something I heard about how the ecological cycle works, with regard to wildfires. Meaning, I guess, that we're better off cutting down trees that are not laying rotten yet, to keep the ecological cycle more in balance. Is that a croc? I dunno.

-Soupy1957

 

[vvvv]

a buildup of vegetation on the ground provides fuel. i think i remember a time when ffires were allowed to burn so to control the situation, naturally. urban sprawl has changed the equation.

 

[vvvv]

between BB's pic of cardboard burning flames coming out of a 5' chimney on outdoor stove & my pyromaniacal obcession with cardboard.....

 

[SolarAndWood]

Anyone here heat with wood ?
Thermostat OFF, furnace/heat pump/electric coils OFF ?
Whew, 69 F in the room, and it's cold !!?! . No wonder Europeans make fun of us.
Hand(s) please ? Those who really really realy use wood--wood stoves, wood furnaces, OWB---to heat their place. Not "up from" 65 F. Hand(s) ?

Comments accepted. :bug:

If you're talking about those of us with no back up there are a few but not many. Dennis(Backwoods Savage) relies on his stove for all his heat, he does not have a furnace of any type.

No furnace/pump/coils here either, just one stove in the middle of the house. The big cat stove makes it possible to both heat the house a little in milder temps and also keep up when its cold and blowing.

 

[madrone]

I've tried small loads this time of year in the past, and it's a pain. If it were just me in the house, it'd be sweaters, if anything. I actually like it colder. With kids and a wife, however, there's a demand for something a little warmer. I let the furnace keep the place at 68. My goal is a relatively flat graph of gas usage through the winter. I start using the stove when the outside high temp is 50 or lower. I might have a small fire on a rainy evening over 50 now and then. I find that when the outside temperature is too high, it makes running the stove less fun.
If I lived by myself somewhere where I could store more than 3 cords of wood, maybe I'd be a hardcore wood-only burner.

 

[soupy1957]

"pyromaniacal"

Try spelling THAT word 12 times in 20 seconds!! (lol)

-Soupy1957

 

[branchburner]

Hey BranchBurner: They say that the HUGE fires they get in California, are because they had worked so hard to keep the wood from rotting into the soil that there was nothing for the natural burn pattern to do, til the fires were so intense that they became as massive as they are. (Does that makes sense? I hope I explained it right). Essentially, had the dead wood (that was being removed for cosmetic reasons in these high-dollar neighborhoods), been left to rot, it would have aided the natural ecological regeneration cycle better, and would have cut down on the massive nature of the fires that eventually DO develop.

In essence, I understand your burning of dead wood, .............just commenting on something I heard about how the ecological cycle works, with regard to wildfires. Meaning, I guess, that we're better off cutting down trees that are not laying rotten yet, to keep the ecological cycle more in balance. Is that a croc? I dunno.

-Soupy1957

Everything you say makes sense, but I'm only speaking for myself and my own habitat. I would say I'm a creature whose preferences evolved because of that habitat. (And I'm a born pyro, of course.) My little ecosystem here in rural NH and where I grew up in rural NY (probably like rural CT) has dead trees, branches, and leaves in abundance. Everywhere I drive, I can look into the woods and see dozens of trees dead or down or hanging, mostly hardwoods. Branches, branches, everywhere. So I'm a fish IN water. A far cry from CA, where I might have evolved into a very different creature.

 

[vvvv]

no prob burning however so long as the chimni's clean?

 

[branchburner]

no prob burning however so long as the chimni's clean?

Yup, bypass open - rather waste the wood than waste the house.

 

[firefighterjake]

Had the same weather you got on Friday . . . only it came in on Saturday . . . which is when I fired up the stove for the first time . . . specifically Saturday night when my wife said she was getting a bit cool . . . and this was after she had put on the sweatshirt, sweatpants, etc. Temp inside was 62 or 64 degrees F . . . I forget which . . . so I fired it up.

Use small splits and kindling . . . don't load the stove to the gill . . . if you have chunks, punks or uglies this is a time to use 'em . . . I had my stove 3/4 full . . . but it was with softwood slabs and some old pine . . . loosely stacked. Started the top down fire . . . let things come up to temp . . . dialed back the air to the half way mark . . . enough to have secondary combustion . . . but I also allowed some of the "extra" heat go up the chimney (although I kept an eye on the temp in the flue).

After that it was just a matter of sitting back and enjoying the show . . . and heat . . . although I did sneak outside to look at the chimney and the lack of smoke . . . which still amazes me even now after three years.

If the temps outside are higher than inside you may need to open a nearby window to get a good draft established . . . and if the temps are or will be forecasted to increase during the day I generally don't recommend starting a fire . . . I did one on Sunday afternoon since my wife wanted a fire . . . and four hours later I was sweating to beat the band since quite honestly the temps outside were not that bad.

Final bit of advice . . . don't reload the stove . . . it's tempting to think that you should throw another split or two or three on the dying fire to keep up the temp . . . instead let the stove come up to temp and then let it die . . . radiating out the stored heat for several hours afterwards.

 

[70marlin]

Light woods, small fire. Last friday night was colder and damp. Had my first fire with some popular keep it small and let it go out, the old living room was just right. (sunny and 81 )

 

[branchburner]

Just lit the first of the season two hours ago. Overcast with no warmup coming today, it was 63F outside and 63F inside, 40s tonight. A handful of kindling, a few splits of dry pine, got it ripping and then cut back on the air without closing the bypass. Now down to coals, and shut the bypass since there's no smoke left anyway. 75F in the stove room, 68-70 in the other rooms. (OMG, open the windows!) Standing by the stove feels great, but a sweater does have advantages: it's a bit more portable.

 

[op_man1]

Funny how common it is to see in these threads that the only reason a fire was lit so early this year was because the wife was cold. Well, let me add to that. Our first fire was yesterday and it's because my wife was cold! Two pine splits with some kindling got the house to 27 C (80 F) with the windows open. Would have waited a couple more weeks...

 

[vvvv]

~8500 btu/lb whatever wood derivative burnt, ithinx

 

[Highbeam]

I heat the house a "little" with a little fire for a short time. These fires are 100% with the draft wide open, a handful of junk scraps. The stone stoves take so long to heat up that you don't get a fast heat rise in the room. You will get a warm stove for a few hours that does the job nicely. Wide open draft leaves a nice brown color and clean baffle indicating a relatively clean burn.

We had no real summer. Cold and wet almost the whole year so we have no problem throwing a few splits in the stove to be comfortable. I have electric wall heaters for backup heat, everybody should have backup heat, but my heaters don't get used unless I am out of town.

 

[Got Wood]

I found that I wasted a lot of wood in my insert last year on days like that. I am letting the furnace do it's thing in those circumstances this year.

Bingo. You figure that you are gonna just fire up a couple of splits or three and take the chill off. Next thing you know you are asking yourself "Well, should I keep it going? It isn't really real warm in here yet.".

Next thing you know you have overheated the joint.

Bingo +1 or is it +2? Anyhow, Last fall I did the same... hopefully my memory helps me control my pyro desires. I'm still in shorts and t-shirts but the females are starting to bundle up....wont be too long now before the fire gets going

 

[rdust]

Funny how common it is to see in these threads that the only reason a fire was lit so early this year was because the wife was cold. Well, let me add to that. Our first fire was yesterday and it's because my wife was cold! Two pine splits with some kindling got the house to 27 C (80 F) with the windows open. Would have waited a couple more weeks...

My wife was mentioning how she was cold the other day. I walked over to the wall and turned the furnace on for 5 minutes to take the chill out of the room. It would've taken longer just to get the stove loaded. I'm not falling for that trick yet! :lol:

 

[fjord]

Those damned weak women......."The" wife......All this machismo is getting hot.

 

[oldspark]

Anyone here heat with wood ?
Thermostat OFF, furnace/heat pump/electric coils OFF ?
Whew, 69 F in the room, and it's cold !!?! . No wonder Europeans make fun of us.
Hand(s) please ? Those who really really realy use wood--wood stoves, wood furnaces, OWB---to heat their place. Not "up from" 65 F. Hand(s) ?

Comments accepted. :bug:

If you're talking about those of us with no back up there are a few but not many. Dennis(Backwoods Savage) relies on his stove for all his heat, he does not have a furnace of any type.

I can join that club, no back up for 30 years, I have no life.

 

[Battenkiller]

When I do a quick and dirty burn on those days, I just accept the fact that the stove isn't going to perform as cleanly and efficiently as possible.

Why not use a "top-down" fire? I've been experimenting with this method all summer long in the fire pit and chiminea. They start great every time and burn clean as can be. I'm a true believer at this point. We just pre-load the chiminea for a top-down fire now. Three splits of cherry on the bottom, smaller splits on top of those and a handful of dry 40 year-old shed kindling, all in the same direction. Drop a couple newspaper bows (or pieces of birch bark is even better), close the front and ignore it. Now when we eat out on the deck, if a fire strikes our fancy, we strike a match and we're good to go.

I think this would be a great way to manage the stove for those who can't stand a few chilly nights. You can use your experience to judge how much total wood you'll need and get it all set ahead of time. Fire it up when you get chilly. No need to tend or feed it, it's already gonna burn perfect right to the end. We get a big kick out of the look on our guests faces when we just open the door and light up the fire like it was a gas stove, then sit back and relax for about an hour or more before we'd even think of adding another split.

I've made a couple videos of us doing the top-down thing. I'm gonna be putting them up on You Tube so those unfamiliar with the method (or are skeptics like I used to be) can see how truly effective it is. If there is one single thing that I learned from Hearth.com that has made a difference in how I burn, the top-down method of fire starting is that thing.

 

[op_man1]

Funny how common it is to see in these threads that the only reason a fire was lit so early this year was because the wife was cold. Well, let me add to that. Our first fire was yesterday and it's because my wife was cold! Two pine splits with some kindling got the house to 27 C (80 F) with the windows open. Would have waited a couple more weeks...

My wife was mentioning how she was cold the other day. I walked over to the wall and turned the furnace on for 5 minutes to take the chill out of the room. It would've taken longer just to get the stove loaded. I'm not falling for that trick yet! :lol:

I would have done the same! However, I took the thermostat out to do some wall repairs so the furnace is out of commission right now... Anyways, two splits of pine and some 2x4 scraps doesn't amount to much of adent in the supply...

 

[branchburner]

Anyways, two splits of pine and some 2x4 scraps doesn't amount to much of a dent in the supply...

Yeah, the stove can live off table scraps for the next few months. The major food supply remains untouched until December, when the real chowfest begins.

 

[oldspark]

When I do a quick and dirty burn on those days, I just accept the fact that the stove isn't going to perform as cleanly and efficiently as possible.

Why not use a "top-down" fire? I've been experimenting with this method all summer long in the fire pit and chiminea. They start great every time and burn clean as can be. I'm a true believer at this point. We just pre-load the chiminea for a top-down fire now. Three splits of cherry on the bottom, smaller splits on top of those and a handful of dry 40 year-old shed kindling, all in the same direction. Drop a couple newspaper bows (or pieces of birch bark is even better), close the front and ignore it. Now when we eat out on the deck, if a fire strikes our fancy, we strike a match and we're good to go.

I think this would be a great way to manage the stove for those who can't stand a few chilly nights. You can use your experience to judge how much total wood you'll need and get it all set ahead of time. Fire it up when you get chilly. No need to tend or feed it, it's already gonna burn perfect right to the end. We get a big kick out of the look on our guests faces when we just open the door and light up the fire like it was a gas stove, then sit back and relax for about an hour or more before we'd even think of adding another split.

I've made a couple videos of us doing the top-down thing. I'm gonna be putting them up on You Tube so those unfamiliar with the method (or are skeptics like I used to be) can see how truly effective it is. If there is one single thing that I learned from Hearth.com that has made a difference in how I burn, the top-down method of fire starting is that thing.

I am one of the few that can not get it to work so will view your videos, I guess I need more practice.