Its official, my wife is a wood-burning convert...

[ecfinn]

So I get home from work yesterday and my wife tells me the following story...

She was at her friends house for a playgroup with other stay at home moms and their children. Her friend has a freestanding woodburning stove, but does not do very well at keeping it lit during the day. Her husband always has to relight it when he gets home at night. My wife says "Let me take a look at that and see if I can get it going again." Its a top-loader (she's not familiar with this as we have an insert), they have no fireplace tools, and only larger splits in the room. My wife asks her friend to go get some smaller to medium sized pieces. She uses one split to move the coals around to the front where the air intake is located. She props up the larger logs on the smaller splits with lots of airflow and gets the stove going again for her friend. All of the other women were very impressed.

We had our woodburning insert installed in November and since then she's become quite the fire tender. It helps that she's at home with the kids all day and gets lots of practice. To be honest, I couldn't be happeir with her. She's been great at adapting to this method of heating the house. I make sure there is always wood in the house before I leave for work, and she keeps it going during the day. All I did was encourage her when she was having a hard time getting used to it. What a great wife I've got! Sorry, but I just had to brag a bit!

Eric

 

[begreen]

Sounds like a keeper... er, the stove of course. Having a mate that gets the bug is living good.

 

[chad3]

Eric,
Is my wife traveling south during the day and I don't know about it. She was absolutly against wood in the house till I started buring this year. She now is the primary during the day and really likes the warmth that comes from the stove and not from the oil men. She even went as far as telling me to buy a new stove this weekend and move our old stove to replace the one in the garage.
chad

 

[NFreiermuth]

Eric,

My wife and I had our first child (Little Ms. Mattilynn) two weeks ago. Until then, we both worked and were gone about 14-16 hours a day. We ALWAYS had to re-light the fire.

Now, with the birth of our first and her being at home, I come home to a nice fire with the wife, the baby, and the cats all alseep in front of the stove.

She stokes it, gets the wood, and keeps the steamer full.

Best of all, she said she couldn't imagine a home without a child, the cats, and a woodstove.

Life my friends, is good!

 

[slowzuki]

My wife was a really good fire keeper until I got a radiant heater to keep around, now she knows she can get that radiant stretchy face feeling with the flick of a switch instead of building a fire so the fire goes out a lot now lol.

 

[MrGriz]

Your're a lucky man Eric!

At first, my wife thought the insert was just another one of my hair brained ideas. Now that it's been in and running for a while, she couldn't be happier. I need to have a little more patience with her fire tending mishaps though. She's learning well and I know I'm not always the best teacher. Something like "those who can, do; those who can't, teach".

 

[begreen]

Well, I hope you all are not taking this too far. No fatwood bouquets today. Or at least not without a nice box of chocolates.

 

[colsmith]

Well, I hope you all are not taking this too far. No fatwood bouquets today. Or at least not without a nice box of chocolates.

Hey, am I the only woman who spent about an hour and a half splitting wood on Valentines Day? ;-) We brought home a pickup truck load of wood we cut last summer at a rental property (lightning strike on half dead tree.) We had to go there today anyway to oversee a water meter being fixed. The tenant came out and said, "This is how you spend Valentines Day?" Then we got home, and I wanted to split the wood right away, to avoid stacking and then splitting and restacking later. Fortunately it was apple and split quite easily, so I just kept going and going until the truck was about empty. Felt exhausted later, of course. (Hardly enough energy to go to my health club, where I swam for 10 minutes and sat in the hot tub for 10 minutes!) I hadn't been splitting wood at all since mid-December, strained my hands then carrying too many cords of wood. Started back up about a week ago, so it has taken a while to get my swing back. I have still not worked my way back up to the Monster Maul. Hubby cracked a rib in Dec. so is leaving the wood splitting to me.

 

[elkimmeg]

wife participation is limited here the stove runs 2/47 If I leave a lew splits near the stove in the morning she will put them in she also has mastered the temp gage and air controls and when to engage the cat combustor. all wood gathering over the years has solely been done by me. Her most frequent move to heat the home, is usually to engage the oil burner Tstat

Since I took the wire off the zone valve the furnace only comes on for the upstairs zone and up to 3 weeks back it never activated. This cold spell changed that ,now it will come on about 2 or 3 times a day, but only for that zone and short duration. Really there is no rush to prepare wood or scrounge for more ,having a 3 year supply cut split and stacked