What got ya started burning wood for heat?

[alleyyooper]

I grew up in a fire wood burning family. Earliest memorys was a huge old 22 room farm house My folks were renting.
that place had about 4 fire places and a big pot belly stove in the living room and Mom had her wood burning range.
There was a big wood lot on the place I think in the 40 acre range where all winter long dad and a bachlor uncle would fall trees with a cross cut saw (late 40's early 50's) cut them to manageable size even splitting those logs with wedge and sledge. long about March once snow started melting they would take a tractor to the woods with a front fold up mount buzz rig and several farm wagons and a couple pick ups and buzz wood.
All that fire wood went into the base ment for the next winters heat and cooking.

1952 folks bought their own farm small 3 bed room house, kitchen and living room and a wood shed. We had a Warm Morning pot belly stove better built than some that had thin sheet metal between the upper and lower parts. I was 16 and the folks was still useing it.

I got away from wood heat when I left home. renting an apartment first then buying a mobile home in a park then finally buying my presant home. It came with a Southernaire add on wood furnace and a Ashely wood stove in the living room. Also came with our own wood lot. How ever I was Spending time helping keep my folks in fire wood at the time and dad was buying full 8x8x4 full cords of so called scrap logs from a saw mill at $40.00 (1980's) for 10 cord load. I was taking my tri axel equipment trailer and they were off loading from their truck to my trailer when they delivered to dad.
that deal ended in 1995 when dad decided he was just getting to old to be messing with fire wood for home heat. Mom had gotten rid of her range just after I had left home.

So that is how I got started, cut my teeth on fire wood so to speak.

Wife is talking about us maybe getting a NG furnace installed, she says after all I am no spring chicken and some day won't be able to cut split and haul fire wood.


Al

 

[old guy]

Yup, me too, pretty much the same, same time frame and all.

 

[bowtechmadman]

Grew up in the 70/80's and my parents burned wood to heat the home. I remember some creative ways (digging through the snow with backhoe to the woodlot) to get more wood. I also recall my Dad being rather upset that he came home once to his "wood" truck missing doors. Truck wouldn't run so my older brothers/ and sister trying to be helpful decided to tow it with the tractor and surprise Dad with a couple loads of wood. Wood made it to the house unfortunately when being towed backwards and you open the door in the woods they tend to get ripped off.
I didn't burn wood for the first 10yrs of being married despite being on 20 acres of woods. Finally, convinced wife (got sick of 60 degree temps in the winter) to let me put in an outdoor boiler. She really enjoys 73 degrees all winter now.

 

[muddstopper]

My dad had a good job, but he always cut 5ft pulp wood to make extra money. We didnt own a loader so everything was loaded on the flatbed by hand. Our old house had two fireplaces, no such thing as central heat, or maybe there was, we just didnt have it, so it was just natural we burnt firewood. When I got married I bought a doublewide house with a fireplace and a electric furnace. I got a $400 electric bill and went and bought a ashley wood stove. Got the big model and you had to sleep with the windows open it got so hot. I sold that place and built a house, all electric, no provisions for wood heat. Had a heat pump and used a kerosun kerosene heater when the weather got really cold. I ended up installing one of those propane none vented gas fireplaces in the basement. I didnt like it one bit, burnt to much gas and wasnt any cheaper than just paying for electricity. In 1999, I sold that place and bought where I live now. Dad had built this house in 1984. In the basement he installed a wood stove. The stove was outdated and rusty so I threw it away and just blocked off the flue. Had a cold spell come thru and got a $300 power bill in Oct. Came home from work and wife says, Guess what I bought. It was a big steel wood stove and she wanted it installed and wood to burn in it. Well it was Oct, and I didnt have any wood on hand, but I had a saw and a truck. That winter I scrounged all I could find and cut my power bill in half. Rented a splitter the first couple winters and then built my own. Burning green wood I had to clean out the chimney half way thru the winter, but finally managed to get a couple years ahead gathering firewood. I added a heat exchanger to the wood stove and heat my hot water with it in the winter. Heat exchanger paid for itself the first month. I plan on selling this house in the near future because I too am getting older. My next house will be smaller and better insulated, but it will have some kind of wood stove. I also plan to use alternative solar collectors to help supplement the wood heat and heat my water.

 

[Bobby Kirbos]

My grandparents still burn wood for heat. My grandfather made their stove. It lives in the basement. It has a shroud on the outside and it's tied it into the heating ducts for the oil burner. He stokes the stove and the fan moves the heat around. Old school engineering.

I would help cut and split during the summer. I learned to fall a tree by the time I was 15. I would drop them, he would limb and buck them. My grandfather didn't want me running a chain saw yet, so I dropped trees with an axe. He had an orange and black Dayton something or other (roller nose bar, guessing something in the 60cc-70 cc range). When I was about 17, my grandfather got a 30-something cc McCulloch that I was allowed to run. I remember that it drove him nuts that I lived on the top of the bar (I still do, I feel more comfortable there).

When I moved out of the house, heat was what it was in the apartments that I lived in. When we got married, our first house had an oil burner with no really good way to add a wood burning something. The place that we moved into in spring of 2016 has a fireplace and we love using it. I plan to put in an insert this year to maximize the heat. Besides, I need something to burn that 4+ cords of maple that I have.


My grandfather is now 89 and still wields his Stihl MS362 all summer. The axe and sledge hammer have been replaced with a 25 ton log splitter. A long time friend of my uncle's has a tree removal business, so he brings my grandfather all of the wood that he wants (mostly oak and maple). Free (almost) heat for them and it keeps him active. He's 89 so whatever he is doing must be working...

I should ask him what happened to those 2 saws...

 

[Marine5068]

Bought a new house with a decent wood stove in it.
I upgraded the older stove and now I burn about 2-3 cords and year in shoulder seasons and very cold snaps.
I burn pellets to heat the main part of the house most of the time.

 

[old guy]

I hope you do not intend to use those snowshoes cuz there gonna dry out really bad hanging there.

 

[stumpy75]

Right out of college on my 1st job in the Pacific NW, I realized I had an unlimited supply of wood available. Figured I'd have to use it somehow, so I put together a small barrel stove. I ran the stack out a window in my mobile home. It worked fine, I stayed warm and I didn't burn the place down, even burning Doug Fir.

Other than a few apartments after that, once I got my own house, I've always burned wood. My stoves over the years have been a little better than that barrel stove though!

 

[Haywire Haywood]

8 days without electricity after an ice storm and $1600 a winter for propane got me started in my mid-30s. That lasted a few years till the divorce and I haven't settled down long enough in one place to put in wood heat since. Sold all my saws anyway except for that 550xp in my sig. That wouldn't get it for a full time firewood saw. I'd end up having to walk away from too much bigger stuff and would want a ported 70cc class saw again.

 

[JeffHK454]

I burn wood for the same reason I use Stihl saws...because my dad did. It's also the same reason I'm into guns , old cars and offroading, it's just what we do.

 

[Erik B]

We didn't start burning wood until we bought this place 38 years ago. After buying 600 gallons of fuel oil for a winter and only having a fireplace to burn wood, we looked around a found an Earth Stove Hotshot insert. Oil use dropped down to about 150 gallons of oil per winter. All of my wood gathering tools have been paid for by oil savings. We are considering upgrading our wood stove this year.

 

[gunny100]

Bought a new house with a decent wood stove in it.
I upgraded the older stove and now I burn about 2-3 cords and year in shoulder seasons and very cold snaps.
I burn pellets to heat the main part of the house most of the time.
View attachment 656206 View attachment 656207

do you do like i do first fill up the stove with small rhin wood let it burn wide open for a while than fill up the stove with large logs

 

[H-Ranch]

In 2008 we bought the house we are in now. About the same time a very industrious friend was telling me about building his own OWB. I thought he was crazy and that it would never work.

Fast forward a year - propane cost was quite high and we paid a few thousand dollars to heat the house. Tried to augment with the fireplace and a blower with little effect. Then he says he did not spend 1 penny heating with propane using his shiny new OWB. Suddenly he didn't seem so crazy.

So... time to get the welder out. Designed, built, and installed it for less than the cost of propane the first year. Since then it has been money in my pocket every year.

Neighbor was talking last week of contacting the gas company to inquire about installing natural gas on our private road. It's going in all around us but at least 750 feet of pipe to get to our house. Told him that I'm probably not interested (might have jumped at it in 2009.)

I grew up in a house with natural gas and never even had so much as a fireplace before. I have been accused of being a bit of a pyro though...

 

[Marine5068]

do you do like i do first fill up the stove with small rhin wood let it burn wide open for a while than fill up the stove with large logs

Basically yes.
It lights easy and burns for like 8-10 hours per load, but i usually fill before then.
I noticed I'm using about half of the wood I used to with the old stove too.
And there's not much coal left after a burn down when I clean it out.

 

[Marine5068]

I hope you do not intend to use those snowshoes cuz there gonna dry out really bad hanging there.

Ha, ha...No they're just wall hangers. I have another set upstairs too.

 

[Streblerm]

I moved into my current house in 2007. It is a drafty old farmhouse. I spent about six months rehabbing it on the cheap before we moved in while we were selling our previous house. This was the riskiest financial decision I’ve ever made and luckily I sold the previous house right before the market went in the toilet. Flush with the equity from the previous house and sick and tired of renovating on the cheap I decided to do something “smart” and I spent big money on a geothermal heat pump. NG was pretty high and going up. Practically free unlimited heat from the earth right? Wrong! The A/C was great but the heat not so much. I got caught up in the hype and didn’t do my homework on heat pumps. Any heat pump is sized for the cooling load which in my area and house is approximately 1/3 of the heating load. The rest is made up with electric resistance heat. My cost to heat the house on electric was $5-700 per month the first winter. This was more than it cost to heat with gas using two ancient gas furnaces one of which was a converted coal furnace. The second winter I tried heating without the resistance heat and my wells froze. I started doing the math and I realized that NG would have to be over $20/MCF before the geothermal was economical and the resistance heat was the least efficient possible way to make up the difference. Add in the sloppy install and by January with diminished output of my wells the geothermal just barely made enough heat to overcome the loose ductwork in the basement.

After one winter of suffering in the wallet followed by a winter of being cold I decided to put in a wood stove. I grew up with wood heat. My dad still heated with wood. I removed a gas fireplace and installed a used VC Defiant and everyone was warm! The Geo had a zone system so over time I settled in to a nice compromise with the geo heating about half the house and the woodstove making up the difference. Once I got that all figured out life was good...for a little while. The geo crapped out in about ‘12. I’ve paid a couple techs to look at it and spent an inordinate amount of time myself. I believe it is a malfunctioning TXV but I’m not 100% sure. I plumbed a water to air heat exchanger into the plenum and hooked it up to my hot water heater and that has been my backup heat to the woodstove ever since. When it’s really cold I occasionally bring the resistance heat on too.

At the beginning of each heating/cooling season I have thoughts of replacing my malfunctioning geothermal boondoggle. Once again the window units are installed so it looks like it’ll be fall before I think about replacement again. There’s about 20 cords of wood stacked in the yard so who knows.

 

[stihlaficionado]

Unlimited supply of free wood & $400-500 a month winter heating bills from Ameren
Good friend is a local arborist & I get all the split wood I want

 

[deernutz]

I started running a chainsaw and cutting wood while working at a vineyard in college. Always more trees to clear and kept me working in the winter

Wife and I bought a house with a gas fireplace but got a chainsaw to cleanup deadfalls on our property to use for bonfire wood. I had the best seasoned oak bonfire wood you could want LOL. Planned remodeling and placing a fireplace but we decided to build and are in the process. ZC fireplace will go on the main level of the ranch and woodstove in the basement on the same chase. Have tons of wood to cut from clearing to season. Moving in sometime in decenber so this year will be close on seasoned wood. Next year will be soft maple and deadfall that is getting split and stacked now. After that will be all the wood from the property that will be seasoned 2 years and then will be on a 3 year plan. Looking forward to the wood heating adventure!


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[ChoppyChoppy]

About 10 years ago I bought a house and wanted a way to not die of cold in case we lost power and/or natural gas.
Heated with wood as a kid, so was quite used to all of it.

IE from the frequent wind storms or an earthquake.

First year I had the stove, we were without power for 5 or 6 days, -15* and 70mph winds.

 

[rancher2]

I grew up in the fuel business so no wood cutting going on there. We heated with number one fuel oil running a furnace no heat in the up stairs of that big old house. Got out of high school went to college and never went back home. Had a few house's in the city. Collage friend called said grandfather had died and did I know any one that might want to buy the farm it was only about 15 miles from were I worked and lived. I had been there a few time during college. The old house had burned down { Chimney fire} and the new one had never completely been finished on the inside. I said sure I knew some one ME so he flew in and I bought the 160 and the house. I sold my house in the city and the two rent house's I had and moved to the farm. The farm was very over grown. I finished the inside of the house installed two Lincoln brand wood stoves one in the basement and one up stairs. That started the wood cutting and burning. For a lot of years a friend of mine cut wood for him and me and we sold a fair amount of wood. I got married we bought more farms so we had more to clean up. In 2002 we remodeled a three story farm house on one of our farms. This time we decided we didn't want the wood mess inside and I needed a way to heat the shop I built. So we installed a Garn and heat exchanger's in furnaces as we need AC in this area. We burn 10 to 15 cord a year in it and run it year around as we heat our hot water with it. So as of today we are getting close of 40 years of cutting wood.