Frigid Temps

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Montana, it's best not to keep track of how much wood I use. I heat 2 houses, 2 domestic hot water and some for the 24x56 shop. Have always planned to keep track but I burn so much junk that it's difficult to keep track. I burn construction cut offs from work, wood bunks, cribbing, tree trimmings, cardboard, newspaper, sawdust and tons of other burnables. Considering what I heat I think it's good.
My buddy runs through about 25 cords heating a similar footprint. It's colder in MN but you have a lot more wind so it probably evens out.
 
25 Cords -- Good Lord!!! I have the saws, the neighbor has the truck, winch, chains/cables, etc. Still we don't really have the proper equipment to get a big amounts of wood without killing ourselves. Since it is to his benefit, he seems to be making the investment to get more equipment, so it should get better.

My buddy runs through about 25 cords heating a similar footprint. It's colder in MN but you have a lot more wind so it probably evens out.
 
I put up 7 cord but am probably going to shoot for 9 from now on. We just feed a small stove so the splits are a ridiculous amount of work.

Year before last tore the right shoulder pulling em apart trying to speed up the process. Try to let the splitter do it's thing now. Just takes too long to recover from that crap.

Did use the axe some to strengthen those muscles. I gotta admit ain't got the wind or stamina for a day of that anymore!

Was at 0°F when I got up today. Dropped to -3 and rebounded to +3 or so now. Nice breeze to go with now!
 
I have a Pacific Western. It's the stainless model and is a big un. Holds approx. 500 gallons of water. We have no issue heating what we do and don't have to fill it full. It will take a 54" long chunk of wood but we use 32" so my wife can do it most of the time. We usually put wood in it twice a day when it's cold but don't put that much in it unless it's poplar or softwood. In the summer we only put a few sticks in it every 2 or 3 days. My nephew has a Woodmaster but it's way to small for the heat demand he has on it. I heard that last year he burnt around 50 cord thru it. His wife was run off her feet filling it. He heats a big house and 2 big shops. He built his own wood processor, I told him he would have been better to build a big OWB and load 8' wood in it with his skid steer. We love our setup. Someday I'm going to build another out of regular steel so that I have one when this one finally goes. According to everyone mine should have started leaking years ago.
 
25 Cords -- Good Lord!!! I have the saws, the neighbor has the truck, winch, chains/cables, etc. Still we don't really have the proper equipment to get a big amounts of wood without killing ourselves. Since it is to his benefit, he seems to be making the investment to get more equipment, so it should get better.
Granted he gets 3 semi loads delivered and then just cuts the 8' lengths into thirds to feed the owb. That's a heck of a lot easier than scrounging/bucking/splitting/stacking 25 cords of firewood.
 
He has employees so whenever they stand around for more than a few minutes he has them on a saw. And he cuts everything around 18" still. I think he is crazy but he gets the logs real cheap from a gravel pit clearing closeby. Still a waste in my mind, if he built one of the big ones he could cut his wood cutting time to days instead of weeks. Could burn stumps, big logs etc. Just think how much ash he has to clean out. I seen his processor last year when it was close to being done but he was having issues getting enough speed to run the pump. Beautiful machine but whole project was guesswork on his part. Too smart to ask for help or advice. I didn't even know he was building one until it was almost done. Darn shame all that time, money and material invested in something that will likely never work right. He used to buy 40' dump trailer loads of split green firewood from a sawmill but decided he could do it cheaper himself.
 
Hang in there people! The older I get the less I like the cold..........bbbbrrrrrrrrrrr
It's about -6 here this morning and that is plenty cold enough for me!
The coming days are supposed to be brisk to say the least, high today of 15 with that going down over the next couple days to 0 or so. It's going to be a long week until the temps get back up to normal.
 
Buddy fishing lake of the woods this am. 20 degree difference from central mn to the northern part. Screenshot_20171227-075716.png
 

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