Stove at Full Throttle

[artbaldoni]

I hope not! I have about 5 cords to get me out of thiscold snap.

 

[1project2many]

The elephant must have migrated?

That was no elephant. That was a skidder.

They were predicting -10 to -20 overnight and I was looking forward to the coldest night since I moved back here. I got home around 7:00 and filled the "once a day" wood box for the second time that day. It was 3 below when I started, 3.5 below when I finished, and 4 below by the time I got inside and got the boots and layers off. Temperatures were dropping fast and by 11:30 it was -7 F which is where it bottomed out. Not so cold but still cold enough.

My "once a day" wood box refill is about the happen for the third time. There's not much good stuff in the pile right now, though. I ended up with a bit of Red Maple, random pieces of Crabapple, and a few big splits of Oak for the overnight burns and bunches of small sticks that burn up quickly during the day. The house is warm enough though. 71 right now in the living room/kitchen area around the stove, 63 in the back of the house, and about 57 in this room because the door is always closed and the divider between attic space and the attached utility room isn't sealed tight. I'm heating a single story ranch with no basement and an earth berm around three sides that's about 1700 square feet.

Having lived in old, drafty houses in my youth I really feel for the folks trying to keep an old home heated in this weather.

 

[Fred Wright]

Well, Delaware climate is probably like a heat wave, compared to the Midwest, folks upstate and in New England... but it's unusually cold for this neck of the woods. The last couple nights have been in the single digits. Sunday is slated to be in the 40s. Monday and Tuesday nights are back to single digits again.

The stove has been open throttle pretty much nonstop at night. The bedroom gets a bit cooler than usual... we rigged up a blower to circulate heat back there. I've been bringing in larger slabs off the woodpile so one of us doesn't have to babysit the fire overnight. When I get up during the night to return some beer to the environment I stoke it up and add wood.

So far we've been doing well. The ol' wolf den is @ around 73° 'round the clock.

Have been digging into our stash of oak also. I knew I'd saved that oak for a reason. This is it. Thankfully we've no shortage of firewood ready to use. That happened once. Never again.

 

[stihly dan]

A couple of firsts for me last night. Was supposed to get to -13 last night. So for the first time dialed up the furnace to high, also filled it full for the first time. Filled it at 11. 72* in the house, went to bed at 2 still 72* got up at 8 to 72*. Still a bit hung over so took a nap till 10, in that 2 hrs house dropped to 65. WTF its cold out.