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lapazfarm
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| Posted: Aug 11 2008 at 12:56am | IP Logged
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We are heating our home with wood this year, using a freestanding woodstove. Though it isn't actually cold yet, we have been using it a few times on cool mornings just in order to get a feel for how much kindling/wood to use, how much heat it produces, and how often to feed it. We'd like to be prepared before the REAL cold hits.
But I could really use some advice from experienced woodstove users.
Where do you keep your woodpile?
How do you store your wood indoors, and how much do you store indoors(a day's worth, 2 days, more?)
What about kindling? How do you organize that?
Do you use firestarter logs or just kindling and matches?
How do you deal with the mess from the logs and kindling?
How do you deal with keeping the house warm overnight/ Do you have to get up and feed it at night, or do you just start again each morning?
Anything else I should know to make this operation run smoothly?
Thanks!
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SuzanneG
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We always got the REALLY STURDY lettuce boxes from the produce guy at the grocery store. My mom would call up when we needed new ones. We'd load them up at the woodpile, which was about 20 yards from the house. Then, stack them up 3-5 high on a hand truck and wheel them into the house that way. We brought in about 4-5 stacks every few days....so that's about 15-20 boxes of wood. My dad still does it that way, but doesn't have such a big house to heat  .
When the boxes emptied, it got thrown in the "box pile".......near the woodpile....the lettuce boxes are sealed with something...sort of like a laminate,so it didn't really matter if they got wet.
I think we had one box that was just kindling. It was nearer the stove, only cuz it was messier to carry farther.
The mess???? Well, my dad always said that was the sign of a good wife in this day and age.....if she didn't complain about the mess that a woodstove makes, then she's a "keeper."  We kept a big tarp under the boxes of wood, simply to protect the floor. We shook it out before we brought in new boxes. Other than that, it was always a child-job to sweep around the woodpile at least twice a day, and then around the stove several times a day.
At night.....we always had much bigger logs that weren't split, specifically for nighttime. Bigger logs, and turn the damper all the way down. Depending on when the first person got up in the am,(and your stove, of course) that may last all night. Also, some kinds of wood burn slower....but i can't remember which ones and I suppose you're liimited by what you have there. On really cold nights, someone would get up to feed it, but sometimes there would still be coals in the am and you wouldn't have to re-light it. We were always up at 5 am or so, so that helped.
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SuzanneG
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P.S. Your dc are going to have SO MUCH FUN with this! (even though they may not think AT THE TIME that it's "fun.") Some of our best family jokes and stories have to do with chopping, loading, and burning all that crazy wood!
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JodieLyn
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don't use firestarter logs.. it can leave residue in your pipe (higher risk for chimney fires) and usually isn't necessary if you have good dry seasoned wood.
How you manage it depends on several things.. it'll probably be trial and error.. I prefer a cool house for sleeping so usually let it go out overnight and start in the morning.. when it's really cold we just build up the fire more than we would otherwise and that usually takes care of it. You may have a more bitter cold though and getting up to replenish it might be wise. Again you'll want to experiment.. but with our stove I could probably get up just once a couple hours after going to bed to add wood and make it to morning.. it also helps if you have the person up latest building up the fire and then the earliest riser getting it going again asap.
On days it's not cold enough to keep it going all day, I'll just have a small fire morning and then again evening.
We bring into the house enough for several hours.. and then in the attached garage is enough for 1-3 days or so. The woodpile is out behind a shed at the back of our yard.. don't want to tempt wood eating insects to the house ya know
keep a small broom and dustpan at the stove/inside wood and then it's easy to sweep up as needed.
I keep a box for paper trash that can be burned and one for kindling inside as well. I try and keep enough kindling for several starts.. but the main thing for me if I know I'll need to make a fire when it's cold is to have the kindling for that start. So I'll make sure to have kindling before going to bed (or before leaving the house for a longer period) when I know we'll need a fire first thing the next morning (or as soon as we get back)
Also, build up the fire when you want to get it hot fast.. smaller pieces will burn hotter so the more gradually you build it up the hotter it'll get.. but you can't forget it or it'll also burn out fast on you. The joke around here is not to let mommy feed the fire when she's cold.. I tend to get the stove a wee bit too hot 
And you want to burn hot fires at least part of hte time.. that helps things burn more completely and you don't have the creosote build up (chimney fire risk) that you do from slow burning fires (especially if you're cutting air flow to get the slow burn).
Alot will depend on the type of wood you're burning too.. so be sure and ask people around you who use the same type of wood what they recommend.
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lapazfarm
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Oh, gosh. I remember dreading it as a kid. The worst part was waking up to a freezing cold house if the fire had gone out in the middle of the night. But, my kids are made of far sturdier stuff than I was! LOL! And ds is constantly begging me to let him make a fire (big surprise there, right?LOL!). Let's hope the charm doesn't wear off until at least spring!LOL!
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JodieLyn
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The summer my oldest son turned 7 we managed to get a lot of camping in. Which meant he got a lot of time of chopping up kindling with daddy right there keeping an eye on him.. that winter was the first time that I had someone to send to chop kindling.. it's one of those luxury things for me.. not having to go and do it myself. Though I'll still do it at times.
Oh and our house is not getting near as cold as our house did when I was a child getting up to a cold house. Of course, my kids also aren't waking up before they're ready to in order to get ready for school on time. So they won't feel the cold as much as I did still being sleepy.
We generally put the tea kettle on as well and start the day with a hot drink while the fire is warming things up.
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Jodie, wife to Dave
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Maddie
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Theresa,
I have the children and my dh load the wood from a window close to the main woodstove. It saves my kitchen, dining room and library from boot traffic.
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KerryK
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We are heating with wood this year as well. It will be our third year, and we are excited to have kids who are big enough to help with the hauling of the wood! In fact, we just spent the weekend splitting and stacking wood.
We usually have about a day and a half's worth of wood inside at a time. Like others have said, it is the kindling that is important, because it's such a pain if you don't have it. We keep it in a box with some newspaper. DH usually is in charge of that part. It gets bitterly cold (-25 ) here in the middle of the winter, especially at night. So we can't just let it go, unless we want to revert to oil at night. When that is the case, one of us gets up in the night, and then we feed it again early in the morning.
Wood is messy and a lot of work, but we really do love it. The coziness of the fire helps us get through our very long winters.
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nissag
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We have supplemented with wood heat in years past - and it really has saved us big time. Brian and Jack take care of the splitting and all of the kids take turns bringing in wood. We need a new cordwood stacking thingy outside to keep the rain/snow off. It's a pain when it gets wet. Our pile is outside out back door, at the end of the driveway.
We keep a dry stash in the compartments underneath my kitchen fireplace. It is brought in using a canvas sling, but we still get mess - just a quick vac takes care of it. We start our fires with anything from dryer lint to recycled paper and kindling (cut from the brush outside).
I'm hoping to put the woodstove in the basement to use, and to get an insert for each of our other two fireplaces. The open fireplaces are not as efficient and are a little bit scary. We have a cord or more of wood coming from Brian's folks, we'll have to order one more from the neighbour.
If your stove is stoked up during the daytime, it's radiating pretty good heat by evening. Feed it before bed and you should be all set. Of course, that depends on how cold you get, the size of your house, and how "leaky" your house is. We tend to like it a little bit cooler at night. I guess you'd say it's going to take a little trial and error to find what works best for you.
We still put an extra blanket on each bed and wear socks or footie PJs to bed for coziness.
There's not much in this world more pleasant than a crackling fire, a cuppa, and a good book. 
Blessings,
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JodieLyn
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Quote:
| There's not much in this world more pleasant than a crackling fire, a cuppa, and a good book |
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DEFINATELY 
Also occationally when we get really tired of the cold and just want to be really warm.. we can stoke it up more than normal and get the house toasty.. put on short sleeves.. some calypso and have a cold drink and it's fun.. luau in midwinter
I also love that the cost of running it for the whole winter here would get you through about 4-6 weeks of oil or propane heating.. so we can keep the house comfy for us without worrying about the cost of it. I like just knowing that if I feel cold I can toss an extra log on the fire.. not to mention drying gloves and hats and boots and warming kids up when they come in shivering.
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Jodie, wife to Dave
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Maddie
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Just another quick thought, you may want to consider installing ceiling fans if you don't already have them. We have them in each room, as we have 10 ft ceilings, and they really help push the heat down.
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~Maddie~
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stacykay
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Theresa,
My in-laws had a wood stove and all the above suggestions are just what they did, so I have nothing to add in those departments, but I did have a question!
Will you also be cooking on it? My mil used to make the most marvelous stews and coffee on her wood-burning stove. Why do they always taste better cooked in a novel way?
God Bless!
Stacy in MI
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lapazfarm
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Thanks for the great tips, ladies.
My greatest worry is the night time. Our house is small and fairly well insulated, but it gets bitterly cold here, ranging from 20 below to 40 below for weeks at a time. So letting it go out at night worries me, not so much for my sake (cause I am fairly well insulated myself, plus I have a warm-bodied husband to snuggle with ) but for the children. I am thinking electric blankets for them might not be a bad investment.
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Theresa
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lapazfarm
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stacykay wrote:
Will you also be cooking on it? |
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I don't plan on cooking on it, but my son... well, lets just say he's got that certain gleam in his eye that means his wheels are turning and plans are brewing!LOL!
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Theresa
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nissag
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I think my Nana cooked on hers. I can distinctly remember bread rising in that room, so I know she took advantage of the warmth in there for that. My father used to cook on his for sure. I think it's a pretty cool idea - very Tasha Tudor.
We won't be cooking on ours if we get it hooked up, though. It's in the yucky basement. 
Blessings,
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chrisv664
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This will be our second full winter heating with wood alone and we love it! We store the wood along the fence around the perimeter of the yard. Usually on Sat. morning my two sons and my husband will stack enough wood for the week just outside the back door and each morning before we start school, or at break time, my 8yo son will bring in the day's wood. On really cold nights, my husband will fill the stove as tight as he can with wood and close the damper and air intake so it burns slowly, so far that has worked fine. If he does that around 11, right before bed, I sometimes don't have to load it until 9 or 10 A.M.! Then that usually lasts until late afternoon when we reload it and then again at bedtime. Basically, during a really cold spell, it never goes out. My 8yo loves maintaining the stove and he has a really good understanding of the properties of fire... more air it burns faster, etc.
I absolutely love heating with wood. It was something we'd always dreamed about, so when we added an extension on the kitchen a few years ago we made room for it. The best part was when our oil company called to see if we were OK because they had delivered so little oil the first year!
Oh, and one more thing: if you keep your eyes open you can get most, if not all of your wood for free! Sometimes it is listed on Crag's List. Have fun, the wood stove has been a great family experience for our bunch!
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Maddie
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Theresa,
We do let ours burn overnight by stoking the fire and then my dh or older son will sleep near the fire and keep it going on very cold nights. We saw our friend's house burn down because of a wood stove so for my peace of mind one of us camps out near the stove on nights it gets really cold.
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~Maddie~
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chrisv664
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Maddie,
Just wondering... when your friend's house burned, did they find out what it was about the stove that caused the fire?( chimney needed cleaning, an ember jumped out when no one noticed...) My dad once told me that when he was a firefighter, he had seen fires that started from embers which smoldered for quite some time before they actually kicked up into a full blown fire.
Just curious for ways to increase our diligence in being safe. Thanks.
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JodieLyn
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Chris, most fires around here are from chimneys that need to be cleaned (my dh is a firefighter) and then the chimney fire can ignite other things.. throwing sparks/embers out onto the roof or week places in the flue and getting into the ceiling type of stuff.
We have a friend who also does chimney sweep work and he says the worst flues are those that keep a low fire much of the time.. you need the hotter fires to keep the flue clean. We rarely really damp down the stove.. we find that it works well to have a small hot fire and then let it go out and then have another later in the day etc. partly because our house holds heat well and it's hard to have a slow enough fire to keep it going without overheating. But we only have our flue cleaned every other year and then it's what our friend says is just needing cleaned.. at one year it's just not needed. So how we burn keeps it pretty clean.
Don't just assume on how long before cleaning the flue though.. start more frequently and learn how your style of burning effects it and how often that means works best for you.
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Jodie, wife to Dave
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JodieLyn
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oh and speaking of that.. looks like this is the year to have it cleaned.. I have to look and see when the last time I paid for chimney sweep was to keep track
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Jodie, wife to Dave
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4Real Forums : Our Lady's Loom, Larder, and Laundry
Topic: Heating with wood
