Firewood

[theghostandmrchicken]

We have a wood fireplace and when our friends come over for the holidays, or visits, they are amazed at how nicely it burns and how much heat it puts out.
They all say that their gas fireplace does not put out that much heat and sometimes cause a cold draft to come down their chiminy since not enough heat is going up.

With my experiance with wood and gas fireplaces. My first house is going to have a WOOD furnace to heat the house and a fireplace to heat the house and be atmospheric to the rest of the house.

 

[darkmatter]

Found the article that explains it better then I could:

http://www.backwoodshome.com/articles/frandsen36.html

For those new to woodburning stoves and cutting your own firewood, I would suggest careful research. Wood heat is the best, but it's not for lazy or ignorant people.

 

[Stacykins]

Good post, Darkmatter. Creosote is a scary problem, but only becomes a problem if a person lets it get that far. Burning at the proper temperatures and getting the pipes cleaned out professionally should prevent any creosote related issues.

I have a nice mix of beechwood and ash for the wood fired furnace (it can also take nut coal). Some of the bigger beech logs are 'all night logs' meaning you can toss one on at bedtime and when you get up there will still be a nice bed of coals to rekindle a good fire from. I love how even wood heat is, there are not hot or cold zones in the house. Everything just feels more comfortable. And if the power goes out, it still works! Just take out the filter from the furnace and you stay cozy during a blizzard.

We don't use our official fireplace. Why? Sure it looks pretty in the living room, but fireplaces are so inefficient. If I am hauling in wood, I'd rather feed it to the furnace where the heat isn't lost up the chimney but piped into the house.

 

[wyoDreamer]

The house we bought when we moved to Wyoming had a woodstove in the kitchen/diningroom. Loved it so much we put another one in the basement . They are QuadraFire's and burn great. We use the propane furnace only as backup.

As for chainsaws - there are 3 in the garage. We have a little Husky for me to use and 2 Stihl's for the Hubby. DH uses the Husky for limbing also, when I am not along.

With all the beetle killed trees out here, we have it "made in the shade" for firewood. No trees in our neighborhood - but 7 miles down the road is where the trees start. We have a rancher friend who has been cutting beetle infected trees for 3 years now. The down trees are dragged to the middle of a big field and we go whenever we want and limb it. The limbs and tops go into a big pile for winter burning. The trunks are cut to 4' lengths and loaded on the trailer to take home. One of the neighbors got a woodsplitter for christmas a couple of years ago and lets us borrow it. Costs us a couple loaves of homemade bread, some beer and a good supper.

We always burned Oak in Wisconsin, to a lesser extent Maple. Pine was only for the firepit outside.
In Wyoming, we burn lodgepole pine and ponderosa pine. It is a different wood than the pine back in WI, but I miss the big chunks of twisty pine that burn all night long.

 

[muddstopper]

A few years ago, my wife called me at work and said, Guess What I just Bought" I certainly wasnt expecting to hear her say a wood heater. Our house already had a flue in the basement, but we got rid of the old wood stove when we first moved into the house. After several years of electric heat with Kerosene backup, I was not really ready to go back to wood. To make matters worse, it was already mid Oct and I didnt have a stick of wood on the place. This meant hunting up a wood source, cutting and hualing, and then splitting before the weather got to cold. We burnt green wood and I had to constantly climb on top of the house to remove the chimley cap to clean the cresote build up. Since then, I have been able to keep a supply of wood on hand ready for the next winter. I dont make a special effort to gather the wood, I just get a tree here and there as I come across it. I also will buy a log truck load and work it up as I have time. I stack my split wood under a portable carport to dry and use a gator to hual it to the house, usually just drive it into the basement and leave it until I burn the wood off the back.

If everything goes according to plan, next year I will have a firewood processor to work my wood up. My wife said if I would cut and split the wood, she would carry it in the house and put it in the heater, I intend to make my part a easy as possible