Wood stoves

[schmoo]

We have one and I love it. It IS a pain to get up at night and load wood in, but I like to be warm and not spend a fortune on propane so it's worth it to me. When it's mid-winter I actually set my alarm for 2am to load the stove and after about a month or so I wake up automatically. We could solve that by getting a larger stove, maybe next year $$

I don't mind hauling wood and stacking it, it's good excercise. I love getting up and cranking that bugger up, sitting there all toasty while there's a blizzard outside. We have also had power failures and I was relieved knowing we could keep our family warm no matter what. I have never actually cooked on it, unless you count warming up leftovers on it the day we had no power.

We eventually want to get an outdoor wood furance, that would be great. It could heat the house and the hot water in the winter. But I'll always keep the stove hooked up because if there was a power outage the blowers on the outdoor furance require electricity.

 

[tink]

Chelly... You can put it through the side walls, it just has to be higher than your roof line. The advantage of running it through the ceiling if you have high ceilings is you get the heat rom the pipe too.
Tink

 

[Zenbirder]

We had a couple of installation things that were tricky. With the home stove we had to lay tile over the linoleum for safety. With the art studio we had to start from scratch, it is a mobile home. We had to cut holes in the roof as well as lay the tile (DH knew what to do, I helped and learned a lot). The machine shop stove we bought new last year for about $120 from Lowes in El Paso, they come out of china but use the exact same old USA pattern. That piping does go out the side of the building and then up because the building has a metal roof.
I recommend the "Descoware" for cooking on a stove. I got mine on Ebay, it is 40ish years old enameled cast iron. Love it, love it, love it!

 

[MissPrissy]

I have a couple sets and odd pieces of cast iron cookware that I cook on it with. Last fall I was in walmart for something and went by a rack with all sort of clearance stuff on it and got 2 peices of heavy lodge iron ware for under $5. What a steal!

I have this one really big black iron fry pan that I set on top and let it get smoking hot. Then I lay 3 ribeye steaks in there and let the outside sear - doesn't task long! Talk about a seriously good cut of beef - makes my mouth water right now.