Heating our House with Wood

As I type this, it is January 20th and currently 4 degrees outside with a real feel of -2. It’s COLD!

Our thermostat says it is currently 66 in our home, and I suspect that it will get up closer to 70 today.

Believe it or not, we have not yet turned on our furnace once this year!

This year, we have had great success heating our house primarily with the wood burning stove! We also have two high powered space heaters that we use in our house. One is used in the big front room that doesn’t have any heat source (why, oh why, would you remodel your garage into an indoor room and NOT put a single heat vent I do not know). So, we would need to be using that space heater even if we were using the furnace. The other space heater we keep in the hallway right outside the bedrooms and run it especially at night when the fire dies down. When we are gone all day, the space heaters keep the house from dipping too low, although our house is usually CHILLY when we get back from being gone all day.

This is actually our third year *attempting* to heat with wood, and the last two years have not been anywhere near as successful. So what has made a difference this year?

1. Our wood is seasoned! We actually started collecting and stacking most of the wood we are currently using in late 2023 or early 2024, so it is well seasoned. This has made all the difference in the world for the level of heat that the stove produces
2. Using a blow torch to light the fire. I probably shouldn’t post this on the internet, but here we are. One of my biggest frustrations with the fire the last two years was that it would take an hour or more to get the fire going, and I would have to do this pretty much anytime I left the house and came back a few hours later. Having a blow torch light the fire in 30 seconds or less is a total GAME CHANGER.
3. Keeping a large pile of wood inside the house. Theo rigged up a large wood shelf and moved it inside the house. We can carry wood in and stack it inside and this lasts for 3-4 days before we need to restock/restack our wood. This is SO MUCH BETTER than having to go outside every 3-4 hours to restock wood.

Honestly, this year I have fallen in love with heating with wood. Our goal was to try to make it through January before turning on our heat, but as long as our wood lasts I would love to go all season with the fire. Our house is so warm, cozy and toasty. I don’t mind at all that it gets pretty cold at night when the fire dies down, because I’m cozy under lots of thick blankets and covers.

I have a theory that heating with wood has helped my winter mental health. Typically, by this point in the winter (especially such a cold winter!), I am feeling pretty down. I am sure that this year there are several different factors keeping me more upbeat, but one of them is having this little wood burning stove running in our house. It keeps the house warmer, and I think that it keeps me more in tune with what is happening outdoors. Instead of just being low-key chilly all winter long, my body and my brain can register the fluctuations of the winter weather outside- on warmer days I don’t have to put as much wood in the stove, and on chilly days I can feel the cold trying to creep in to the house.

I was recently reading this book called “How to Winter” and she even pointed out that people who heat with wood tend to be more mentally prepared for winter because their minds and their bodies are aware that winter is coming because of the prep work that goes into the wood burning process.

Heating with wood does add a lot more chores to our routine. We are stacking wood indoors about twice a week. We are filling our backyard wood hutch about once a month. And Theo is almost constantly chopping and stacking wood in the barn for next year. All summer long he will spend an hour or two here or there chopping. This year he invested in a log splitter, but prior to that he has been chopping everything by hand!

Another huge bonus of heating with wood is that so far we mainly source our wood for free. We have used wood on our property, we have picked up wood on the side of the road, we have had friends and family offer us the wood when they have a tree cut down, and we have even stopped by when we see tree cutting companies cleaning land. They often need to find somewhere to dispose of the wood, and we are happy to take it off their hands! Win-win. The only thing to watch out for is that the type of wood matters. Some wood does not burn well at all (smoky, stinky) and some wood will burn hotter than others.

While I love this quote, I think that Mr. Ford got it slightly wrong. Heating with wood warms you at least 5 times- once when you collect it all, once when you chop it, once when you move it to your house, once when you stack it inside, and another time when you actually burn it!