Heating this place.

Since moving in we’ve slowly converted the cabin-in-the-woods feeling of the home to something more convenient and modern. Things like low pressure lukewarm showers, ancient electrical outlets and switches, and leaky toilets are mostly things of the past, but in the cold we still dress in layers of thermals and sweatshirts. We were living on borrowed time there for a bit, Thanksgiving week it got up into the sixties, but as nice as that was the reality of a cold winter and poorly insulated and drafty house have set in. Once again our place feels like something out of a Little House on the Prairie book (well, certainly not that bad, at one point Pa had to shovel and sweep snow off the girl’s bed in the morning before they got up. Now that’s drafty!)

I’ve been splitting a lot of wood lately and that got me wondering if our four acres could produce enough to heat the house. I’ve done a fair bit of research on heating with wood and it’s amazing what can be done with a modern wood stove or fireplace insert. They are extremely efficient, 70% and above on the good ones. By using the forced air system in our house we could heat with wood alone, in theory anyway. The trick is to cover part of the return vents in all the rooms that don’t have the stove so that the furnace pulls more (warm) air out of the stove room and moves it to the cooler rooms.

We’ve got a nice fireplace store close by so this weekend I went and had a good talk with the salesperson there. According to him we’d need between six and eight ricks to heat the house for the winter. It’s a tough call, I’ve got almost that now (not all split yet) with just the wood that fell this spring. I’m not sure if that should be expected and if it’s sustainable out of four acres. If I can work with our neighbors (we’ve all got lots of trees) and maybe start talking to some local tree services I shouldn’t have too much trouble coming up with four cords a year. We’ve certainly got the room to dry and store it, although I have to build something better than just covering the top of the stacks with plastic.

We always just assumed we’d replace the old gas furnace in the basement, but if we’ve got the wood why not put it to good use. (Or at least better use than it being put to now.)