In case you haven’t heard from every other local blogger, it’s frickin’ cold outside, dipping down below 0°F last night and will easily do it again tonight.
Here’s the problem with the cold in the Ortman household: We use our woodstove for heat during the winter, because it just provides much better heat for our house. Our electric furnace only pumps lukewarm air into one room of the house (there are no vents in any other rooms), so it’s fairly pointless to even bother to turn it on. So we use our wood stove to heat the house.
The problem is that with wood heat that you have to have wood, and you have to chop said wood. This isn’t usually an issue when the temperature’s in the 35-50° range as I can easily keep the house warm with not a ton of wood. I can usually chop a bunch of wood and have it last a few days. However, when it doesn’t get above 10° for a couple days, I can’t keep up with the amount of wood needed as we have to constantly have the fire burning hot, and I have to get up in the middle of the night to put wood on it. Chopping wood in 5° weather isn’t any fun, either.
I’m thinking it’s time to start saving for a new furnace and duct work, as I quit chopping wood a couple hours ago and I’m just now able to feel my hands again (and yes, I was wearing gloves and about 15 layers of clothing).
Comments
use juniper wood. It’s usually cheap (as a waterhog anyway) and burns hot and long. You could probably get it from any local rancher. In NV, they pay you to take it off your property. They ought to be doing that here.
I was on the coast over the weekend and it was cold for the coast. Came back to KF and it’s been not getting much higher than 20 for the last week or so. Its currently about 2 degrees.
And that, my friend, is why we switched to a gas stove after 20+ years of chopping wood – When it’s cold and/or wet outside, when it’s covered in a foot of snow, when you feel like all you’re doing is chopping wood and not enjoying the fire. They say wood warms you three times. Well, I only need to be warm once, and I enjoy my heat so much more now. my two cents – juniper is really hard to chop and the bark shreds everywhere.
Bring the wood indoors to chop. Then start eating peanuts indoors and throwing the shells on the floor to hide the wood splinters. Bring in a picnic bench and call it a Kayo’s Roadhouse for the winter!
Or not.
Good luck Jake. We did the same thing a few years ago. I couldn’t stand the woodstove any longer. We went with forced gas heat. One thing I would do differently–don’t buy a Payne–it s in a name.
Mr. Howard did all our duct work. He has also been known to work for beer. 🙂
@pril: My wife has allergy issues. She’s OK with the various lodgepole wood we get, but the one time we got Juniper (from a friend of ours that was tearing up some trees in their yard), she was a sneezy, nasty mess all winter long.
@Cheryl: I don’t drink the stuff, but I’ll happily buy it for labor 😉
Jake,
I don’t envy you! We had the old wall heaters in my house growing up as a kid, and of course they were VERY expensive to run. Needless to say, my dad did NOT want us to use them so we used the woodstove. And guess who’s chore it was to chop wood and bring it to the house? Yep, mine!!
I lived on a half-acre lot so the woodpile was at the edge of the property, behind the fence. It was a pain in the ass (which is probably why my dad elected me to do it when I became old enough). We tarped our wood which was always fun when it was windy! I can remember numerous times watching the tarps get picked up by the wind and fly down the field, which meant I had to go chase them down.
OK, I digress. I’m just glad I don’t have to chop wood anymore. But now I find myself telling the kids turn the gas fireplace off in the living room because of the cost! 🙂
After all this talk, I REALLY want to click on the wood stove banner ad attached to this post. I love internet irony … and my gas fireplace 🙂
I can’t officially encourage you to click on the ads, Redmond-ite. Google frowns on that sort of thing. You just do whatever you want 🙂
I am a great fan of our pellet stove. It gives that nice radiant heat you get from your wood stove, it’s carbon neutral, and it doesn’t require chopping. We hear you sometimes, you know, while we’ve got our feet up on the couch, hot toddies in hand, next door. Sorry you’ve got to do all that work.
I’m happy to haul pellets and clean the stove every couple of days if I can avoid paying for a gas line (from the street where we are, I have heard) and the ductwork.
Yeah, carol, I’m sure the whole neighborhood hears me. I try to do it before 10PM or after 7AM, but sometimes I just can’t.
Oh Jake, you really do need ductwork. 🙂 We were debating between two houses here in the same neighborhood, and the smaller one won because of its ductwork (and the A/C we’ll have in the summer).
We’re spoiled here with two gas fireplaces. Sigh. Wish I could loan one to you!