Quote:
Originally Posted by SailinAway
Now that I've had a month to practice heating with wood, here's what I've learned. I think I was splitting the wood too small and burning it too hot, hence the rapid consumption of fuel. I switched to burning larger pieces---8" instead of 4"---and I close the damper about 2/3 once a hot bed of embers is established. So Thinkxingu was correct about all this! (But not, I think, about the number of large logs I can fit in my stove for burning all night.)
Since I have no idea what the price of oil will be by the fall, I think I will try to replenish my wood pile from my own woods. That will save money on fuel and also clean up the woods. At the very least, I can set the thermostat to 50 day and night, and supplement with wood so that the thermostat would only come on on a cold night, and never during the day.
Some tricks I learned: I prefer to split kindling the lazy person's way, sitting down. I got a 12" x 12" log that happened to have a vertical notch in it. The notch will hold any oddly shaped piece of wood, like the ones that were cut at an angle---the poor person's Kindling Cracker.
To cut larger (8"-10") but short (24") logs with a chainsaw (it's hard to hold those), I made a contraption like a miter box and nailed it to the top of a 15" high chopping log. Even a small electric chainsaw can cut through larger logs just by cutting and turning the log in the miter box. The miter box can also hold one or more long branches for sawing.
This is mostly tedious and messy work, not to mention dangerous, although splitting kindling is pretty satisfying. I read the mini split thread with envy and dream about solar heat also. Anything but oil.
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The solar that I am looking at is more about hot water...
But Gary (ex-Boeing engineer) has been working on it and compiling the effort for decades. He was a strong contributor to the Mother Earth News forum over the years as we worked out the differences between theory and real world outcomes. He keeps his information on the
www.builditsolar.com site.