How to Heat Your Home With Wood

With the price of oil pushing $100 a barrel, people everywhere are looking for alternatives to save energy or use it more efficiently. The cost of heating a home during the winter season, especially if you live in a very cold region, can be overwhelming. While heating with firewood is not a viable option for everyone, there are many for whom it is well suited; you may be one of them. The problem is, you're not sure how to begin, or you've never used wood as a primary heat source before and you're worried about the safety, cost, or other unknown factors. Hopefully, I can address some of your concerns here.

Instructions

Difficulty: Challenging

Things You’ll Need:

• An airtight, UL approved wood-burning stove or furnace compliant with home your insurance regulations.
• Proper, well-inspected and clean chimney. (Some codes prevent you from venting a wood stove in the same chimney as other fuels. Check with your homeowner's insurance policy.)
• Seasoned firewood, 4-6 logger's cord if you plan to make this your sole or primary source of heat
• You may need a chainsaw, splitting maul, or wood splitter if you are going to cut your own wood.

1. Once you've decided on a wood stove and have properly installed it according to building and insurance codes; and, once you have made certain that your chimney is in good repair and able to properly vent your wood stove, you are ready to begin heating with wood.
   
   You will need to find wood that has been properly seasoned. In most cases, this means that it has had at least one year to dry thoroughly. Green wood is not only difficult to burn, it doesn't radiate heat as well as dry wood, and it can exacerbate build up of creosote in your chimney which will result in having to do more frequent cleaning. Creosote build-up is also a safety hazard.
   
   You can find firewood for sale most easily in the classified ad section of your community newspaper or shopper.
2. Burning firewood is less costly than burning fuel, of course, but that doesn't make it cheap. Expect to pay upwards of $50 for a logger's cord of firewood. A logger's cord measures 4 feet high by 4 feet wide by 8 feet long (the wood arriving to your home in these 8 foot lengths).
   
   The wood will arrive to your home, and from there you will either need to cut it yourself, or hire someone to do it for you.
   
   Another route you can go is to buy wood by the face cord. A face cord is exactly that. It is the "face" of a logger's cord. It measures 4 feet by 4 feet by 1 foot. That means that the wood will come to you cut and split and ready for burning. But, a face cord is quite a bit more costly than a logger's cord.
   
   A final option if to find and harvest the wood yourself. You can do this if you have access to a wood plot. Look for wood that is standing dead or fallen, but not rotten or "punky". If you don't have acreage on which to cut, check with your county's forestry department. They usually have wood permits available for a very small fee, and they will direct you to areas available for obtaining wood. DO NOT go onto public land to collect firewood without obtaining a permit.
   
   Obtaining your own firewood, cutting, splitting, and stacking it, is good exersize of the highest order!
   
   If you live in cold region such as I do, you can expect to burn 6 or 7 logger's cord of wood during the course of a year.
3. When the wood arrives and when it is cut and split into manageable pieces, it should be properly stacked. A good idea is to stack it a few inches above the ground. You can do this using old wood pallets, or by laying lengths of boards across bricks or 2x4 pieces to get the wood off the ground.
   
   It isn't absolutely necessary to do this, but in the deep of winter, it's nice when your firewood isn't frozen to the ground.
4. It is even more helpful if you can keep your firewood sheltered. Building a three-sided woodshed to keep the snow and rain off your wood will help it to stay dry and continue seasoning if it hasn't done so completely.
   
   Some folks stack their wood directly in their basements. Others find a convenient place beneath the deep eaves of a house or garage, or even inside the garage.
   
   If worse comes to worse, you can always cover your firewood with tarps. Lay a couple of chunks of wood on top of the tarps to keep them in place. You'll have to brush off snow and flip back the tarp as you move along down the stack, using your wood.
5. You'll want to keep a garbage can or barrel in a convenient place (like the garage) for storing scraps of wood that you salvage to use as kindling throughout the season. For any number of reasons you might let the fire go out from time to time and need to rekindle it. It's nice not to have to go scrounging around for sticks and scraps at those times.
   
   If Uncle George is doing a remodeling project, ask him for his burnable lumber scraps. Even your local building supplier may have some scraps he'd like to get rid of.
   
   You can do the same thing with old newspapers. Start a newspaper bin to store your old papers in, just to have on hand for fire starting. Avoid using colored or glossy pages.
6. It's important throughout the season that you regularly empty out your stove's ash pan (probably once or twice a week at the very least), and that you frequently check your chimney for build up. If your wood is well seasoned and you are burning your fire hot enough, you may never need to clean it until spring. (Keep in mind that you shouldn't get carried away with letting your fire roar too hot. If it smells hot, as in having that melty smell, it probably is too hot. You don't want to warp your stove!)
7. Burning with firewood is probably about the most satisfying heat there is. It's a deep, radiating heat that soaks into your bones and feels mighty good on a sub-zero winter day. In fact, sometimes you might get too warm!
   
   Burning with wood is safe as long as you use good sense and practice maintenance. Don't leave flammable items near the stove. Follow manufacturer's directions. Get advice from others who are familiar with heating with wood. You'll find it to be a great way to heat, and get exercise to boot!