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Posts Tagged ‘wood stove’

If you live in a rural area are you heating with wood?

Last year we heated our house with propane only because that was the heating system that was in place when we moved in and it worked. This year with the high price of propane we decided to switch to a wood heating stove.

In our case it did not take much thought for we live on top of a mountain with no neighbors on 140 acres of land that is surrounded on three sides by state forest land. We have an over abundance of excellent hard wood trees that need constant culling so it was a perfect choice.

If you live in a city or in a small community with close neighbors, then heating with wood might not be such a great idea because of the nuisance that your chimney might be spewing out. According to the EPA if you have a modern wood heating stove that is EPA compliant there should be very little smoke.

They say that if you do have smoke coming out the chimney that it is unburned fuel and that the new type wood stoves burn all of the fuel more efficiently and all you should see coming out the stack is a small wisp of steam.

Well we use an old clunker that is not air tight and it burns hot so we don’t worry about creosote buildup and it seems to have been working fine, until that is last night. Twice during the night I was rudely awakened by the Carbon Monoxide CO alarm! Let me tell you that gets your attention. The dogs ran into the back bedroom and I opened two windows and the door and put on some heavy clothes.

I think it was caused by the firewood being a little wetter than normal and the fact that I might have closed the damper in the stove pipe a little farther than I usually do. So I cranked everything open full on the stove and put in some smaller wood and got that baby roaring.

Let me tell you that CO alarm is different than the smoke alarm, which goes off many times when I am cooking, and it sure does get your attention. None of us seem to have any ill effects from it and I am going to go and get a new set of batteries for the alarm today.

For those of you that are heating with wood I thought you might like to see this old time poem on the subject.

Beechwood fires are bright and clear
If the logs are kept a year,
Chestnut’s only good they say,
If for logs ’tis laid away.
Make a fire of Elder tree,
Death within your house will be;
But ash new or ash old,
Is fit for a queen with crown of gold.

Poplar gives a bitter smoke,
Fills your eyes and makes you choke,
Apple wood will scent your room
Pear wood smells like flowers in bloom
Oaken logs, if dry and old
keep away the winter’s cold
But Ash wet or Ash dry
a king shall warm his slippers by.

Have you checked your wood heating stove lately?