Fact: One day, I’m going to have a cast iron woodstove. I have always loved them. I love the look. I love the dry heat that pours off of them. I love making a fire and stoking a fire. I love it.
At our last house, we had a wood-burning fireplace. I miss it. It wasn’t cast iron, but it did make a nice hot crackle in the wet winter. I found the key to heating with wood is making the time and energy for getting the wood, drying the wood, and storing the wood. Once you have those skills on lock down, you’re good to go.
The biggest expense is the wood. If you get creative with acquiring the wood, you can save yourself some major moolah. There are a couple of ways to get wood on the cheap. The first requires manual labor and time.
Get yourself a permit, and tredge out into the wilderness to fell some trees. Chop, dry, stack, and burn. If one major wood haul isn’t in your future, you can scavenge for trees that have either become victim to a strong wind, or have been chopped down to make way for a new Starbucks.
Either way, once you start looking, you’ll see dead/fallen wood everywhere. While I don’t recommend pulling over and grabbing it on the fly, I totally do recommend contacting the land owner and asking if you can take it off their hands. Who knows, the deal might be mutually beneficial. They don’t have to haul the stuff away, and you get wood. Finally, surf sites like craigslist. People with trucks and time will often sell firewood for a fraction of the cost of commercial wood delivery. While the idea of soliciting chainsaw-wielding strangers on craigslist might deter a few, I am personally one of them.
After you have gotten yourself some wood, you want to make sure you burn it as efficiently as possible. The key to burning wood efficiently is making sure it is dry. Wet wood, no good. To dry your wood, make sure to take the time to split it. Big ol’ logs will take forever to dry out. Split wood, not so much. Leave it out in a sunny spot to dry {this is why getting your wood for winter in early fall is best}. As it dries, the wood will start to crack. This is a sign that it is ready to be tossed into the fire.
Once your wood is dry, or mostly dry, then it’s time to stack it. When you stack your wood, make sure that it is covered from the elements, but that it still has air circulation. This will help keep it dry and burnable. It’s also best to stack it up off of the ground. You can get fancy and get a firewood rack, or you can use pallets or two by fours. Whatever blows your hair back.
Procuring, drying and storing are the biggies, but there are a couple of smaller tricks that keep your stove burning efficiently. For one, don’t use magazines, plywood, treated wood, plastic, etc. They emit nasty toxins and don’t burn efficiently at all. They can also damage the interior of your stove. Stick to newspaper, kindling and logs. In the long run, they will burn the most efficiently. When you do build a fire, make sure that plenty of air can circulate. Air will stoke the fire. Finally, clean out your stove regularly. It will limit the crappity-crap that builds up in your stove AND make each fire burn a little more efficiently.
Do you have a wood burning stove? How do you get the most out of it?
~Mavis
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Karin Carson says
Here in BC Canada you need a permit to go into the bush to get wood, you are to not take trees that have fallen , you are to take standing only, and they have to be bucked up in the bush you are not aloud to transport any logs over 4 feet, we used to have a wood stove and I am soooo glad we do not any more no more getting chopping,,stacking , bark in the house and spiders loved the wood pile :).we have a pellet stove so we still have the nice heat :). Cords of wood will run anywhere from 180.00 and up, average home if using wood can burn up too 5 or more cords easily, and many municipalities have banned them for the smoke they produce. My good friend heat there house with wood and get 7 plus cords, if you factor in there time, cost of saws, wage time etc it adds up quickly. With our pellet stove we buy a metric ton (50 bags ) for $185 and we may use 11/2 tons over the winter.
We used to go cut and buck up logs then you come home and split and stack, took several weekends but was what we did in the early fall.
I live in rural Okanagan BC between Kamloops and Vernon, we usually have snow from November-March and I would say 30% or more heat with wood, and about 15% use either pellet stoves or furnace, pellet stoves are zero clearance and only requires one 4′ piece of insulated pipe, we looked in to putting in a wood stove and the chimney was going to be 1200.00 .
I do miss the crackle of the stove .
Carrie says
I bought my small house (1200 sq. ft) in NC last fall and used the wood stove for one winter along with the gas heat. The stove could only heat up the front two rooms (living and dining rooms). We don’t work from home so starting a fire at 6 and then going to bed around 10 was kinda silly to do during the week. It was more of a form of entertainment for me and my spouse instead of relying on it for heat. It was nice to have on the 2 snow days we got or when the power was out.
We acquired free wood from neighbors when trees would fall on their property. We also checked Craigslist and would drive through neighborhoods looking for wood by the road. You definitely need a chainsaw if you plan on collecting wood this way. My dad has a spliter that makes life so much easier!
The major down side for me was that the dry heat caused regular nose bleeds. I’ve never had nose bleeds before using the wood stove. I even had a humidifier going and jars of water sitting on the stove to help. We are looking into a whole house humidifier to install if we plan to use the wood stove this winter.
Karin Carson says
Hi, just put a large kettle or pot of water on the top of your stove, always have water in it , it should be a big help in adding moisture in the air.
Tammy says
The house we bought has a fireplace with gas logs. I did a little research and it sounds like it is pretty expensive to run a gas fireplace (the flu has to be open – 90% of the heat goes up the chimney! and beyond that it takes a lot of gas just to run it.) I have heard that it can be converted to wood burning but I’m not sure if we will go that route or not. I love a fire in the winter! So maybe sometime down the road we will look into doing that.
It seems like there is always free wood on Craigslist! Someone cuts a tree down or it falls over and they don’t want to deal with it. Another option is if your city has a yard waste dump. Where we lived in Michigan (we are now in South Carolina), the yard waste dump was free to leave stuff and free to take stuff – any time we were there we saw people with trucks taking tree stumps and logs.
Sherry In Sumner says
When we moved to our house 36 years ago, the first thing my husband did was build a wood stove using a big pipe about 20 inches wide. He welded a lip for the top edge and he cut out some scallops so it wouldn’t look so industrial, and on the front of the door he made some brackets where I put a decorative tile. We didn’t have so many rules and regulations back then snd we enjoyed our uncertified stove. It was a humdinger and we kept it going 24/7 for many winters. A few years ago we decided we’d better get in compliance so we upgraded to a new stove. It doesn’t heat near as well as the one he built, but no doubt is better for our health and probably the air outside.
Our property was heavily wooded back then and every couple of years my husband would be diligent about falling (felling?) trees on our property for the wood to heat our cozy house. Actually, he’s in his 70s now and is still at it! After all these years we are still using the wood from our property. But it’s a team effort. He does all the cutting and I do all the stacking. We keep two supplies of wood on the back porch. One we supplement daily for using inside, resupplying it from the cords of wood we keep stacked next to the garden. The other porch supply is for an emergency, like if we get a big snowstorm so we don’t have to trudge out to the big supply. It’s a lot of work but well worth it. Nothing feels better, physically and emotionally, as wood heat in our wet and cold Northwest weather.
nancy from mass says
We have a wood fireplace and have lived in the house for almost 20 years. I burn wood quite often. I work at home twice a week and on those days, my fireplace is running all day long. In fact, i will sometimes take a potato, double wrap it in foil and but it in the ash under the grate. less than an hour later, i have a baked potato for lunch!
I have never had to buy wood. we have woods in the back yard that we’ve gleaned firewood from (the woods are our property) and last year, i thought i was going to have to buy a cord but then my neighbor was cutting down 2 trees in his yard. I took a walk over, asked what he was doing with the wood and he delivered it to me with his company backhoe! (cut into about 2′ pieces).
I do run a humidifier during the winter because my husband will get nosebleeds if i don’t.
Mavis Butterfield says
Nancy!!! Thanks for the potato idea. I am totally going to use that.
nancy from mass says
you just have to watch it….i’ve dried out a potato leaving it in too long!
Karin Carson says
Put the peelings from your potato’s in your stove, they help stop the build up of creosote, less cleaning and less chance of chimney fires .
Ken Newman says
My wife and I have heated with wood ( we have a modern forced air furnace but it never comes on when we burn the stoves and have only used 3/4 tank of heating oil in the past five years ) for many years. Our main wood burner is a Jotul #118 box stove which we bought in 1975. It’s come along with us through three moves and is burned every year. Our second stove is a “Bun Baker” cook stove ( that I won in a “Mother Earth News” giveaway ). It’s smaller than the Jotul and won’t hold a fire through the night. It has a nice little oven and easily heats the entire second floor of our 200+ year old farmhouse. If you haven’t tried wood stove pizza…put it on your to do list. And the Fall doesn’t officially begin for us until the first baked potatoes come off the coals. I’ve found it easier to buy in a tri-axle load of logs ( $600 ) that will yield around 9-10 cords when cut and split. We also inherited an electric/wood kitchen range ( circa 1950’s ) that came with the house. We prefer using a renewable heating source and appreciate the security of having a full years supply ( usually 2 ) on hand. There’s nothing like a wood fire on a cold winter night with a steaming pot of herb scented water steaming away next to the teapot. . Another interesting attribute of a wood burner is that when fired up they become powerful cat magnets.
Mavis Butterfield says
Thanks Ken! I’ll tell my husband about the tri-axle load of logs.
Julie says
We have a pellet stove that looks exactly like the one in the photo. No crackle, but a nice hum. But after having had a fireplace in our previous house, and we used the fireplace alot, with all the cutting, stacking, the time it takes to light the fire when you’re cold, the smoke and the clean up, I will take the cleanliness of bagged pellets stacked in the garage. But that’s just me.
Julie says
haha I have the exact opposite problem…too much wood and no where to burn it! We just have a regular ol’ fireplace but something on it needs repair (it was like that when we moved here SEVEN years ago!), and we have a TON of chopped logs that have just been sitting in the back yard for about 2.5 years now from two giant furs we had to take down. I’m hoping we get the money/motivation/time to get the fireplace fixed before all that wood goes to waste!!
vy says
I heated with a wood stove + blower for five years and let me tell you, I am a fire-making machine. To the point, on a boy scout camping trip, I was finally the one who got one going, even among the scout leaders. A very good skill to have 🙂
Mimi says
Did you mean to say “TRUDGE out into the wilderness…”? According to the Urban dictionary the definition of “tredge” is: to walk a seemingly impossible distance whilst under the influence of marijuana.
Just wondering. 😀
Deb says
Definitely go with the jotul wood stove! When we installed ours the utility company sent people out to check our house because they thought we had bypassed the meter. That’s how much energy we saved. It kept our large two story home toasty.
Catherine says
Before you invest in one of these, check if they’re legal where you live. I’m in Southern Oregon, in a valley, and there are regulations against wood-burning stoves because of air pollution. It’s too bad. I love the smell of them.
Mama Cook says
20 years ago and just starting out, we purchased our home with an existing Woodstove. We never purchased wood, as everone would give us their fallen trees,etc. That stove warmed us through many winters, provided heat for drying clothes, and served as a cooktop! Unfortunately upon switching homeowners insurance, we were no longer able to keep our stove. Away she rolled on a little makeshift trailer to comfort another young family.
(Moral…check you insurance regulations!)
Jenny Young says
We have a wood pellet stove. It heats just like a wood stove but much more efficiently. It burns compressed wood pellets that we buy in 40 pound bags.
Our home owner’s insurance has started to raise prices on any form of wood heat (wood/pellet stoves or fireplaces) . We’ve considered getting rid of our pellet stove because it’s cheaper to buy propane – what our central heat runs on – than to the higher insurance price.
karin Carson says
we too have a pellet and on our insurance it is our back up heat source as we have natural gas listed as our primary heat and it didn’t effect our premiums . we buy our pellets buy the metric ton and pay 185.00.
Debi says
We have heated our home primarily with wood for nearly 40 years. We purchase our wood from a farmer who sells wood on the side and it costs us about $700 a year. We live in the northeast, about an hour from Canada and have pretty cold winters so the woodstove runs pretty much 24/7 from mid-November until the end of March. Five years ago we had a propane furnace installed as we are getting up there in years and may need to give up the wood one of these days and we wanted an alternate heat source for when we were away during the winter. We use than 200 gallons of propane and that is for heat when we are not at home and our hot water. It is definitely cheaper than fuel oi; or electricity.
Michelle says
We live here in the SW Washington foothills and wood is not that difficult to come by, so we decided to put in a Blaze King Princess wood stove. It’s a catalytic burning stove with an extremely long burn time – and very efficient. Nothing compares to wood heat…it warms you twice!
Margaret @ Live Like No One Else says
We have a wood burning stove in the basement that is hooked up to our central heating. A couple of years ago a hotel not too far away was cutting down trees and let us take them. Finally this year hubby was able to split it all. We probably have about 4+ years of wood from that. LOL We also have regular gas heat and haven’t used the wood stove in a couple of years..but hoping to start using it this year as I’m mostly home and can look after it.