Blowing through the wood

Right now Im freezing and cant wait for spring It doesnt help that I woke up sick Ive got a cough sore throat and chills. But aside from that the stove is having a hard time keeping up in this weather. It was 12* when I got up this morning and the high for the day is in the 20s. It looks like that s what its going to be like for the next week or so give or take a day in the 40s. This house is so leaky and drafty Im making a huge list of things that need to be fixed over the spring and summer.

 

Big 'ol smokey. I figure 3.5 - 4 ft3 per load...twice a day.

 

Global Warming is officially over!

 

I don't have a big old smokey and in this weather where the high is never above 10 degrees I can easily push 6-9 cubic foot of wood through my stove which is roughly 1.5 -2 cords a month. It's a friggin crazy amount of wood!

 

I can take 20's and teens all day...... I have problems when it never gets above 10 all day and goes negative at night for days on end. My basement temps start dropping like a rock and add a huge heat loss to my house.

 

This winter should be a wake-up for us to get on the 3-4 year plan ASAP (for those who aren't), and get our homes sealed/insulated. Seems obvious, but hard to do sometimes.
Put away the toys for a couple minutes, and do this instead. Reap the reward.
Use more wood than normal and if you don't adjust, then in a couple years, you'd be in worse shape than this year. Ask my brother about this.........
Playing catchup sucks.

 

This kind of weather isnt normal for us. Mabe a day or two here and there but usually its a good bit warmer than this.

 

Yep. Once I spend most of the day in single digits, my day consists of loading stoves + whatever else I can fit in. I will be looking into the rigid insulation board bogydave used on the exterior of his home and try it out on a few section at the house. Pulling away the dirt and rock and seeing how far down I can get the board. I have a lot of cold air coming up from under the floor and I do not have a basement or crawl space.

 

Same here, but I this is all about comfort and convenience for me. I do not want to watch the weather reports and dread certain temps. I have weaknesses in this house and they need to be corrected for my own sanity.

 

COLD, cold cold here. We've been 20 degrees below normal days, closer to 25 to 30 below normal nights. I'm not trying to keep even heat throughout the house. No fan usage, upstairs is good ten degrees colder than down, at least. Very strong draft with our cold temps, and the stove is eating wood. I'm burning on average 3 cu ft per day. A lot for me. Our temps have been well below -20 F nights, seemingly forever. I'm maintaining a 90 to 100 degree temp differential nights. Loading the PH 2/3 full really cold nights, days reloading with at least one split whenever the stovetop temp falls below 400. This allows me to keep the North half of the house (32 x 16 feet, lots of windows) at 74 degrees. My draft is such that I have active secondaries from within minutes of loading until there is no more smoke. Only a few days have been warm enough to keep me in a cat burn.

I could load the PH up more, run it 2/3 full day and night, use the fan etc, and get more heat and keep the upstairs warm. But I've not been in a situation to c/s/s much wood the past two years, for varied reasons, so am low on wood and trying to conserve while still being reasonably comfortable.

Once the ice is out of the woods a bit, and the temps normalize a bit, I'll get into the woods and harvest some of the long dead branches of fallen tree, branches that are up in the air and will be good and dry. Lot of work to get sufficient wood, but it will be dry.

Then a lot of wood processing for future years. Fortunately, I have lots of long dead trees whose branches are keeping their trunks off the ground (I don't worry about cutting those quickly....they stay fine for years) with lots of dry upper wood. And I have quite a bit of ten to twenty year old trees that hydro in its wisdom cut along their right of way across my property this past late summer. That small stuff will dry well for next winter.

I have heard that we can expect this type of winter for the foreseeable future. I will be setting aside four cords for each of the next tree years, just to be safe. And maybe setting aside a new cushion of very clean ironwood or sugar maple in the basement.

Put a cord of sugar maple down there when I built the house in the seventies. Am down to less than a face cord of it left.

We were 30 below at 7 AM, -14F at 10 AM. We have a blizzard coming in early this afternoon, not too much snow (4-6 inches, unless we get hammered with the higher band near Kingston), but developing winds out of the south gusting to 80-100 KM (up to 60 MPH). Temps will moderate a bit (still won't be up to our normal winter colds) during this storm, and the one following it on Sunday, then we are right back to colder than normal weather.

I just went out to bring more firewood in before the storm hits. Find that since I was out earlier, the winds have already picked up, but they are strong out of the west and it is really cold out. I gather that is the wind bringing the storm in, while the southern winds will develop later.

Anyway you look at it, it is cold out and I am using a lot of wood. Thank goodness for the January "thaw" we had last week....even got above freezing one or two days.

This place is like a skating rink, with a foot of icy snow or, in places, shiny clear ice.

 

Indeed. We are not experiencing quite the bitter cold that you guys are back east and in the Midwest, but I'm still going thru a wheelbarrow load every 2 days or so. Stay warm and it's not too early to plan and make lists of what needs to be done while it is still fresh in your mind.

 

Yea
I noticed that here, the 10°f threshold.
It's the 10° f & colder temps that are the cold, heat zapping, temperatures for me.
Add any wind & 10°f or colder, changes the heating program, start eating a lot more wood.
If it stays above that, (12° f to 30° f) steady wood usage all winter,
lots easier to keep the hose at a constant temp.

-10°f with wind, it becomes brutal.
Luckily, -10° is normally to cold for wind, but when
it does occur, the woodstove don't keep up.

 

Was excited today for 30 degree temps before it slams way below zero, but the winds are howling 30 + mph.

I park my skid loader in the corn crib where there is no electrical, I'm just nice to it and use it on warmer days. Much easier on the hydro's, electrical system and engine. It had a hard life working in the cow yards for 30 years. Its been retired to wood harvesting duties only.

A stove cord is defined by 4ft long and 8ft high. ( I know goofy terms and measurements) I built a rack that is four foot wide and four foot deep as a crib in my porch. One stack is overnight wood in the front and the back stack is day time burning stuff. Helps my wife know which wood to use when when she is on stove loading duties. It takes me two trips with the skid loader to fill it up, but it is nice to have that much wood dry and near the stove.

 

I don't mind using a lot of wood if I stay warm, but using a lot of wood and being chilly bites.
I miss the old stove (as if you did not know that)

 

I'm going to be into some very green wood or be buying some more seasoned wood before the winter is up I fear. Although as BBar pointed out, once temps crawl back up, total consumption is cut way back.

 

Getting hit with one day with single digits doesn't effect the house much. The first 24-48 hours of this mess I kept the upstairs at 65-69. By 72 hours into this the upstairs is 60-63.

 

If you live near a saw mill call around and ask if they have mill ends or cut-offs. Growing up we did that all the time in a pinch and I still utilize bundled slab wood to mix in. On a bad day I can get hardwood slab for 100.00.

 

Seems like I'm tending the stove all day. It's 15° right now and every night it goes down to zero or below. If there's any wind it sucks the heat right out of the house. In the overnight the oil furnace has been coming on when the stove cools down, so I'm blowing thru oil too!

 

Here's a shot of the inside storage, use an old corn crib with single stacks one on each side and park the old skidloader in the center isle.

We season outside, and the wood that is ready to burn or close to is brought in before winter and stacked on one side of the crib to be used the following season.

Ready to burn on the right and next years on the left. Only problem is the five cords on the right side are almost gone, sad =(.

 

I don't usually get my firebox in the boiler completely full. With the empty space it is usually about 80% full I guess. My firebox is 6.5 cu.ft. When it is this cold (-20ish at night with some wind) I am burning through 3 firebox loads in a 24 hour period.