So, probably like most of us, I want to run my fireplace as soon as the highs, say, barely reach the 50s temp-wise. However, while I have more wood this year than any since I started, I don't know that I have enough to burn from when I started straight through to, say March. And our springs have been cold and wet lately. How do you guys ration your wood? Do you have a temp that you look for or just how it feels?
I heat with an OWB and I still run my fireplace most days/nights we are home basically because we can. We all love a good fire. I don't care how much I burn and I throw anything in the fireplace that is seasoned and will burn. It can be a mix of pine, locust, oak, cherry, poplar, cedar, mulberry, maple. I generally save the locust for when it's cold out and I want a good bed of coals and I tend to burn more pine and cedar when I want a quick blast of heat and lots of pretty flames.
Great thread and curious as well to see what folks do!! Am in the same boat, am pinching splits like you wouldn't believe. Right now am picking and choosing when I fire up, which is mostly weekends or when it's super cold out. For example, they are calling for a high of 30 on Turkey day and a low that night of 18. For sure I'll have the stove going probably all afternoon after we get back from Mom's and overnight! I am really trying to wait till the heart of winter time to lay into my dry wood! I did pickup some Eco bricks to mix with my not as dry wood if I start to run thin. Probably is we just fell in love with wood heat, and we love having a fire going just about all the time so we have to pick and choose. Next year I am much better shape as far as dry wood!
Around here we don't ration the wood. Simple thing is to get on the 3 year plan and then don't worry. Our idea of using the wood is actually quite simple; if the house is cool, put some wood in the stove. I think the last count says we have about 4 years of wood on hand.
I used to, before building up my stash. Now I don't care, plenty to burn, plenty more to replace it. In the early years I'd burn late November until about March and suffer with the heat at 60F. Most of the suffering was due to the pain inflicted by my wife...
By cool, Dennis means 79F! I am burning daily, but trying to ration as well. I load the stove in the am, so its warm all day. Then in the evening, instead of reloading, I will shut the air down completely and let the stove settle down overnight. Still 66-69F in the house the next morning, and plenty or coals to relight. I've used just about 1/3 of a cord in 2 days shy of a month.
Our first year, we would let the stove burn out at around 9pm. After it burned out the temp in the house would start to drop. We used an oil filled electric radiator in the bedroom to keep the temperature reasonable. In doing that we were only heating about 10% of the total square footage of the house. Overnight, the house temp overall would drop as low as 40-45 degrees if it was in the single digits to teens overnight. Most of the time, it dropped to the 50’s. In the morning, we would get a fire going and if needed, we’d fire up the boiler to speed the ascent to 68-70 degrees. Once up to temp, we’d let the wood stove cruise for the day and the next night repeat the same process. We also sectioned off the family room with the cathedral ceiling using insulating curtains to minimize heat loss. That winter, 2013-14 we were grabbing dead and downed wood from the back yard and burning it within a couple weeks. We had about 2 cords stacked going into the winter which was not nearly enough. The electric heater pushed the electricity bill up $25-50 per month, but overall we saved thousands in home heating oil (I think it was $4 per gallon) that winter by making what little wood we had last til spring. After that winter, we’ve pretty much always had enough to burn overnight and keep the house a more reasonable temp..
Do you have access to standing dead trees? You have plenty of time to process trees for the end of the heating season. Last year I was short about a cord. I cut a standing dead red oak in November that was 25% on the moisture meter. I keep 100% top covered outside and brought about 75 splits into my stove room. After two weeks of being in 80+F, low humidity conditions the moisture content dropped below 20%. I did this process over and over. I made it to April 1st and turned on the heat after that.
Been on all day burns for about 3 weeks now, about a cord down all ready. I don't ration at all, but I should think about it. I should have plenty for this year, but is seems like I'm falling behind overall (guess that's the hoarding in me). Definitely not on the 3 year plan yet. Going to the inlaws farm for Thanksgiving... I'm going to have to try to set a personally record of CSS to get back on track!
I can tell you this, rationing and staying ahead on yearly wood supplies gets a lot easier after you properly air seal and insulate your attic spaces along with any other sealing of your house envelope. If you have he time and resources to do it, it completely changes the amount of wood you need to burn since the heat is essentially trapped in the living spaces. It doesn't get lost/wasted, and you'd be shocked at what a heating & cooling loss assessment reveals. I had to empty the attic of about 2o totes of stuff (clothes, decorations, archives, crap) it doesn't belong up there anyway. You have to consolidate and find another place to store it because it shouldn't ever go back up there again. The only thing in my main attic now is the air handler for the a/c and its ductwork. I initially planned to replace the faced fiberglass batts and replace with new plus the unfaced to get the R49 rating. After all the prep work it was so much easier to have someone come in and blow loose fill cellulose. I did all the blocking off of fixtures and baffles myself, the insulation depth is about 24". Of course there are companies that will do all that for you but I wanted to get right down to the joists and ceiling myself to inspect. I was hard work and required full covering with disposable coveralls, dust masks, and about 30 giant bags of insulation that I had to squeeze out of the hatch and dispose of. After the loose fill was blown-in the difference was immediate. The cooling stayed put over the summer and when winter set in hard, the heat from the stove was trapped in the house. I would say that I cut back on a third of my wood consumption, maybe even half.
Same here. No rationing, just burn when it’s cool. Earlier in the fall I turned on the furnace to make sure it worked, after that I would rather build a fire and let it burn out than pay the propane man.
I have about 4 cords of mixed hardwood plus some reserves. I scrounge throughout the year but the bulk of my stash comes during the fall and winter months. I always try to cut a mixture of wood for different conditions. I get plenty of Black and Honey Locust just finding dead and fallen trees. I usually can find a few big Hackberry that either fell over, broke or had large limbs break. I find Sugar Maple fallovers frequently. There is a gigantic Red Maple that fell over, yet stayed rooted enough to not die and I cut a little off it each year. Everything else I find as I walk through the woods, but those are my common firewood choices. The only thing I actively cut are boxelder. So to ration I first make sure I have a diverse choice of wood. I religiously use boxelder on 40 deg up days or rainy, damp low to mid 50 deg days to take the chill off. If I have Cottonwood or Tulip Poplar they make good firewood those days as well. Anything lower for daytime highs I use Hackberry, Red Maple, Elm, or Ash. Typically we don't experience much lower than 20 deg daytime highs in my region. For nights in the 20-30 deg temps, I use the typical wood as the daytime highs within that range but mix in locust (either species), Sugar Maple, Beech, Mulberry, or Oak. When it's lower than the 20's at night, and not going to be much warmer the next day, I pull from my stash of Persimmon, Osage Orange, Dogwood, Hop Hornbeam, and Shagbark Hickory. Monitoring what I use allows me to keep on the lookout for particular species when I scrounge. Since I take literally anything dead, fallen, or broke, I never have a problem keeping up with my "rations". Right now I found a big Persimmon broke near the top, but still alive. I will make sure to recover what I can from what fell to the ground but I will for sure be going after it this winter since it will never be any healthier than it is right now. Categorizing is just an easy way for me to keep up with my rations.
After 5 years I'm now about 4+ years ahead. I never did ration, just scrounged more and more. I'd cut standing dead in the spring to get by. Sometimes it was a struggle to keep up, but we never got cold. We did burn a little oil the first 3 years, but now with the IS, it puts out more heat. Last winter I sealed up a bad air leak I found around a door and the whole house warmed up 1 degree. I put curtains across the opening of the living room as we don't use it any in the winter (we sit in the basement stove room). That made the rest of the house another degree warmer also. We just use what ever wood is driest/oldest first. I do try to save the oak for the coldest months and use up any lesser BTU wood in September and October. I won't sit around all bundled up. If I have wood it gets burned!
glorth2, are you married? Cuz if I told my wife and daughter I was going to use less firewood and let the house temp drop.. Far easier to go find some dead Pine, buck it up, split and stack now!! If you use it in spring.. Fine.. If not you can use it in October.. Everyone's happy P.S. I am not, repeat NOT referring to my wife as cold-hearted. I am not commenting on my teenagers inability to open and then SHUT a door. Or eithers opinion that a home should be 80 in winter and 60 in summer! When obviously vice versa saves energy!
Excellent post and something that I've mowed over in my head and plan on doing perhaps in the spring or early fall of 2019 as my house truly needs added insulation and air sealing. I can tell you that I replaced our double front doors in the spring and I just replaced our sliding glass door few weeks ago and difference is amazing. The slider was the original slider from when the house was built in the early 60's, single pane glass, all the seals were warped and leaking air. That room now when stove is on or the furnace is running just traps the heat and it stays in that room so much longer, what a huge difference already!
I grew up with wood heat, never rationed. In my younger years if wood was getting low I'd go pallet picking.
I don't have much oak ready for next year. So I'm sort of rationing by burning as much pine and red maple as possible hoping to stretch some of the two cords of red oak I have across two Winters. Red maple is OK but it isn't oak. After next Winter I'll be all set again with plenty of oak.
