Yesterday I visited my in laws. My father in law always stack his firewood as small holz hausen. I took a picture for you. I think he is seven years ahead. Last time the chimney sweeping company was att his place, they asked if they almost stopped use the fireplace, because of lack of creosote.
Hello & welcome sir. I am enjoying reading your posts! It is interesting and educational to see how firewood is done in other parts of the world. I also think it’s neat that you live in a 680 square foot house. Please keep the interesting posts coming & thank you!
Farmchuck Thanks! 680 square feet is our vacation home. We have a house in the city as well. Our vacation home was 2 apartments until 1950. Now it is to small to live fulltime for a family of four.
Score Today when I was taking a cup of coffee at our vacation home I see in the corner of my eyes a tree that fell. Closer to my pile is hard to get them! It's a ash. 6 inch in diameter and maybe 25 feet tall. Almost no branches. In Sweden we also has problems with our ashes but they are still really good for firewood. It is not the same sickness as in America.
I'd say heating up the whole house initially does take alot more wood. Especially the chimney. I'm interested in the chimney. The few I have seen for Sweden and part of Russia are huge compared to US chimneys. The old swedish ones have a lot of thermal mass and small fireboxes. I would guess the traditional method of burning for an hour or so and stopping has many origins. Old chimneys often didn't have the best bricks and mortar and could not handle long hot fires. The size of your regions chimneys would make rebuilding or relining very costly and time consuming. Also with all that mass the bricks will give off heat for along time. Themodynamicly it gets harder to "push" more heat into the bricks as they warm up....so long hot fires would waste a lot of heat out the top of the chimney. Modern Americans typically like it warm enough inside during winter to walk around with shirts and barefeet. From what I have seen, traditionally northern cultures wanted to warm a house enough to keep the frost off and not need excessive layers of clothes. Wearing coats, sweaters, pants and shoes inside was/is not uncommon. Being too warm causes one not to get used to the cold. Sweating in a cold climate can kill you if you are not dry before going out. Also, minimal heating requires minimal amount of work gathering wood.
Meche_03 I Will try to take some pictures of the chimney. Most swedes have around 70°F in there homes. In our house in the city I have a little higher (73°F). In our vacation home I keep it around 64 when we are not there and around 77 when we are there.
Before my family and I bought the farmhouse and it's wood furnace we lived in town. The town house used electric heating. We kept the house at 66F to save as much money as possible. We moved to the farmhouse and started burning wood and set the thermostat at 72. We burned up the first winter. We didn't know how to sleep with the house so warm.
Meche_03 Man 66°F that sounds way to cold. 2 feet of insulation at the attic would have been a good start . When we bought our house in the city, I decided to put the same time it would take to collect firewood in insulate the house. 12 years down the road I still benefit from my work. But this is a firewood site so enough talk about insulation. I once heard a statement I think would be proper to quote: "Love your heating source as much as you hate to be cold." My body would prefer a life in Florida, so I hate the cold. That's one reason I spend a lot of time here.
It's time for an update We have a some cool weather so time to light up the stove I also get around to the tree that was blown down a month ago. In Sweden it's common to take down the tree in the summer and let the leaves suck the moisture out of the wood. So that was my plan for this tree. I probably should have let it dry longer since it wasn't that much leaves left. But between 2 and 4 weeks is most common to let it dry. When I handle firewood I want to touch it as little as possible so as soon as I cut it I bring a couple of pieces to the splitter And then to the drying point. I have run out of pallets so my stone wall that's facing my neighbors property will do just fine
Since it is 90 out a fire is the last thing I want to see. Lol thanks for sharing. What type of tree was that?
Today I did some bush cleaning in the corner of the garden that was to big for my weed eater. But for some reason I can hardly see any difference in the pictures. Before During After I tried to count the rings on one piece. I think it was 27 on a 3 ince tree. So it is probably same high class firewood. It's a mix of ash, Norwegian maple, hazelnut and Rowan(Sorbus aucuparia). I will keep that firewood for my self. Here a picture of today's harvest. A cute pile of firewood I also want to show you a technic I use when I cut down forward leaning trees to prevent it from barber chair. I make the face cut bigger and bigger until Then I safely can cut it down. I also took the time to prepare some kindling And when the evening came and the kids was asleep I cleaned inside the the stove. Where it earlier was creosote it was much less, now most of it was ashes there. But still it was some creosote, so I have more to learn.
