Shutting down the central heating

You have definitely come to the right place , my other half and love of my life is Woodwidow!

Firewood West Coast style!

 

Yes venting in same flue is what I was talking about.
Very common in Maine.
I agree it's not "ideal", but it is code.

In any case I wouldn't want to have to depend solely on a woodstove in a standard house for all the what ifs.
Your situation may vary of course.
Myself...
I'd worry about being tied to home. It doesn't take all that long when its cold and windy for the house to cool down.

 

Very new here and to wood burning in general, and learning a lot. Scotty and the others who generously volunteer their time have created and run a very nice site. It's easy to see why the numbers joining is growing.

 

What a wealth of information! Thank you for sharing your knowledge and time. Love the picture of the old "pig." Must have been a heck of a lot of work going through 22 cord in one year! Huge strides in efficiency have been made in a relatively short period of time.

 

Firewood was a lot of work but at the time we had a 5 ton flatdeck that would haul 5 cords at a shot. Being a loader operator, I would look for a big old growth Fir log that was badly wind shook and buck it into firewood length rounds, then pile drive the rounds with a big heavy hemlock log and most of the splitting was done in a matter of minutes. Wind shook - picture an onion sliced in half and see how it is formed in rings. Big old growth fir logs - 3 ft. dia and up - can look like this. They are useless for lumber as the lumber would just fall apart. No good for pulp because of the pitch seams. They are perfect for firewood as they split real easy.
The curved split round just this side of the splitter is wind shook and that seem where it fell apart is full of pitch.


Seen the picture of your BIG Old house in another thread and the idea of two big wood stoves to me is quite scary! Looking at where you live, it can be cold country. An Eko 25 would be too small but an Eko 40 would work in your colder periods without storage but would need storage for the shoulder months.
Again love the pictures of your Kids!

Allan

 

Fireplace Gasification Boiler



http://www.walltherm.ca/

 

Allan thats pretty cool

 

Great photo. Is that you up in the truck? Looks like you've seen an honest day's work or two.

I've looked into the Eko, and we might even need the Eko 60. Our oil boiler puts out 218,000 btu, roughly what the 60 does. Luckily we have plenty of room for storage. As many have mentioned in this thread, I'm planning ahead for the next owner, and having options for heating would be a selling point on this house when we get to that point. Unfortunately we have a $20,000 roof job that takes precedence right now. Maybe five years down the road or so...

Thanks again for all your good suggestions. And I'll use other postings as an excuse to put in more pics of the kids. Maybe crowded around the rooster Ideal Steel when we get it installed. Hope it doesn't lay an egg!

 

Yes that is a much younger me up in the truck. Taking advantage of teenage daughters boyfriends for some helping hands, this load was being donated to someone who could really use the wood.
I don't know how much more you are going to use that big oil boiler ? What I did in the past was to attach an hour meter to the oil burner motor so when ever the burner would fire the meter would record the time that it would run . I recorded these daily times and the outside temperatures , then knowing the size of the nozzle in GPH was able to come up with a very accurate hourly BTU heat loss for the house!