Monday, October 6, 2008

Getting Ready for the Cold

Mick and Chris thinking
about cutting trees

Some where in my past life ( before children) I married a man that was frugal. Not a bad move, but sometimes there are weird things that make my life different. Like the time he decided after our first winter in our house, that he didn't want to waste money on fuel oil to heat the house! BRRRR! it was chilly winter, but we were young and in love....we slept close together!




Mick Stacking Wood


The next winter he decided we would try a wood burning stove.
He took two 55 gallon drums and attached them together with some kit and we heated the house, well one or two rooms....just ask my brother in law who was staying here at the time, how cold his room was. Until the day that Dave decided that it wasn't burning well enough and he threw deisel fuel on the fire.....POOF! that was the end of that!
Then he discovered a Brunco Indoor Wood and Coal Furnace.... it will meet all your heating needs...... well it was installed and hooked to the other pipes in the house and as long as you had a fire in the box, the house was warm....then the fire went out! BRRR!
It wasn't long until I took over the job of feeding the fire... I studied the furnace and all the sources of fuel and decided on a recipe of wood and coal and we have been warm ever since.... cooked out of the house more than once , and dirtier than I have ever seen, but warm.




So who would think I would come to love my wood furnace? I still struggle with dirt, and now I understand Spring cleaning.
But in the fall, it is wood chopping.....fortunately I have an unlimited source of free wood, and coal is still relatively cheap, $125.00 a ton, and I have a couple of great guys and their friends that cut and split and stack the wood.
This year they got carried away. Mick is having his ACL Tendon replaced today and he was afraid he would be out of commission for a while and he didn't want us to be without wood if it got cold.

So Mick,Chris, Tommy, Adam and Dave, started cutting a splitting wood like little beavers. We have cellar doors that open to the basement and the area near the wood burner. They loaded several trailers full of wood into the basement over the weekend and now we are set for a while.
I think if it was up to Mick he would try to get one more trailer load of wood in the basement. I'm not sure if there is room, but he would try.




2 comments:

angie {the arthur clan} said...

My husband installed a wood pellet stove in our kitchen last year and it really helped our heating costs go down. Watching the propane truck drive up our driveway still gives me a heart attack though!

Angie

ChickenGal said...

Chris and Tiffany have propane. In 2 months it cost them $800.00 to filltheir tank. Chris solved the problem by installing a wood furnace outside and it send hot water into the house to the forced air furnace to heat the house. It also heats their hot water, so the only time they use propane now is to heat hot water in the summer.