(RE)WARMED BY WOOD

After thinking we would be dependent on propane for backup heat, wood has come back into our lives and our home.

We lived on Goose Creek for twenty years, and only had two wood stoves for winter heat.

In June 2020, we downsized and moved closer to town into a newer home that is handicapped accessible (while we remain reasonably able bodied to date).

What this house lacked was a way to install a wood flue that was practically and aesthetically acceptable in the vaulted-ceiling part of the house.

And with the existing heat pump (15 yrs old) and a new (fall of ’20) propane free-standing 31k BTU stove (in the Great Room) working together, we were not warm in the bedrooms end of the house when temps fell below 40 and the wind blew. And the wind blew from October to April.

Long story short: we discovered that the newer (2020) outdoor wood furnaces are not vertical smoke-pits but are EPA approved and highly sophisticated wood gasification devices that can be adapted to use existing ductwork (for our heat pump) to send warm air through the ducts AND provide continuous hot water.

Early morning of August 30, waiting in the fog.

A friend with a backhoe trenching tool helped us dig the trench. Before it is backfilled, I want to lay down a CAT5e cable to hardwire the new furnace with the modem in the house so I can monitor many aspects of the burn cycle—not that intervention is likely to be required at all often. It just scratches my geeky itch to know what’s going on out there.

Solar panels; weather station; and now wood furnace reports ad libitum—my physical plant info-hub by phone!

I am asking for advice from Citizens Coop tech support regarding the cable and probably will request assistance with pulling the wire into the house and up through the wall to connect with the modem. Then the programming of furnace and home network will offer their own challenges.

Installation was yesterday. Our installer (Yoder Outdoor Furnaces.com headquartered in FloydVA) started a fire in the stove for testing and demo-education purposes and I have commenced my way up the learning curve.

The first week or two of use in the fall will be the most tedious, since there are no ashes or a bed of coals to kindle a fresh fire. And the building of the first half-dozen fires will be less than automatic for this novice user. Miles to go…

So keeping a steady water temp will take more attention to the firebox now than later on when, from November through mid-March, we will keep it going 24-7.

HeatMaster G4000, morning of August 31, 2021, with coals remaining from the demo fire yesterday.

I am expecting a dump truck of dry firewood this afternoon before tomorrow’s rain. I will stack it near the furnace, two ranks deep, on locust runners fixed on cinderblocks and covered with black plastic—a temporary plan, I hope.

📌 I will be asking around for construction ideas and estimate for a pole shed near the stove that will keep a roof over maybe two cords of wood. Need is immediate. 📌

And so, I am delighted that I will no longer wince in pain, walking past a perfectly useful downed cherry or locust or hickory in our woods. I confess that more than a year after our move, I was still unsuccessfully doing the grief-work over leaving forever behind our wood-as-heat legacy, forever amen. Now we are back in the game!

And miles to go before we sleep. By this time next year, the muscle memory and infrastructure will be in place for the wood economy where we live; and I will have developed a relationship with this machine working on our behalf so that there are no surprises.

And I hope to remain competent for the divers tasks involved, and look forward once more to benefitting from the mental, physical and spiritual challenges and rewards of heating with wood.

But there is this: The view from the porch (or through the sliding glass doors looking out on the porch) will have to carry the aesthetic weight of watching the fire shimmer through the glass doors of the Quadrafire cast iron stove as we did for 20 years.

For everything you get, you give up something.

Granddaughter Abby has a brief experience in the world of wood heat—maybe the only one in her lifetime. I hope not.