valley
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Heating with wood?

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Greetings, If you heat with wood, how do you collect it. How much do you use each winter? How do you store your fuel?


Richard

valley
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Do you cut your own? Richard
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tomf
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That is a big tree you are cutting up.
Yes I use mostly wood to heat my house. I use trees that have fallen or need to be cleared for some reason, and this gives me plenty of wood. I use logging cables and hooks to grab logs and haul them with the tractor to where I can work on them. I also stack some with the backhoe for use latter. When I have the logs where I can cut them up and split them I buck them into lengths that fit my stove. Then I use a gas powered splitter that I tow down with my tractor and split them up. I then load a trailer with the wood and place it into my wood shed. The wood shed is 20 feet by 9 feet deep.
I do not use all of that wood in a year, of course how much I use depends upon what kind of wood it is. There are two wood stoves in the house and I keep one side warmer than the other side, mostly I use the wood stove on the side we mostly live in and let the air flow to the other side of the house. The house is 4600 sq feet so I may use a different amount than some people.
I clean my chimneys at least once a year doing the chimney sweep thing, although I do not have a top hat, so I may not look the part.
On big logs with the larger chainsaws I like full chisel chains for dropping and bucking, they cut much faster.
I use safety gear like a helmet with face shield and ear muffs for dropping, I also have one with out the helmet for bucking. I also have chaps to protect my legs.

valley
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Tom, Sounds like you have it together. We use 4 cords as least and it's nice to have more. We stack it on the deck around the house. From the front of the house we lift it with the tractor. From the back we walk it onto the deck. We have Fir and some pine.

Richard

Susan W
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Youzies! Heating with wood is a job in itself. I do have a nice fireplace, and order a couple loads of wood each season. As I heat with natural gas, have a newish furnace, probably don't save any $, in fact it costs. Oh well. Either when chilly or because, often get the fire going late afternoon.

A side note is there is no lack of good hardwood to burn here. I get mine from a fellow who delivers split hardwood, nice size, stacks nice on the porch. He's a small independent who has buddies in the tree cutting biz. Some of the tree cutting businesses also sell firewood (duh!)

valley
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Hi Susan, We can get hardwood. it doesn't grow up this high in the mountains. We always cut here on the property. We have natural gas, the furnas I bought used when I was building the house in the 70's, it was old then. I've installed great little modern furnaces in houses, one day I'll pick one up for the our house. Tennessee, I bet you have fine woods for smoking meats and fish.

Richard

Susan W
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R, we have the wood for smokin' n grillin' Want fruitwood (apple, peach), pecan. HaHa!!

Another one you don't have is Fatwood. This is from a very pitchie pine in regions more southern than me. I get small bundles of starters when I go to AL at Ft Toulouse, as friends have it. They built houses with this. Granted termites didn't mess with it, but a simple candle or lantern spill would put your house up as a torch.

valley
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The wood stove is cooking right now, snowed yesterday. Sun's out today, a bit cool, but nice and warm in here.

Susan,Fatwood, Just looked it up, they sell it for Fire Starter, I see what you're saying. They say: touch a match to it and you have a fire.

Richard


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ElizabethB
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Richard - we had a wood burning fireplace. No problem getting hard wood. Eventually we got tired of the allergens from the wood and the mess. We converted to LPG. Much cleaner. The fireplace set on low warms all of the living area of the house. No mess - no clean up. Are we spoiled? YES!

Looks like you are wrestling with GIANT logs. Good luck to you. Better you than me. Your climate requires extreme measures to defeat the cold. BRRRR! Hope you have enough wood to last through the winter.

Good luck



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