Caw
Minister of Fire
I suspect further back and to the right or left will be the hottest and you'll find slight lag time on the magnetic. Though it'll be fairly close with a new magnet.
Started as stove talk now thread about marriage, etc...
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Nope we are definitely Not heating the house with this. It's The kids that are asking for another fire.
My oldest ask me why I’m not putting any more wood in it before I put him to bed LOL. My wife did comment she was hot in the living room but certainly didn’t complain in any other way shape or form..
I’ll be curious to see if she says she feels chilly tomorrow when I’m at work tomorrow without it running!
Playing the long game still
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Caw
Minister of Fire
Long game will prevail especially if you get the kids on your aide. Kids and women both like being warm!
Now granted the stove room will be semi oppressive depending on how cold a person you're dealing with. My wife will sit in the 78 degree stove room all day happy as a clam. I personally find that that too hot I enjoy 70 ish in the TV room.
My wife runs on the warm side, and we’re accustomed to 64-65 degree heat settings. I was perfectly comfortable in all rooms, the stove room was definitely warm but as I stated tolerable. And one could sit by a cracked window and be perfectly fine, even though it’s 29 degrees. 72 in the kitchen, upper 70s in big rooms and 70-71 in bedrooms and bathroom since it’s been lit. So we’ll see how it goes. My oldest definitely loves sitting in front of it even at its hottest.
It's very easy to get used to being "very comfortable". T shirts and shorts mid winter rules.
Absolutely not. I’m not even going to ask her what she thinks of it. I’m going to wait for her to come out and tell me what she thinks…at whatever point.
At this point, I’m fine with that. And if she doesn’t complain when I light it randomly, or daily, then to me, that’s a big win.
Ashful
Minister of Fire
That's exactly how we roll here. Some things are better left unsaid.
When 5 cords of fresh logs show up in the back yard, my wife has a less than 30% probability of noticing, anymore. The key is a neat and organized stacking method and area:
And a neat and organized seasoning area, when it's split:
Ashful
Minister of Fire
Things will hopefully change for you, there. My wife became very "anti-woodstove" in our first year or two, fighting with two older and misbehaved Jotul maintenance queens, and watching me spend too many weekend hours on processing firewood with inadequate equipment. But ever since installing two newer and very well-behaved stoves, she's the first one to ask why they're not lit on every cool evening. She also spends more time warming her back side in front of them, than any other person in this house. Equipment upgrades over the first few years also cut way back on time required to process the wood.
I wish I had the space to hide that much wood, but I don’t have nearly enough property or hiding spaces for that.
At this point in my life I have a lot of time to myself with no one home. I plan on using that time to do what needs to be done with wood processing. If it doesn’t effect her life directly in a negative way, she “shouldn’t” have a leg to stand on to complain.
Ashful
Minister of Fire
That's always a tough one. This is a "cart and horse" problem, as the ideal space for processing and stacking wood will not become evident to you until you know how much wood you'll be using and develop an efficient pattern for processing it. Also, every time you make a major change in equipment, new methods of processing will dictate different layouts. I ended up going through three major changes in wood lot layout.
The space I have dedicated to mine is roughly 80 feet long, starting around 50 feet wide, and tapering down to maybe 30 feet wide. So, let's say 3200 sq.ft. = 0.07 acre. But I'm feeding two stoves in a very large and inefficient home, others might be fine with half that space.
Now I remember you mentioning this earlier, and that's good. It was a point of occasional friction for a year or two here, until I got things under control. I'm my own worst enemy, in that I'm the cheapskate who will always burn hours to save dollars. It was my wife who had to push me toward the purchase of each piece of equipment that made processing more efficient.
What equipment did you get. Assuming you already had a splitter for feeding 2 stoves, did you get a tractor? Was each major purchase a result of changing around your wood yard?
My goal for next fall is 15 cord for the homestead and 40ish for sale. With this goal is the purchase of a production commercial splitter. I'm on 5 plus acres so, space isn't an issue. Have an arsenal of saws and a dump truck. Hay bail conveyors are plentiful around here ....
My first year in sales will be an issue with seasoning. If I sell 20 of that 40 I'll be happy. Ideally it would be the faster seasoning wood sold at a lesser quality, (aka mixed hardwoods), and advertised as semi-seasoned for a lower cost. Of course there is always green wood sales too.
I'm an honest guy and have no qualms selling my wood for what it is.
Caw
Minister of Fire
Quick thread aside, how do you find your middle rows season relative out the outer ones in that shed? I used to season 2 rows deep with an air gap but moving to 3 with no gap to conserve space and add more wood. It'll be fine after 3 years just curious about your shed.
Back on topic - Agree it's all about keeping it organized!
Ashful
Minister of Fire
Well, keep in mind I was posting to MRD1985, who is processing just a few cords to heat his own home with wood. If you're looking to process 50+ cords per year and sell most of it, you're operating in a totally different class than him, or even me. I'm set up very well to easily process 10 - 20 cords per year, at a rate better than a cord per day. That's great for home use, but no way to make any decent wage at this.
That said, I started with a pickup truck, a 12 hp 1963 Cub Cadet 123 garden tractor with utility wagon, a maul, sledgehammer and a box of wedges, a few single-row wood racks, and two hand-me-down chainsaws of 40 and 50cc. Purchases thereafter, in rough order by memory:
- Better chainsaws, so I could cut bigger stuff, and do it quicker. Landed on the 30/60/90cc trio described yesterday, with the smallest being a top handle variant.
- Compact utility tractor with a front-end loader (FEL), that allowed me to move rounds and smaller logs around, giving me better speed and some ability to process wood someplace other than right where it was dropped from the truck. Also gave me the ability to stack rounds up to 1000 lb. each, to get them up off the ground until they could be processed.
- Log splitter, as I'd been doing 10 - 14 cords per year with the maul, and starting to develop some serious shoulder problems associated with that.
- Tandem axle (7000 lb.) trailer, so I could haul more than 1000 lb. of wood at a time, along with all my gear.
- Winch and battery set for trailer, so I could stop bucking rounds on-site when collecting wood, and just drag full logs onto the trailer. This vastly increased the amount of wood I could drag home in a day, to the tune of several cords.
- Mini 2-ton farm wagon to move wood from wood lot to house, so I could just load wood into the wagon and park it at the house, rather than making a half dozen trips with loader bucket or utility wagon, unloading it into racks at the house on each trip.
- Proper wood sheds, so I could stop wasting my time on constantly rearranging rotting pallets and top-covering stacks with plastic.
- A larger tractor / FEL, so now I can lift logs (up to 3000 lb.) directly out of the trailer and stack them in piles.
I drag a log off a pile, buck it, and roll the rounds into the bucket of my FEL. I drive that to where I have already parked the splitter, right next to the shed into which I'm stacking. I park the FEL next to the infeed side of my splitter beam, with the bucket at hip height, so I can quickly swing rounds from the bucket onto the splitter beam, infinitely faster than any log lift. I have a log catcher on the outfeed side of the splitter, to catch a half dozen or more splits. When that is full, I just start tossing splits right onto the pile, until there's enough there that it's time to step around the splitter and sort them neatly. I do that, grab the half dozen off the log catcher and stack those, then step back around to the infeed side to repeat the process.
That's a huge amount of wood. 55 cords? I'm only processing for myself, so I don't think I've ever topped even 20 cords in a single year. It's hard to make any decent hourly rate on processing firewood for sale without a dedicated / automated firewood processor.
What's your net hourly rate, including all felling, processing, moving, equipment maintenance, etc.? What are your amortized yearly equipment and fuel costs?
Honestly, I don't know. I've never correlated the order the wood comes out of the shed and into my wagon, to how the wood performs in the stove. Nor have I even touched a moisture meter in about 10 years, as all of my wood is seasoned at least 3 years, and more often 4 summers. Everything I'm burning right now was split and stacked in 2019, and I still occasionally get a split that hisses, but I don't know if it came from an outer or inner row. I will try to pay attention to this the remainder of this year, as I have had two hissers in the last week and I think I probably am burning from an inner row right now.
A side note on probably the biggest issue with stove use…
I think my wife’s biggest concern with the wood stove is the air quality in the house, particularly because both our kids have asthma. My wife and I also had it when we were kids, but it only really causes an issue for us now when we get sick. She did mention that the biggest reason why they stopped using the stove in her childhood home was because of the “issues” it cause for her when she was a child. Now, I suspect it was more of a RH issue rather than say, a smoke problem. I have a feeling that the stove they used at the time (30+ years ago) was not the cleanest burning, so I suppose smoke rollout could have been a problem, but can’t say for sure.
I know she will refuse to read any literature on the subject to prove that it can be managed, because, just being the person she is, she thinks what she thinks and that’s that. We have had air purifiers in both kids bedrooms to help mitigate any air irritants long before we got the stove. Does anyone have any advice from personal experience on how it effects kids with asthma or how to deal with a household member that is stubborn in thinking by nature?
FWIW I checked my nest thermostat for RH during stove use and it was 50%. Take that for what it’s worth, as it’s a nest.
I think my wife’s biggest concern with the wood stove is the air quality in the house, particularly because both our kids have asthma. My wife and I also had it when we were kids, but it only really causes an issue for us now when we get sick. She did mention that the biggest reason why they stopped using the stove in her childhood home was because of the “issues” it cause for her when she was a child. Now, I suspect it was more of a RH issue rather than say, a smoke problem. I have a feeling that the stove they used at the time (30+ years ago) was not the cleanest burning, so I suppose smoke rollout could have been a problem, but can’t say for sure.
I know she will refuse to read any literature on the subject to prove that it can be managed, because, just being the person she is, she thinks what she thinks and that’s that. We have had air purifiers in both kids bedrooms to help mitigate any air irritants long before we got the stove. Does anyone have any advice from personal experience on how it effects kids with asthma or how to deal with a household member that is stubborn in thinking by nature?
FWIW I checked my nest thermostat for RH during stove use and it was 50%. Take that for what it’s worth, as it’s a nest.
I don't have kids but, i use an air purifier as my fan to pull cold floor air from the rest of the house and blow it to around the lower side of the woodstove. This does double duty and works great. Makes the house much warmer when the stove is running strong. And the air is obviously less dusty. The woodstoves definitely add dust to the air. We see it everyday by the way the sun comes thru the windows and lights up the dust in the air. It's amazing how much is airborne.
The indoor humidity here in NJ usually averages 40-50% in winter. (Woodstove runs everyday)
In Utah it can be teens to 40% all year. (With or without woodstove)
The indoor humidity here in NJ usually averages 40-50% in winter. (Woodstove runs everyday)
In Utah it can be teens to 40% all year. (With or without woodstove)
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Caw
Minister of Fire
I can't speak to how it will affect asthma but the stove is definitely going to dry out the house and add dust. It's noticeable. It's great for drying out laundry, work clothes, ski gear etc, but not the best for dry skin or irritated throats. We're all pretty used to it at my house and just throw on some chapstick. I like it dry and we don't use a humidifier only if someone is super sick we'll put it by their bed.
Smoke roll out can largely be controlled with proper reload timing and patience if you're draft is good. That said you are always going to have little smoke here or there it's just going to happen. I have A+ draft, and the house will still have a hint of smoke smell for a few minutes after a reload. I'm not necessarily ultra careful on roll out though. We all enjoy that hint of smell once in a while to know a fire is going. Its a small amount and dissappates quickly. My walls and ceilings are always clean I just dust them well at the end of the year. Other flat surfaces need regular dusting.
If I were you I'd just be overly careful with reloads. Don't do it too early while anything may still be actively burning or a touch smolder-y. Burn in full cycles. Always turn the air up or crack the door for a few minutes prior to opening it. Throwing a log in mid burn usually isn't super smokey either. The worst roll out comes from reloading too soon during the end of a cycle when the coals are not quite fully done and the draft is weak due to a cooler flue.
Smoke roll out can largely be controlled with proper reload timing and patience if you're draft is good. That said you are always going to have little smoke here or there it's just going to happen. I have A+ draft, and the house will still have a hint of smoke smell for a few minutes after a reload. I'm not necessarily ultra careful on roll out though. We all enjoy that hint of smell once in a while to know a fire is going. Its a small amount and dissappates quickly. My walls and ceilings are always clean I just dust them well at the end of the year. Other flat surfaces need regular dusting.
If I were you I'd just be overly careful with reloads. Don't do it too early while anything may still be actively burning or a touch smolder-y. Burn in full cycles. Always turn the air up or crack the door for a few minutes prior to opening it. Throwing a log in mid burn usually isn't super smokey either. The worst roll out comes from reloading too soon during the end of a cycle when the coals are not quite fully done and the draft is weak due to a cooler flue.
Understandably increased airborne dust comes naturally with a wood stove (wood, dirt, fire, ash). The filters always have a good amount of dust stuck in the filters when I change them. I was considering getting an air purifier for the main living area, but unless we use it for frequent heating not sure if it’s worth the investment.
The kids also each have a humidifier in their rooms that run nightly . We have one for our own bedroom but don’t use it often.
First day of use I really didn’t have any smoke roll out on reload.. All the airborne “fog” was the paint curing, and I had doors and windows open during use. My draft seems very good. Reload catches quickly with the door just cracked for a few minutes on a hot bed of coals. Leave it cracked until I have full flame, then close the door with air control full open and then was able to throttle it way down pretty quickly after that.
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