What got you started with burning wood?

[teutonicking]

Just curious...

Back to back snowstorms in 2009-2010 knocked out our power for almost a week each time. My baby girl and my infant son nearly froze to death. Snow was too deep to go anywhere, streets were not plowed. Never again.

 

[Ram 1500 with an axe...]

None of the above... After the sandy storm left a huge limb in my driveway, I had to buy a chainsaw to cut it up, a bug must have bit me, cause i went wild after that. I searched for alternatives to get heat out of the fireplace, hokey stuff like cast iron plates that you place in the back, blowers etc, then I went to a friends house, he has a shed with a wood stove in it, that's how I learned about an insert, I love splitting by hand, I had that maple cut down, it had one limb left on it leaning towards house, I've had multiple very good scrounges and in less then 1 year, I am sitting on 5 cords of wood on my property, 2 1/2 CSS, with the rest needing to be processed. I was worried about being ready for this year but I cut small, single stack it in the sun and wind and I am now good to go.....

 

[bag of hammers]

1 through 5 for me, with a slight tweak to #1 (I was cold too). As always, these stories are great. BrotherBart, its good you can laugh about being "busted" now. Shadow&Flame's experience is the flip side (all the respect in the world for cops - a few in my family - but just one with something to prove kinda spoils the fun). Luckily here most of the places that throw out old scraps / pallets have a sign posted "free for the taking".

This year's freakish rains, last week's 10 hour electrical storm, etc. - we've had a few power outages already this year- one lasting @ 8 hours, 2 last week end alone. These short outages are minor compared to what other folks have been dealing with, but they're constant reminders of how fragile the grid can be, especially for us folks out in the boonies.

 

[rideau]

Cost of electric heat going from under 2 cents/KW to about 30 cents, with the added harmonized sales tax, and no end in sight, did it. Plus, all the downed wood on my woodlot......plus I'm a firebug. Five Rumford fireplaces were designed into my home, then the mason put the base of the stack in the wrong place, so I abandoned that idea.....Woodstove is where the living room rumford would have gone, and heats the entire home nicely.

 

[blujacket]

We lived in a condo with a insert before buying our current home. We loved the heat and it warmed our condo nicely. Our split level home has a huge fireplace in the lower level. The 1st Winter we had we lit a nice fire, and after it burned a little while, the furnace kicked on. All our heat was going up the flue! I found Hearth.com and after researching, bought our current Buck 74 stove to put into our fireplace. Now I have the wood hoarder sickness, and I love it.

 

[joescho]

My Parents heated by wood. Buderus wood boiler, late 1970s/early 1980s.

My parents had a fireplace and an old pappa bear Fisher so I was cutting and hauling wood since I was about 10. When I bought my house it had 2 fireplaces with inserts. The inserts were shot and the chimneys a death trap. Fixed and cleaned both and put a new wood insert in the basement and a pellet insert in the upstairs.

 

[northwinds]

If I didn't burn it, what would I do with all of the wood that I obsessively split and stack?

 

[Swedishchef]

Cost of electric heat going from under 2 cents/KW to about 30 cents,

WOA!! In Ontario? Sheesh...

Nobody in my family has ever heated with wood. However, I live in Quebec and wood stoves are part of a religion. It helps for the resell of a house since the ice storm of 98 and no power for weeks woke people up.

I love the ambiance and I am a firebug.

 

[bag of hammers]

WOA!! In Ontario? Sheesh...

I wish I could say it was not true.

My first bill for the year was $300 (@ $11 in actual electricity usage). My last bill (for an entire year) was $1500 (@ $600 in electricity usage - fridge, stove, small freezer, couple lights). 13 % of the cost was HST. We're out in the sticks plus we pay seasonal rates, and part of the 'delivery charges" are fixed (I pay even if my main breaker is turned off). Electricity costs are a killer. I heard of families with electric heat at their camps getting billed $4500 + that last year of annual billing.

I could not afford to heat my place with electricity. If circumstances allowed, I'd go off the grid completely. Thank God for wood heat...

 

[brenndatomu]

I started by accident, kinda.
Along comes a friend of mine who asks me to help him build a stone hearth for the new stove he was planning on getting. So we built the hearth and set the new stove up on it. I turned around and saw the old fire-in-a-box type heater just sittin in the corner, I says "whatcha gonna do with that"? He says "you spent a lot of time helpin me here, you can have it if you want it." I'm newly single, not at home much and wanting to minimize using $3.50 per gallon fuel oil to heat an empty house to 70*, so I takes my "free" stove home.
Well, little did I know, a free stove is kinda like a free dog, there's no such thing! I had to put $900 in putting up a class A chimney. Then I proceeded to advance through grades 1-12 of the woodburners school of hard knocks, burnt green/wet wood, didn't use a key damper on a stove that REALLY needed it. (figured that out after I replaced the stove with a different one) etc, etc, etc.
Anyways, by this time I'm hooked (infected) on wood heat. Fortunately, after getting my second burner (an add on Yukon furnace) I educated myself by reading their manual, and absorbing all the knowledge I could get from their website too. From there, I found Arboristsite, then Hearth.com, and hanging out there (here) was like going to wood burner college!
By this point I'm fully dedicated to starving out the oil man, so I decided to go all in, I took out my add-on furnace and the old oil furnace then installed a Yukon Husky whole house wood furnace with the oil backup option....and now here we are...3rd wood burner, 1 class A chimney, 1 SS liner, 1 woodshed, 1 log splitter, 2 chainsaws, 2 Fiskars axes...and growing

 

[Bster13]

I need to hear more about the wood burning replacement for the toaster oven.

Grew up with the snowbelt culture where it is very common to heat with wood. My family split between electric and wood.

My childhood best friend had a masonry fireplace/oven in their kitchen. Loved it.

My ex husband was a big burner. We would have fires inside and out whenever possible. He even warped the metal stove from using it so much.

I got into alternative stoves when a guy offered a crazy solution to replacing my broken toaster oven.

 

[Backwoods Savage]

Trees had a lot to do with it. However, both my wife and I growing up with wood heat did not care to freeze in our house during the cold months. We started cutting wood then got a stove. Been much happier ever since.

 

[DevilsBrew]

I need to hear more about the wood burning replacement for the toaster oven.

He suggested I remove the unnecessary heating elements and place the frame of the toaster oven on top of the metal body of a rocket stove. He was using something similar to bake with. He started emailing me links to hybrid metal stoves from overseas and I was hooked.

 

[firecracker_77]

I just like it. Doesn't save me any money.

 

[WellSeasoned]

Freak early snowstorm. No power for a week and freezing temps smartened me up quick.

 

[Freeheat]

I needed some thing to do to quit smoking( cigarettes) Worked well 3 going on 4 years no cigs and I feel better!! always something to do CSS.

 

[fishingpol]

Parents had stove during the oil embargo and I learned what work was.

Probation officer felt it was a good, safe outlet for me.

 

[Locust Post]

Been a fire bug every since I was a kid and almost caught the neighbors pines on fire....so it just came natural. My parents never heated with wood but I have fond memories of the warm morning stove at my grandma's house. That last and best reason is to keep this house hot as......see my first line below.

 

[jeramy]

I don't like the idea of having to rely on a power company to hopefully give me electricity at any given time or a gas company to make sure there is gas in the gas line for ever.Simply put I know I can go out to the bush and do a little work and can guarantee we have heat

 

[Huntindog1]

I save my self upwards of $1500 a year in heating cost.
I like being out in the woods cutting wood.
I like the heat better it feels better than electric baseboard.
I like the ambiance.
I like the independence it gives me.

Nothing gives me a better feel than looking at all my ricks of wood neatly stacked and drying, thinking now this is a hobby that pays me back.

 

[TradEddie]

Emerging from my basement to find the scene in my avatar. Free wood delivered right onto my doorstep, and through my garage roof.
Burning wood is the cheapest way to dispose of the trees that fall or need to be cut down on my lot. Saving on my heating bills is just the gravy.

TE

 

[coldkiwi]

I believe I had a 50,000 year old itch that needed scratching

 

[Wildo]

I was born this way. Why pay $ to fight it when I can save money to spend on encouraging it !?

 

[suprz]

My first girlfriends family had an old potbelly stove in cabin they owned, and my first house came with a Vermont Castings Vigilant. , but honestly i love the heat, love cutting wood, splitting wood, and the fact that i can be warm if we ever loose power during a storm. Of course the monthly gas bill DID decrease since putting in the stove... ($9.00 was the total bill for one month last winter)

 

[toddnic]

Used to have a wood stove in the early 1990's and enjoyed the heat and the convenience. Today I'm burning to save money as well as the convenience.