When are you going to light your first fire for the season?

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Had a few one-stove nights already, but tonight is our first two-stove night.

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All red oak, baby... it’s all I have in this wagon load!
 
Fired the EKO gasifier up today, mostly to test some upgrades and new controls. All working good. Had some issues with expansion tank pressure but Maple1 was able to give me some advice ans set me straight.
 
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Well Friday night was the first fire, the telephone company came through and cleared what I think is cherry and some pines. I cut the cherry up and plan to burn that to take the chill off. It has been burning for quite a while and have gotten 4" chunks to coal up after an 8 hour burn. I'll have to check if it actually tulip poplar but very sweet smelling.

EDIT: So I was thinking it was young cherry but it is mountian ash by the looks of it. No wonder it is burning so well.
 
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Cleaned the pipe out today and swept out a dead Bluebird, poor little guy. I got a fire laid in now just waiting for the house temp to drop below 63F. Currently at 71F so we got a couple more weeks at least until firing up,
 
Cleaned the pipe out today and swept out a dead Bluebird, poor little guy. I got a fire laid in now just waiting for the house temp to drop below 63F. Currently at 71F so we got a couple more weeks at least until firing up,

Was fortunate to have Natural Gas run down our road, and just had a new 96% furnace installed. I'll probably start burning in December. Wife and I are gone the whole month January, my daughter is going to house sit, and I told her to just use the furnace, I have one of those thermostats that I can control with my phone, so I can monitor what she's running it at. Then I'll start up again with wood when we get home.
 
Looks like tomorrow for me! Going to put all my new gaskets and parts on and break them in.
 
Whenever the day time temps are not enough to keep warming the house up and the furnace is kicking on more than a couple times a night.
 
I've been firing my Castle Serenity intermittently for the last week. Last weekend here in Northern Virginia we had 2 days below freezing, but the last week or so it's been quite comfortable.

That changes starting this evening, apparently, with a cold front coming in.

Bring it. Just bring it! I have pellets and a 100-pound German Mountain dog to keep me warm!
 
Before we bought the property I get our firewood on, we had a pellet stove so tonight we'll let the wood stove go cold and burn a bag of pellets.

We receive around three inches of snow today with a high of 38 and the low at the moment is 23. We heat from the basement so the temp down there is 79 and 71 up here.

We're still burning pine during the day in the wood stove with the overnight load usually four splits of pine and four splits of cherry.
 
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I have been burning ash with some cedar splits and some older not as hard locust pieces these last few days. The new cat on the Sequoia has been glowing a bright orange once up to temp, the basement stove is running like brand new! Upstairs the summit insert has been running great just about all my current firewood being burned is three plus years old some close to five.
 
Been burning here full time for a week now. It’s cold in MO this AM!
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2 fires back to back, last night and this morning. I really didn't need one this morning the house was still 70 but the wife is going to be tending the fire tonight and I wanted her to have some coals for an easy restart when she gets home.
 
My first fire was Nov 3 in the morning. NFL game came on at 9:30 am so figured I'd have a little fire while it was going on. Next one was November 7th. I only have an open fireplace as of right now. Boy do I love the big open view and watching the flames but I know it just wastes heat. Last night my furnace didn't come on until few hours after the flames died. It was 39° outside and 72 in my living room. Upstairs was thermostat said 71°. The upstairs bedroom that shares a wall with the room the fireplace was in always stays toasty warm. The far bedroom upstairs usually is much cooler so I put a fan in the door way blowing toward the fire. Still amazed this works! That room also stayed warm. Only room not warm is on the first floor on the opposite end of the house. That room if I had to guess was low 60°. The door was shut or it would have been a tiny bit warmer. Normally I have that door open and ceiling fan going in reverse.

My point is even with the open fireplace I seem to heat the house fairly well. Maybe the OAK built in helps with that I don't know. I can't imagine how well it will work once I get the Enviro Venice 1700! We're probably going to need to open some windows. Disregard the messy house. I have two small children and by this time of night I was just done cleaning up after them. I was burning red oak and ash.

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