Heating With Wood

Sep 25, 2005
6 Comments

Oil may be past its peak, but wood will ever be a renewable and environmentally responsible source of heat for non-metropolitan areas. Newer stoves burn more efficiently by using a catalytic converter to lower the temperature of wood smoke to the point where it becomes combustible, burning twice as it’s recirculated in the stove. As fuel prices climb again, some of you may be thinking about heating with wood. Many homes in New England are already equipped to heat with wood, particularly here in Vermont where I live, wood heat never went away. Right now I live in an apartment, and must face the high cost of heating fuel oil this winter. I long for a country house heated with wood.

Part of having a good grip on what the future has in store for us means I have a responsibility to share my insights with others, so that everyone can benefit. Oil prices may rise and fall a bit this year, and after each hurricane we breathe a sigh of relief… until the next one. And what about next year, when we will not have fully recovered from this year? What about the year after that? And the year after that? One step forward, two steps back. Peak oil has already passed. I predict the situation in Iraq will disintegrate and fall through America’s fingers, regardless on where any of us stand on why we went there or how we did it. With all this in mind, we need to act now in order to be prepared for the seachange in energy consumption that is over the horizon. Oil prices will never go down to the cheap levels we in America previously enjoyed. From now on, you will never see gas less than $2.00 per gallon. Within a couple years, you will never see the price of gas dip below $3.00 per gallon. You will see plenty of upward spikes in fuel prices after various events, such as hurricanes or political/military actions.

With the above in mind, I thought I’d offer some resources so that those capable of helping themselves and preparing for what’s to come can begin to do so. The links in this post will also be permanently added to this blog’s sidebar to your right.

Links on Heating With Wood

How to Burn Wood Right!
How to use an axe, split, and work with firewood
Chimneys: how they work and how to care for them (very important!)
Learn about masonry heaters (thermal mass stores heat and radiates it back into your house)
Wood heat and Safety
HearthNet
Learning about pellet stoves (A friend of mine has one—it’s awesome)
How to buy firewood
More on buying and using firewood
How to Avoid Getting Burned When Buying Firewood (PDF)
Tips and advice for how to start a fire and maintain a stove

  • Great article. We own a small sawmill and hardwood company, so we heat our home entirely with wood, naturally! We took the gas furnace right out!
  • Michael
    I think that when oil prices rise to the point where they start affecting the cost of everything in a very significant way, people in major metro areas are going to be the hardest hit.

    My prediction is that we will see a mass exodus from cities back to rural areas, the exact opposite of what happened during the industrial age. Metropolitan real estate will devalue to compensate for the high cost of operating in a city, while rural property values will skyrocket as people seek to live closer to their food sources, closer to downtowns and schools, and work via telecommuting. Tony, thanks for commenting!
  • Tony Kunowski
    Wood is OK for some who live in areas where the maximum usage of the local population is within the renewable limits of the resource. Many proponents of renewables, especially biomass, seem to conveniently ignore the renewal rate constraint!
  • Michael
    I love heating with wood. I miss the places that had stoves or fireplaces. We're saving and planning to buy some land and build on it, which means we can build a much more energy-efficient and ecological dwelling than moving into an old farmhouse (even though that is the height of charm in Vermont).

    I plan to do posts on gardening and canning/food preserving, as well, in the future.

    Thank you for visiting!
  • Interesting list of links, I wish I had some of these under the hand when I had to learn how to light a fire the hard way--by trial and error.

    I quite agree with the gas problem, and it's maybe even more prevalent here (3$ a gallon would actually be cheap, compared to the prices in our area). That's indeed the good thing with living in the country: heating the house with wood is easy. We'e already doing that this winter, as there's no way we're going to shell out several thousands of euros to buy fuel for our former heating system, and next year we'll also go the road of solar energy. At least this is a source that is supposed to last for a -tad bit- longer than oil.
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