Wednesday, November 5, 2008

Wood burning

I've always liked heating with wood, having a place to warm up or sit and read by, so I'm really enjoying our wood stove. I'm actually looking forward to a cold snap of 30 below or colder. Our house is so efficient, I can hardly keep the stove cold enough when it's not below zero out.

So far the Jotul F400 stove seems like a good choice. It's very simple, with no damper, just a + /- control for air. It's also the easiest stove I've used to light. It's efficient, with a secondary burn chamber. Not quite as efficient as a catalytic converter model, but less finicky. It burns about 6 hours with 3 ~5" logs, so I can run it on about 2 easy arm loads of wood a day. I'm trying to burn whenever it's 10 degrees or colder to offset heating costs, though fuel oil is almost down to half the cost it was when it peaked this summer.

The big glass door is nice for viewing the fire, though it cleans itself best when running above minimum temp, which is why colder weather will actually be welcome.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

The inside of the garage looks really good with so much usable space. I am very impressed. I really love the expression on Roland's face in front of the unlit wood burner. I'm glad you can finally begin to enjoy your home minus tool clutter. I know it will be a very happy place for you.
Congratulations. Mary