Cold snap!

Fairbanks is one week into a major cold snap, and the week-long forecast shows no end. Lower elevations have seen -50 or colder. We often are 30 or more degrees warmer at 950 feet elevation, but lately it's only been about 10. We saw a new low for the house of -37 degrees!

I've had the fire going constantly but amazingly enough it still heats 90% of the house to 70-75 degrees on low, with 2-3 armloads of birch per day. The spare room needs a little heat to keep warm when the door is closed, but it does get some heat from the rest of the house still.

I carefully keep track of our fuel usage to see how much benefit we get from the wood stove. In the last 4 weeks we burned about 40 gallons of fuel for heating. 3 weeks were around 0 degrees and the last week dropped to -30 or colder. That's less than 3 gallons a day on the coldest days, and most of that is for the garage which has no wood heat (yet). Compare that to about 10 gallons per -30 degree day to heat the house and garage normally, and we're saving $15 a day, which could double quickly if fuel costs go back up.

The best thing of course is having a cozy fire to read by, and our house it much warmer than we might keep it without the wood stove.