What if it Snows?

So @Cattleman84. Do you have one of those efficiency stoves that reburns exhaust gasses?

 

Our fireplace insert is a reburner, as a former firefighter that went through controlled flash over training I could watch that thing for hours

 

No... Both my old freestanding stove (now stored in the shed) and the insert in this house are older stoves from the 70s and 80s. The freestanding stove is a Fisher Stove that I refurbished and added heatilator tubes to. The insert is a Hurricane with heatilator tubes from the factory.

 

In addition to being well insulated, the layout of the house will have a lot to do with it too. If the house isn't too big, and the fireplace insert is pretty well centered, you can keep darn near the entire place heated. At a previous home of ours we had a small country home with a great room in the center with the bedrooms and kitchen just off the great room. That little fireplace insert with a blower would slow burn some oak logs and keep the entire house heated for hours with just a few small logs. On really cold nights we might have used a fan to move the heat around into other rooms. It was great.

 

This is my Fisher Stove... You can see the 10 heatilator tubes I added, they are fed room air by a fan mounted on a heat exchanger box on the rear of the stove.


This is the Hurricane insert and it functions exactly the same as the Fisher. But the fire box is more air tight than the Fisher.

 

My place doesn’t have heat or a/c. If it gets hot you open a window. If it gets cold you close the window. It averages 71° year round.

In all seriousness, we’ve got little wall heaters in three rooms that we don’t use. A friend gave us a portable a/c unit that my wife uses maybe 3-4 times a year.

When a gale comes ashore in winter you just plan on baking and cooking. It will heat the house up.

 

I enjoy preparing wood for winter... I just usually do it slowly through out the year... Not rushing to get it done before snow flies... Bucking and splitting wood in single digit temperatures and snow drifts gets old VERY quickly.

 

Before I started driving I’d go to my wife’s family house in Snohomish and we’d spend a couple days with my brother-in-laws splitting wood...that was fun...lots of food, laughs, and jokes, but I don’t really miss it. LOL

 

It always more fun when you have good company... And a good meal when you're done.

I enjoy running the chainsaw and splitter, that's the fun part. Its all the bending and lifting required to move and stack all the wood that gets to me. My knees and back are not as agile as they once were.