Preparing for Winter

After the hard rains of leftover hurricane Fay flooded the basement and caused hubby and I to have to sleep on the living room floor on a fouton (and we’re still there, since it’s just us for a few more weeks), we got our first real cold front yesterday. Nights are down into the 50s and scheduled to stay there for at least a week, reminding us that it’s now time to think about winter heat.

So in between harvesting concords and muscodines, I’ve prepared the stove pipe cleaning mechanism. No, it’s not a nice English chimney sweep brush, it’s an old holey towel tied around other old rags and a large round river rock, onto which I tie a long piece of rope. We get up on the roof and remove the chimney hood, then drop this thing into the pipe so it will scrape down any accumulated soot. Which falls into the stove in the basement. The pipe runs straight up through the main floor and loft, so there are no bends and kinks. This is good if you’re heating with wood, as bends tend to accumulate more creosote and are difficult to clean. The tall pipe is the “central” part of our central heating system, giving off a lot of heat when it’s cold and making the single wood stove very efficient.

We’ll also have to paint the stove this year again. That’s always a yucky job, but necessary or it will rust. Painting it with stove paint isn’t that hard, but you have to then ‘cure’ the paint job by getting the stove really hot. That sends out some nasty fumes, so when the curing hours are ‘on’ don’t forget to get all the people and critters out of the house, open the windows wide, and turn on the exhaust fans.

As for the fuel, my hubby says wood’s the only fuel that heats you three times. Once when you cut the tree and section it (and toss it to where you can load it), again when you split it up, and finally when it burns toasty warm on a very cold night. We have already marked with bright orange ribbon some standing dead locust on the ridge and down by the road. These four or five will give us about a cord split, since locusts here generally die before they’re a foot in diameter. Locust is extremely hard wood that burns very hot. I like to mix it with poplar or oak, which makes the fire not too hot and makes the oaks burn better.

We go through about 6 cords of wood between October and April, with enough left over to get us through the slight chill of Blackberry winter in early May. Best advice is to make sure your chainsaw’s chain is sharp (you should sharpen every two tankfuls), as well as your axes, maul and wedges for splitting. Just fix the butt-end of the tools in your workshop vise and use a good steel file to sharpen. It’ll make splitting the logs something even I can do!

We like to stack our wood into cones according to species. That usually ends up with 2 or 3 cones of locust, a cone of poplar mixed with any maple or hickory we happen upon, and separate cones for red and white oak. I keep those separate because red oak is the stinkiest stuff you can imagine, and I don’t like to store it in the wood-bin because it’ll stink up the house. You’ll want a wood-bin near the stove that holds enough for an entire 12-hour period before replenishing. Stack greener wood farther from the door so it will be used last after it’s had a chance to dry well.

One last note on heating with wood… Notice that all the species I’ve named are hardwoods. In the case of home heating, the harder the better. It should also NOT be green unless you’re cutting for heat 6-8 months down the line. And unless you’re really desperate for heat and prepared to deal with the creosote and possible chimney fires right now, DO NOT BURN CONIFERS. Save your dead pine, spruce, fir and other conifer wood for the campfire. These soft woods are full of resin even if they’ve been dead for a pretty long time, and will choke your system with soot in no time at all.

Okay, back to the grapes now… §;o)

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Filed under Activities, Biofuels, Energy, Heating, Homestead, Independence |