Here is a picture of a lovely red Vermont Castings wood stove, busily burning in a clean, cozy room. Ahhh-you could just curl right up in that easy chair with a cup of hot chocolate and watch the woods fill up with snow. How warm and welcoming! How green!
Right now I am sitting in my front room with my lovely red Vermont Castings wood stove, waiting for the coals to ignite a few pieces of old dried lath we cut up for kindling. The scene does not match the picture above, about which I have many questions. Where is the firewood (other than that burning obediently in the open hearth)? Where are the shovel, broom, and poker? Where is the filthy leather log carrier? Where is the trail of ashes and bark chunks?
Biomass, my friends, is not pretty, nor is it an “easier way” to stay warm. First you have to procure and assemble a woodpile (that’s a topic for another day), move it around several times (outdoors to season it, inside to store it), haul it to the stove, and feed the fire on a continual basis. Each piece of dried, split cordwood (about 16-18″ long) weights about 15 lbs. Our stove, which is on the small side, takes at least three pieces of cordwood to fill it. Once a good fire is going you can load it every two hours or so. It’s no wonder I often feel my day is essentially a weight training circuit.
I once saw an advertisement for some Ralph Lauren furniture featuring cordwood. The room was a rustic set-up of leather couch and chairs, draped with all sorts of pashmina shawls and plaid woolen blankets, against a backdrop of a perfectly stacked woodpile (all limbwood, nice round pieces) along the stone hearth wall in some sort of Tyrolean lodge. “So,” you might say, “why not just stack the wood in the front room, all rustic-like, and avoid having to carry it up the stairs in the irksome leather sling? It’s so beautiful and natural!” Great idea, if by “natural” you mean dirty, stinky, and full of spiders. Some people have the idea that cordwood smells great, like freshly sawn lumber. I think cordwood smells like the rotting forest floor. Very natural, but better left in the cellar.
Don’t get me wrong: I love having woodstoves and living with wood heat. There is truly nothing warmer than a room heated by a woodstove. The romantic image of the Humble Hearth, though, has to go. We use wood heat as a major supplement to an oil burner, so we can take a more leisurely approach, but if you live with only wood heat you have a full-time project on your hands. I’ve heard of stoves touted as “overnighters,” but even our HUGE Vermont Castings Defiant, a beast that eventually ruined our chimney with its furious belching, would not really burn through the night. By morning there would still be hot coals, but very little heat production. When I did live in a tiny house heated only with wood, the mornings were very cold affairs. It takes a long time to warm up when you have to wait for the fire to get going.
During my lifetime I’ve seen many woodlots carefully, and not so carefully, harvested and regrown. I’m pleased to be able to use a truly renewable resource to heat my home, and for some cooking (another episode, perhaps…). Wood is pleasant to handle, pleasant to look at. Lest you think we’re all just snuggled up near the fire singing old camp songs here in Vermont, though, I want to offer a reality check. Since I started writing this post, the fire has finally ignited, I’ve made two trips to bring up kindling and logs, I’ve opened the top four times to feed the beast, and I really should sweep the hearth. Everything in the room is covered with a fine layer of sticky ashes. The temperature is still 66 degrees; maybe within the next half-hour it will go to 68. My sweatshirt is smeared with several new black sooty stains. I’d like to move on with my day, but I need to stay with the firestarting project until the stovepipe temperature reaches about 350 degrees–then I can damp it down and do other things until it needs feeding again, probably within an hour or two.
By then, the fire will be making that wonderful crackling music. The room will be warm and toasty. Maybe I’ll fix myself that mug of hot chocolate and curl up on the couch with that plaid woolen blanket. I’ll sweep up those ashes some other time.
