Wood stove heat

Kindling , I save out and use dead mostly lower lower limbs , break them down and have them in boxes for restarts. Air dried old Spruce is best , always have a box of Birch bark saved out as well ... the combination is quickest way to go from from cold to comfort
 
I like taking the nicest straightest grain oak and turn it into pencil sized sticklets. Lol
And the dead straight grain hemlock snag I got last year is such a joy to make kindling out of. You can practically split it down to each growth ring. Tooth picks.
 
Cobbleskill if you quit moving you are dead. Ive seen inside many nursing home so can attest to that. Habitual tasks are very important in the later years. Maybe you could get her a contract for a couple of yard clean ups with a local tree co. I would love to pay someone good coin to do the mind numbing habitual part but to the right person its therapy .....
 
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  • #731
Kindling here on my place is almost exclusively split out of oldgrowth cedar fence posts that rotted off at ground level after 30 to 50 years of service. After we replaced them with PT 4x4 posts and steel T posts, I cut them up into 12 to 16 inch lengths and let them dry a few years in a segregated part of our woodshed. They split sweetly, and make the best kindling ever imagined.

I reckon we have at least 20 years' supply available :D.
 
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Did you have livestock of some sort at one time, Burnham? Or just fencing to keep unwanted critters out?

I'm regularly cutting the lower, dead stubs off of pines, both alive and dead, and when seeing one is full of fat wood, I'll chunk it to the side to be saved. I have quite a few saved up from one the years.
 
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  • #734
We never kept livestock, aside from Rouen ducks, and that's been many a year ago now. The perimeter fencing serves to keep out wandering cattle and horses. Also kept our own dogs in and out of trouble with neighbor livestock and road traffic.
 
Dem ol canines just love a good wood stove fire.;)8)

Speaking of finding just the right kinda wood OTJ and bringing it home, I've done that many a time with stone dead, no-bark, no twigs/just the stem, oak limbs. Mind blown repeatedly when they hiss in the fire box.:?:?
 
I read in this thread something I did not know, that a stove generates more heat for a house than a fireplace. Can some explain why?
 
A stove also slows down the heat flow giving it more time to radiate out before going up the chimney, but the draft is the main issue as Cobleskill mentioned.
 
I like taking the nicest straightest grain oak and turn it into pencil sized sticklets. Lol
And the dead straight grain hemlock snag I got last year is such a joy to make kindling out of. You can practically split it down to each growth ring. Tooth picks.
Would somebody please intervene I have a problem
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help me!
 
Seems like those knothole sticks could be something. I'm just not creative enough to see it atm. Looks cool though. I wouldn't burn them.
 
I'm thinking of setting up a stove in a friend's house with a heat exchanger around the chimney pipe like this.

1639361724630.png Thoughts?

Later on we might figure a way to blow air through the heat exchanger in reverse for higher heat output, but this is the initial low cost design.
 
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