THank god for my wood stove....

You know sometimes you do something and people tell you its a waste of time....but it winds up being a life saver.....always follow your gut.

A few years back I made the choice to heat the fishroom and a major part of our house with a woodstove in the basement as a suppliment to our oil furnace.. Family and friends thought I was nuts..all the work of cutting and stacking etc....and then the basic act of running a fire all winter.
Still, I wanted the safety net if we lost power and I calculated it would save me on the electric so I did it.

Fast forward 3 days ago....CT gets hit with Artic weather...sub zero etc....COLD COLD COLD. My furnace had been on the way out and I knew It so I had been working with a company to replace it.....Wouldn't you know with my luck, I signed the papers on it and the next day my Furnace cracks and dies irreparable......This was SAT am.. New Furnace can't get here until Tuesday.>>Today...MY luck in a nut shell.

Talk about rotten timing, Well....thank god for the wood stove...Its kept us pretty well these last few days.... , I've been running it full blast and all the doors in the house and basement open so the pipes don't freeze and crack. Sweaters and layers and wool socks but we made it.... The guys are herer now removing my 45 year old dinosaur and replacing it with a $7500 new one... I can say how nice it will be to take a hot shower and wash dishes, pots and pans with hot water!:)

Oh and I can also say having 2 -45 gal storage/aging barrels for hot water from the fish room was also a god send.

Not been a great 3 days, but thankfully I did put that wood stove in all those years ago.

-al

Glad to hear of your survival there Al, talk about the worst time to loose heat! We got down to 4 degrees here! Ridiculous and I have no clue what I would do if my heat went down!!!
Good luck with the brand new unit!!!

Rodrigo

Bet you will see a huge difference in your heating bill with new furnace Al, of course the savings will take a few winters lol, but hey!

I remember throwing wood/coal into one of those back in Europe, kind of like a fireplace, just not as nice looking :)

Can't wait for this thing to go online...they have it hooked up now and just are purging the lines and working on the combustion...I've got some serious water changes to catch up on here!

-al

Hi Al
Glad everything worked out. The last time I saw your wood stove it looked rather sickly, with the top off and such.
Ironically this is my last winter with wood. Just tired of it. This Sat. I bought some of those envi blocks and tried them out.Great.I know you tried them a few years ago and even gave me some too try. Why did you go back to wood?
Jay Walsh

Hi Jay,

I still use the wood and the Biobricks?envi blocks here.... Nice thing about the biobricks/envi blocks...store inside, take up less room, burn cleaner...But I still use wood too. I burn them interchangeably.

On the wood stove....replaced that one for a smaller non-catalytic one from Craigslist last year.... and I am very glad I did!

As I write this my home is finally heating up after 3 days of cold cold cold. :) Man Am I cranking that furnace now.

-al

Sounds warm and cosy Al , i wish i had it at home , its abt 18 C in the flat and i have to wear lots of layers to keep me warm :)
glad all worked out for u , and hot water .. we always need an earthquake to appreciate it all lol

Your old one was a Consolidated dutch West, was it not? What did you not like about it and what did you replace it with.

My wood stove saved me 2 years ago when I moved back home. The house had been trashed by hurricane Katrina. The furnace was also toast. But I did have one room that despite a hole through the roof and ceiling, and a hole in the floor was livable with the help of the wood stove. Of course I had to invest in a Still chain saw but that was money well spent. If you live in the country a decent chainsaw is a necessity.

Quite the heading here!...we have a custom built stove here. When we first built our home, I was younger and enjoyed cutting wood. Now on disability, I'm a bit stove up to be seriously cutting ( we used to go thru' 20 full cords of prime ash and oak per year)..The sub-zero temps for 3 or more months here in the 'Dakota's are nothing but a b*tch...Stove still works well, just no wood..Put in a furnace when I was injured and had to retire. Now fuel is so expensive that all of my retirement goes to the heat bills...Miss the wood; six saws at the ready in the garage. 2 Sthils, 2 Poulan's, and two new Japanese brands...I use one of the Stihl's regularly to start cutting timbers to make repair parts for our Tallship- http://www.TheRoyaliste.com (my avatar) Other than that, I do miss the radiance of the stove....We find something to burn on occasion, due to power failures here on the plains, but that's always a big drama production....

Glad to hear you got going, but you still use heating oil? How the heck do you afford it? That stuff is crazy expensive. Almost no one uses it around here anymore. You'll be lucky if you can still find someone to work on an oil fired unit in this part of the country.

Liz,
Yes it was a Dutch west... It was an expensive woodstove and very efficient, but The maintenance was higher on it...The catalist chamber needed to be replaced every so often.... It was also very hard to get parts for as the MFG was going thru some issues.......anyways... it served me well for 8 years... I purchased a used smaller non- catalytic stove thats basically a metal box, but the price was right and its perfect for the fishroom. Its a Pillsbury stove works and its an excellent little work horse.

Darrell,
You guys down south have a great line on Natural Gas...thats not readily availible here in the north east especially in the more rural areas.. ...and even if it was, My house is so far back from the road....It'd cost me a small fortune to run it to the house. I could use propane..but its not economical here. For many of us out here..oil is still the main option.

al

Al
If that new stove keeps your fish room anywhere near the temp that the old one did, great. I could spend the rest of the winter down there.
I think you'll notice a big difference in efficiency vs: the old one. I have one that's 25 years old and it still test out to 85-87% eff.
Take care
Jay Walsh

Glad you guys made it through :)

Most likely the new boiler/furnace will be much smaller than the old one, which means more room for tanks ;)

Anyway don't get rid of that stove, I kinda like it :)

Hi Pat,
Thanks, Yes its been a long few months!! Glad its over!! :)

Hey Paul,
No worries there my friend, I'll always have a woodstove here!

-definetly was a toasty night here last night! :)
-al