With winter weather fast approaching, many people’s thoughts will turn to heating their homes during the winter. Some people heat with central electric heating, some with gas furnace heating and some with woodstoves. This article looks at the advantages of using woodstoves for heating your home during the winter months.
Perhaps the greatest reason for using wood for heating homes during the winter months is purely economical. In using wood stoves, you can create a fire which last for most of the day with something you already have around you, natural wood. Natural wood can be used from dead trees, trees which you don’t want on your property anymore, and even trees from your neighbors. Using wood can eliminate the cost of using gasoline and electricity for heating during the winter months. The only cost involved in using woodstoves for heating is purchasing the heater and the piping for the chimney, as well as the gasoline and oil and a few little odds and ends for your chainsaw and wood splitter for cutting and splitting firewood. Compare this to the costs of gasoline and electric each month during the winter.
Woodstoves also add an element of winter romance to your house that you don’t get with other methods of heating. You can curl up on the couch or in bed with your sweetheart and enjoy a romantic, intimate, perhaps even sexual night in front of the fire. Woodstoves and heating with wood can go a long way towards renewing the heat, both literally and figuratively, in your love life.
Heating with woodstoves can also be a lifesaver in the wake of a terrible winter storm which causes you to lose power. You can use woodstoves for a little light in the house, cooking, and heating in the middle of a terrible ice storm. The disadvantage of this, however, is that you have to stay in the same room as the heater, because a wood heater isn’t going to go a very long distance towards heating the entire house in the wake of a winter ice storm or snowstorm.
We purchased our Vogelzang Box Wood Stove at Lowes for $179.97 plus tax, which was about $45.00 less than it would have been if purchased from the manufacturer. The Vogelzang replaced another wood stove that we found impossible to seal, and keep sealed, around the door. This caused problems with smoke and fumes inside the house.
Our home is owner designed and built using strawbale construction and other alternative building procedures. The house is extremely well insulated and we require very little heating in the winter or cooling in the summer. We looked at various wood stoves, mostly on the Internet, and decided the box wood stove would meet our needs.
The stove was crated up and in pieces but was easy to assemble and all the parts were there, which isn’t always the case with a lot of DYI assembly items. After assembly, replacing the old stove pipe and stove pipe cap, we opened the windows and fired up the stove. When the paint is cured or burned off, it gives off fumes and you need to have good ventilation.
The first thing I noticed was the door would drag on the sliding draft control, also called a sliding clean out. It appears the main stove casting, where the legs attach, was cast at a slight angle. The door opens and closes if the slider is closed but won’t open completely if the slider is open, even partially. I placed a couple of small flatwashers between the door pins and the tangs they swivel on. on the front of the stove. That remedied the dragging problem but increased the gap under the bottom of the door, which makes it more difficult the control the airflow into the stove. We haven’t had any problem with too hot a fire but we only need to use very small amounts of wood since the house is so well insulated.
The first couple of days I was somewhat disappointed with the performance but discovered if I placed the wood at the front of the grate, and as far toward the door and away from the outlet as possible, we got a lot more heat than if the wood was placed in the center or at the rear. Doing that caused the heat to have to travel further inside the stove and not as much went straight up the pipe and out. We bought the grate we use at Home Depot and it was about $20.00 less than the Vogelzang grate. I had to trim about an inch off the ends to make it fit, but I have a portable grinder and cutoff discs, and it took about 5 minutes.
Overall, I would rate the stove an 8 out of 10 for what we need. The stove isn’t an airtight and would only work for small square footage dwellings, small shops or for homes that are very well insulated.
