While few office workers are found in their garages at 7:30 am cutting up wood, I am one of those few. The reason for my morning madness at such an hour? Since last winter, we have heated our home with a woodburning stove and burning only reclaimed combustible material. When the pieces we reclaim are too large to fit in the stove, I cut them up.
After only three months, we cut our gas consumption during one of the coldest parts of the year. IT may be too early to say for sure, but I think we will save about £200 ($330) to £250 ($410) over last year's heating costs. We expect to see the wood stove pay for itself as well as the cost of installing it within less than three short years!
I located a local joinery which provides our wood, so basically we are burning waste wood which could be overfilling the landfills. We're helping the environment in many different ways with our wonderful wood burning stove.
My wife and children live in a four bedroom house which was built about 1980 and it isn't the prettiest in the neighbourhood. It has double glazed windows and is well insulated thanks to the former owner's cavity wall insulation addition. They probably spent tons of money on an extra fireplace with a fully lined chimney and then used it to operate a fake gas fire!
We remove the fake gas fire and associated pipes, measured the fireplace area and shopped for a wood burning stove which fit our small fireplace.
In order to make our wood stove financially feasible, cheap wood has to be found. I called a few local joineries and visited the largest in town. Once I told them what I was doing, I was directed to a huge lot in back where all the cast off pieces were tossed. Whenever I drive by that area, I stop to pick up a load of wood to burn.
We do sometimes buy a few bags of sawdust logs -- about £1 each -- which are made at the joinery from sawdust which is compressed. These burn very well indeed.
The wood quality we get is superb and includes hardwoods such as mahogany which burns especially slowly, generating lots of valuable heat. Thanks to the local joinery, we get free wood to heat our home and cook with as well. When we go into the wood, I take along a saw and fill the car boot (or trunk as the Americans prefer). You'd be amazed at the dead tree and branches just awaiting my collection trips.
When it gets really, really frigid, we still turn on our central heating unit to keep the bedrooms toasty.
There are some small downsides. I have some tiny burns on my hand and the stove can be messy to clean and operate as it sends ashes and dust into the room air. But the good old dustpan and brush makes clean up easy. Sure, it takes a little time and the stove requires some floor space, and yes, the car boot has traces of sawdust all the time.
But we would never even think of going back because there is absolutely nothing like snuggling up in front of the fire, and knowing we aren't paying the fuel company dollars and dollars we can use for more fun things -- like wine and cheese to share in front of the fire.
When we move into our next home, I vow to go further and install a wood burning stove which includes a back boiler so I can heat hot water and provide all the heat for our entire home.