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Reading this article made me smile, I think the authors experiences are something everyone who leaves "The Big City" goes through, it is a sort of right of pass

Reading this article made me smile, I think the authors experiences are something everyone who leaves "The Big City" goes through, it is a sort of right of passage. I doubt there is a single person that uses wood for heat that hasn't questioned their life decisions when they find themselves slipping and sliding down a narrowly dug path through deep snow, in their housecoat, half frozen and hauling wood into the house early in the morning before the sun is even up only to spend the next hour fiddling with a smokey fire that refuses to get going. Some people make it, some people give up and head back to the city but all of them become better people from gaining a respect through hard times for the people living outside of the cities and a possibly become less arrogant in the process. I hope the author and his partner tough it out over the winter, there are few places more beautiful than the Shuswap region and the people who call that area home are the same.

theluketaylor 5y ago
My grandfather heated with wood in just about the easiest way possible apart from the german self-filling pellet stoves. He designed and built the house specifically for wood heating with some very clever ideas. The back wall of the attached garage has built-in sturdy shelving that holds months of firewood neatly stacked, eliminating the cold walk to a shed for something to burn. The basement wall shared with the garage he built a cold room outside the insulation envelope of the house. The room has a chute from the garage you can slide wood down, but since the cold room isn't part of the insulated envelope you're not losing heat to the garage. The woodstove is only a few feet from the cold room exterior door, so adding wood to the fire is just a few steps and the chute only has to be re-filled every few days. Still had to haul ashes out from time to time, but overall I've never seen a better setup.
liveoneggs 5y ago
should have spent more time consulting this old-timey documentary about it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Acres https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Acres

theluketaylor 5y ago

My grandfather heated with wood in just about the easiest way possible apart from the german self-filling pellet stoves. He designed and built the house specifically for wood heating with some very clever ideas. The back wall of the attached garage has built-in sturdy shelving that holds months of firewood neatly stacked, eliminating the cold walk to a shed for something to burn. The basement wall shared with the garage he built a cold room outside the insulation envelope of the house. The room has a chute from the garage you can slide wood down, but since the cold room isn't part of the insulated envelope you're not losing heat to the garage. The woodstove is only a few feet from the cold room exterior door, so adding wood to the fire is just a few steps and the chute only has to be re-filled every few days. Still had to haul ashes out from time to time, but overall I've never seen a better setup.

liveoneggs 5y ago

should have spent more time consulting this old-timey documentary about it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Acres https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Acres