Another activity I like to do on snowy days is take an egg carton, tear off the edges & top, rip these into tiny pieces & fill the cups with those pieces. Then I melt some wax on the wood stove and pour it in the cups to soak through the torn pieces. After this cools, I tear apart the cups and use them as fire starters. I do this over freezer paper so any wax that soaks through can be peeled off when solid and used next time. #recycle #reuse #repurpose #FireStarter #WoodStove #FirePlace #FirePit

A Winter's Dog
#dogs #gundogevening #snooze #WoodStove #cozy
#FlatCoatedRetriever

Avoir les pieds dans les plats, prend un tout autre sens...😆 #woodstove

I can feel the ice storm looming on the horizon. Something about the charge in the air changes and I feel it viscerally.

When I heard the news I started looking around for a new kerosene heater. If the electricity goes out, electric heat and diesel electric heat are useless. They require electricity, obviously.

I have a wood stove but that is my last resort since it requires a lot of attention throughout the day. If the electric goes out, a kerosene heater will burn on low all night.

I can get K1 kerosene at the pump for 1/3 the price of the jugs sold in stores. It is a good hedge against power failure. Wood is cheaper if I cut and split if myself, but tending a woodstove is more time consuming.

The propane heater keeps things warm enough but propane heat is really expensive. Propane can cost $600+ to heat a small house for a month, or about $20 per day.

When I build my new house I plan to build a south-facing tromb wall with water pipes and a 5x8x8 insulated water tank set in a concrete pedestal housing. This way when the sun shines the heat will be transferred into a couple thousand gallons of water which can be piped to an interior radiator. The wood stove can be perched atop the concrete water tank housing with an insulated baffle that can be removed when the stove is burning, so the heat cast under the stove heats the metal water tank.

My dream home setup will also use deep geothermal ducting for cooling in the summer. About 300 feet of ducting running from a 30-foot deep well, buried six feet deep next to the shaded area of the yard will allow air to be drawn through and cooled by the cooler ground well, which is 15-20 degrees cooler in the well and about ten degrees cooler at six feet down.

This would allow a small fan to draw in cool air from underground during the summer, and push the higher warmer air up a vent, using far less electricity than a HVAC unit.

I like cooking on the wood stove. I can set a big iron dutch oven upon on a rack and let it slow cook all day. Chili and cowboy beans are almost effortless. I have also cooked pots of chili on the old kerosene heater, however one must be very careful to have a tight lid to prevent the kero odor from getting into the stew.

Right now I am getting ready to make a batch of baked beans with bacon, bratwurst, and ham. This fat mess will stick to my ribs and keep my blood warm.

#Heating #WinterStorm #IceStorm #Woodstove #Kerosene #Homesteading