Tag: heating with wood

There are so many reasons to heat your Maine home with a wood burning stove.

Often what drives a home owner to feed a wood burning heater stove or furnace is the spike in the cost of other fuel options. When heating oil, natural gas or electricity bills soar higher, the natural fall back routine is to fire up the wood or coal burning stove.

Today it is smart to have more than one heat source combination so you can adjust to seasonal fluctuations. To play the energy market if you have more than one fuel system to maneuver. Let’s face it, if the talking head news reporter signals a shortage of oil or natural gas production, brace yourself. For the here it comes. Suddenly blip. It is a helpless feeling. When the beep beep beep Maine winter heating routine fuel delivery truck is backing into the driveway too often to hook up the expensive hose.

So burning wood, heating your home with rock maple, beech, white and yellow birch, ash, oak and other hardwoods.

Maine is ninety one percent wooded and with all those vast timber resources increasing in cordage yearly right out your back door, why not? And not just to save money. Wood burning provides lots of other perks besides the warm your bones. You cut up a few blow down tree limbs off your back yard. Or venture into the wooded sections of your land acreage to hook on and haul out to a yard whatever did not make it through the last winter ice storm. Slice and dice to fit your wood stove heater box and often the big limbs don’t require a split down the middle to crack them open faced.

Your Maine house yard is cleaned up in the spring and the stacks of wood created are part of your fuel stored for the following winter. Or to use to take the chill off a Maine home in late spring, early fall. Before the wood heater stove is put into round the clock action. Some folks burn wood only when they are home and awake. Others build a smug to heat the house floors with a small cellar wood heater when the temperature sinks low in the glass tube. To supplement whatever the kitchen wood cook stove does not do to increase the warmth in that very important space in a family home.

Heating a space in a Maine home using a wood heater, but not keeping the entire house to the same temperature is economical.

Does to mean you are going to be wearing your snow suit inside or that you can see your breath. Or won’t be able to have house plants. Just things are going to be a little lower temperature than seventy degrees in the second floor bedrooms or down in the formal parlor used on special occasion. Like funerals at home in the original days when the Maine home was young. Or when gentlemen callers came to call.

Wood furnaces keep the wood chucks in the cellar where they are stacked and racked to prepare for the seasons of snow flakes and thick sheets of ice. The central wood furnace can be hot air or hot water and tied in to work in tandem with the oil or gas unit. Making sure the chimney is lined, solid and not tapped with lots of “appliances” That are vented into the same heating stack which is a no no.

The clean burning wood pellet stoves that use the pallets of forty pound sacks that a fork cliff delivers in ton increments like the kerosene K-1 monitor type heaters are direct vented out the home’s exterior sidewalls. Woodstoves need more than just cleaning the chimney, emptying the ash pan and using fire wood that is not twenty minutes old green green green. Which is the kind full of creosote and that causes the house fires that roar loudly up the burnout in the stove flu. Cementing in fire brick, replaced a handle that breaks, and always studying for any cracks or danger that lack of repair can cause with any wood stove or furnace heater.

Nothing wastes wood for heating more than a Franklin wood stove or a fuel hog fireplace.

The hypnotic smell of a wood fire outside as you head indoors. Combined with the sound of your boot crunching, compacting the new soft snow underfoot. Sometimes it is the dancing, crackling wood fire romance you want and not to squeeze every renewal heat source BTU out of your Maine log timber tid bit. Especially at a seasonal lake camp after ice fishing or ski chalet when the boards are removed that you used to carve the groomed down hill gravity ride. Or cross country slide and glide to end up relaxing in your front den. The fireplaces that have a woodstove insert that are air tight or the stone / brick chimneys that have blowers and heatalator grates can pull their weight lots more efficiently. Helping heat the inside of a Maine home to keep it warm as toast. To greet you when you decide to come in from all that fresh air, the beauty of new fallen white snow that transforms your location.

I am very partial to Jotul wood stoves because my Dad was a dealer who believed in these Norwegian tried and tested gems.

Jotul North America employs about seventy five people and produces roughly seventeen thousand woodstoves, wood and gas fireplace inserts. About nine thousand stoves are imported from the mother company in Fredrikstad, Norway. Jotul is a major player in the cast iron woodstove parts market. The Norway main operation has been producing wood, coal, gas heater stoves since 1853. Jotul Gorham Maine’s operation started in 1980. The same year my Dad linked up as a wood, coal, fireplace insert distributor to sell the stoves put together from the parts floated over from across the pond.

Now I find myself along with my youngest son shopping for a new Jotul wood heater stove.

The small but mighty Jotul 404 wood cook stove does an amazing job as a cast iron heat producer. But the smaller fire box means foot long wood to whittle down to from a cellar feeding a wood furnace using sixteen and longer lengths. And little box means more trips to stoke the flame, tend the fire. That goes out shortly after the led lights do in the old farmstead located west of town in Houlton Maine.

What are we toying with buyer for a Jotul woodstove and why not consider any other brand, or a sleek sexy soap stone model that is out there to tempt us? Because my family’s exposure to Jotul woodstove has been an over the top positive one. My oldest brother heated his Bangor Maine home for years and years with a Jotul #4 unit.

This model wood heating stove has a front door that can open up, push down and slide under so a fireplace screen can be added for open blaze effect. Another older brother swears by his years using a 602 and 118 Jotul model outlined in the same previous model link you just passed in the read read read. Slow burning like a cigar to make the fuel burn clean, even, and more completely. Not headed up the chimney in wasted heat that does not benefit the inside of a Maine home sweet home atmosphere.

My Dad sold a slew of Jotul stoves using all fuel sources and fireplace inserts too!

The farm neighborhood neighbors that had the amazing 602 heater kept them. They did not leave them in a house when they moved. You get attached to your Jotul woodstove because you know as the slogan goes “Jotul woodheaters have been fighting the Norwegian winter cold for 160 years”. Wood is a little more precious in Norway where wars, too many centuries of burning wood and more people all tapped the tree woodlot hard. That’s why these cast iron wood heater stoves are so so energy efficient. The tall coal stove Jotuls were not as popular but folks who bought them still use them which speaks volumes. Made to last and too heavy to move when you consider cast iron that needs three men and a small boy to wheel in and out of the Maine home.

Heating with wood gives you a good stewardship feeling deep down inside.

When you have your winter wood all cut, split and ready for the next heating season, it means you are prepared. No worries. And if the power which is rare to lose goes off, no one misses a beat with the wood fire routine. You really feel self sufficient like a homesteader living off grid in Maine.

There is an independence when no matter what foreign oil prices shock and awe to new for new price levels, you keep chugging along with your wood heat routine in your Maine home. These Jotul woodstoves are a timeless Norwegian craft. And I bet, chances are you will if you have not yet heard of them first hand in your lifetime. Like rooting for the Red Sox, Patriots, Boston Bruins sports teams, you no doubt feel strongly about your brand of wood stove that keeps your toes from freezing. That heats your home and warms your soul.

Vermont Casting models of all kinds fill the properties that get listed for sale in my area. The Intrepid, Resolute, Defiant models in all colors of enamels. Neat names too for fighting the winter cold. Other woodstoves out there too! Lots of home made ones welded from steel, fashioned from shop trailer truck tire rims, fuel tanks and 55 gallon barrel stove wood heaters. Plus the dependable Ashley or Suburban models square models that are not fancy but work like a charm.

And don’t forget the old Home Comfort, Clarion, Glenwood, Atlantic and other smasher wood cook stoves too heavy to take apart and lug off still stand guard in many Maine country farmsteads and in-town Victorian house kitchen parlors. Some are rough and you find them in Uncle Henry’s, on Craig’s List in searching for Maine treasures in the buy, sell, swap guides. Others have been re-nickeled and have all their parts, are working stoves not just conversation pieces.

Your appreciation for how well your wood stove heater works increases.

You fall in love. Get more attached to the wood heaters you stoke and stroke. That you spend lots of alone time with over the peaceful, lazy winter months. Or those wood cook stoves, outdoor wood boilers that take monster sized tree pieces that you use more often than just the snow calendar months. The former for serving up your Saturday night brown bread, soldier or yellow eye or Jacob’s cattle baked beans in the oven section. While topside another cooking show is playing. Grilling the neat rows of red snapper hot dogs on stove top mingling with the sliced onions like “upta Maine camp ayuh” Chummy.

The really old woodstove parked and forgotten much of the year in the dark of the log cabin retreat in T this R unorganixed township. That’s used for R and R, for hunting, fishing, reading, sleeping and snow sledding or four wheel ATV trail fun. With the woodstove almost driving your out as you play fifteen two, four, six and one point for last card high spirited cribbage matches. Chasing up and down the rows with your wooded match stick marker replacement because the one that came with the board turned up missing. And whoever made the board is gone. Pegs by Porter. RIP Paul Porter a local accomplice to Torrey Sylvester a retired attorney who has made many an exotic wood cribbage board for camp fun.

Heating with wood is an old time tradition in rural Maine because it saves money, heats more completely and gives you healthy exercise year round.

Nothing is wasted when the limbs and blow down trees are cleaned up so it is a win win scenario. Maine is a state not flush with cash, without money to burn so anything along the lines of practical, frugal, we’re all over that. The study and slow impulse control to do your home work is part of the thrifty living.

Like anything, is this model the best value, is this size the closest fit to what is needed based on the specifications of your home for safety clearances to keep the fire marshal and insurance adjuster away from your doorstep.

And that won’t be too much or too little to do the job of heating your Maine home for the maximum comfort for your family. To hang yours mittens next to, to position the wooden rack to dry other clothes  a little snow covered from playing or working outside in Vacationland. Every household in Maine’s dry fluffy snow winter climate could use a little moisture inside generated from the drying clothes. And with a wood heater stove, there is always a kettle of hot water for a spot of tea, to make your fresh press hand ground coffee.

The Jotul F-45 Greenville model is a sweet stove that could be a good candidate for replacing the old trooper Jotul 404. Will never sell or get rid of the black beauty smaller cook stove. But the Jotul F-45 is a wood stove under consideration. There is a $300 Energy Of Maine tax credit rebate too which improves the taste for burning with wood to heat your home.

I’m Maine REALTOR Andrew Mooers, ME Broker

207.532.6573 | info@mooersrealty.com | 

MOOERS REALTY 69 North ST Houlton ME 04730 USA