Fuel on the Fire

As a child, I had an ongoing chore that I just detested - it was my job to put wood on the fire at night to keep it going.

With that statement I realize that I sound like I was born in the time of the pioneers - but no, we had a forced-air wood furnace. And how I HATED that thing!

If I let it go out and ever had to relight it - I could expect to spend at least an hour fighting with that thing, throwing in ball after crumpled ball of newspaper, countless armloads of kindling...one thing I did learn was this: where there's smoke, there is not necessarily fire!

I also had to help stack the firewood - and no matter how many times I made a wood pile that fell over, I never managed to get fired from that job.

I swore that when I grew up I would live in a house where you could simply turn up the thermostat and voila! there would be instant heat.

So, I moved to Thunder Bay for University - in retrospect, what a stupid place to go to school for someone who hates being cold! While living there, the big thing was to find a place to live with the cost of heat included - winters are darn cold there and heating bills could get expensive! For a couple of years I lived in a place that had a fireplace - a WOOD fireplace that is. Sigh...

After that, I moved back to The Rock, and lived alone. The heat source? A wood furnace. Could I never escape this? I spent hours and hours of my life fighting with that thing, trying to get it to light. Many times I had to capitulate and call my dad to come over and light that beast for me!

And now, my husband, two kids and exuberant dog, live in a house that is heated by.....a wood stove.

Do I still hate wood heat?

Yes . . . and no.

Yes, because of the labour intensiveness, the mess of firewood and dust from the stove, the time spent lighting it, cleaning ashes out and the list goes on and on.

So why "no" you ask?

#1. Wood is cheap around here - our heating costs (not including labour and equipment) work out to about $200 per winter for wood, although we do use electric and solar as backup, it isn't anywhere close to the cost of oil or propane.

#2. We aren't using non-renewable fossil fuels.

#3. The wood that we use is sustainably harvested. We use wood that is from blow-down, tops that are by-products of logging, and trees that have been removed for building or forest management.

#4. With all the power outages that we have here on Manitoulin, it sure it nice to still have heat!

So , do I still dislike wood heat? Do I still despise the work associated with it? The answer would be "yes", and "yes".

Would I ever change it?

That would be an emphatic "NO".

photo from Pacific Energy