We burn wood

Where we live, it is common for most homes to heat with coal or electricity or oil.

Our home was built in the 70"s during the oil crisis and it has electric heat because at the time it was the cheapest way to heat a home.

Neither Dear Darling or I had electric heat growing up, but we knew that now electric heat is expensive.



 

 

Our home had a chimney but no heat source connected to it, so we bought a wood burning stove that sits in our family room and began our adventure with wood heat.

 

 



 

 

 

 

As I think I mentioned before, we get our wood in a barter arrangement.  Plus, the wood we get is from downed trees, meaning they were cut after nature had decided to fell them or they were in danger of falling and causing damage to a home.

 

I can feel good about that because otherwise this wood could have been just piled somewhere to rot or have been chipped up and used for mulch or land fill.

 

It is a lot of work, for Dear Darling and myself.  We are lucky the wood is already split when we get it, but we must load, unload and stack it once we get it home.  They say wood heats you twice, well I think it's more like three times for us!

 

So, our savings is quite large.  We have no added electric use in the winter and from what I understand, most people with a home our size are carrying a winter electric bill of $300 to $500 dollars a month.  I don't know how they do it, but I know that we sure couldn't.

 

I will say one nice thing about electric heat though, when you use it, you are heating only the room you are in.  BUT, you have to remember to turn it off when you leave the room.