New England's Narrow Road

Love My Wood Stove

This Jotul is one of the smaller wood stoves made by the company and it fits nicely in my living room and is able to keep it plenty warm.
This summer I replaced the gaskets on the door and around the glass for a tight seal. I didn’t realize the extra work of having two gaskets, but I love having the glass front to watch the fire.
My old stove was in the basement and it didn’t matter since I couldn’t watch the fire anyway.
Replacing the rope around the openings was not a bad job and I watched a video first to get some tips. My son was visiting over the summer and he did the door gasket, then I did the glass one later on.

Having a tight gasket fit is needed to burn wood and control the fire. Closing the dampers won’t work well if air gets in around the seals.

If you need to replace your gaskets, look for size info on the paperwork that came with the stove. The black glue is easier to use if you knead the tube first, and spraying the rope before you add it will help it stick better. Just a couple of tips I learned.

Burning Wood For Winter Heat

Cordwood under tarps in snow. — Cord wood ready to burn

I’ve changed some things to make burning firewood easier this year. Last year my wood was stacked and covered with blue, plastic tarps. I had to trudge through the snow to the stacks of snow covered wood, brush it off and dig it out, then haul it in through the back sliding door to the living room.

By about mid-winter the snow was so high, and with the thaws and re-freezes, the wood became buried in solid snow hills. I dug out what I could, but mostly I was careful to not use too much. There is always the threat of an ice storm that would cause days without power. If that happened, keeping my small wood stove going for a week or more would really use up the wood.

This year I have a new plan. I had a wood shed built this summer! I also added a door to the back of the garage. I can walk out the back of my garage and within a few steps I will be in the wood shed collecting dry pieces of firewood. This is much better!

New wood shed to keep firewood dry and snow free. — Love the new wood shed!

More is stacked inside the garage and so I feel like I am ready for the winter’s cold. No more shoveling out the tarp covered piles. The wood shed was an investment that I will enjoy for a while.

My New Wood Shed

All of us who burn wood over the winter months to keep the high cost of heating oil at a minimum, must begin gathering and stacking it long before the snow flies. This winter my wood will be stored in my new wood shed.
For me, fire wood is gathered during the summer when my son visits and uses my chain saw to cut up trees. He does what he can during his visit and my other son then splits it for me during the rest of the summer. I do all of the stacking. Up until this year, I’ve stacked the fire wood on wooden pallets along the side of the house, and then covered the wood with flimsy tarps to keep the snow off.
That hasn’t worked so well. We get lots of snow here, and the wood ends up buried. With melting and re-freezing, pretty soon the wood is tough to get to. Also, unless I keep a path dug, it’s hard to even get to the wood to bring inside and burn. Usually I give up and end up leaving much of it to re-stack for the next year when I could be using it to heat my house.
So I splurged and hired my contractor to build me a nice, dry wood shed. Continue reading “My New Wood Shed”

Fall is Gone Too Fast

Fall leaves and pumpkin — Leaves and Pumpkin

Fall is here, in fact it is almost gone in my neck of the woods. Many trees are now bare, but some still hold onto yellow and orange leaves. The oak in front of my house is mostly green still, so it may be a while before I finish raking leaves.

I haven’t even bought a pumpkin yet. The photo I included here is from last year or maybe the year before. Money is tight, and to splurge on fall decorations like a pumpkin doesn’t seem anything but wasteful to me. I don’t have little kids who would want to carve it, and since we don’t even get Trick-or-Treaters, what is the point? Nature’s decorating is good enough for me.

I always tell myself that I will take long drives and find good spots for photos, but then I don’t. I did get back up to the lake for a few pictures, and that was nice, but the foliage color wasn’t even as good as I had hoped. But I always get outdoors this time of year as much as possible. I grabbed a blanket and had a nap in the sun out at the side yard the other day. I’m grabbing my natural vitamin D while I can.