Lawrence Ulfik

I am a little old, and have had two major surgeries in '21, so have been unabe to gather firewood this past year.  My woodshed holds about 9 cords of wood, and it was half full at the beginning of this heating season.  We have a well insulated house and in winter use the wood for cooking and heating.  I have my propane tanks turned off and they have been off for sevaral years.  They are almost full.  I am about 3 days away from using the remainder of our wood.  It is cold as a cod outside and we are expecting snow, sleet, and more cold weather in the coming days and months.   I've been supplementing the seasoned wood with some of the pine i cut up last year by splitting it and mixing it with the seasoned wood.  The 18 inch pieces when split are too wet to really work well so I will not continue that for the next days until I run out of seasoned wood.  I'll split the logs and stack them and start using propane and induction for cooking.  Luckily, I have lots of standing pine and some still standing ash that I can start to harvest, cut into pieces, split and stack for next year.  I do not usually season for more than about 8-10 months which seems to yield wood that is about 15% moisture level, and burns well.  Yes, I burn pine!  It works well and leaves a lot less ash than oak, it seems.  I heated all last year with pine until this year,  the remainder of my woodshed is hardwoods of various species.  I was able to accumulate the needed tools to accomplish heating with wood.  I hydraulically split wood sort of as a meditation and treat stacking it in a similar fashion.  It allows me to feel my body move with power and energy, which is very helpful in keeping fit.  We grow a lot of our own food, can our fruit, make hot pepper jelly, and have lamb galore and a lot of beautiful shorn finnsheep wool to keep us fed, busy and warm.  I look at the ancillary hidden costs of using fossil fuel to heat our house, and try to balance the labor I pay for fire wood against the destruction that fossil fuels have had on our planet.  Nothing is free, and life is an expense whatever we do!  Luckily the sun provides almost all of our electrical grid based power, and grows our food!  The food we eat is sourced from our composted, no till, garden beds; using organic compost from our local area supplemented by sheep manure and leaves.  I know where the seed comes from, and what goes into the food we eat. Sure we supplement that with fresh lettuce and veggies in season, and salad stuff, and are by no means self sufficient until spring when we can grow our own greens again.  So, burning wood is just part of our lives and has been for the past 12 years.  I will continue that practice until I am no longer able to do it.

Travis, is there a good link you can share about installing Page fencing?  I read your posts and agree that putting up a decent fence is a good idea.  I plan to fence in about 2/3 acre of pasture for raising 4 sheep, two of which are rams.  They're rambunctious so controlling them and keeping them away from their female siblings and moms is imperative and they need protecting from predators [we have bobcat, fishers, coyote, bear, and some stray dogs].  I'm checking local suppliers as well, so far I have two that provide this product.  I'm looking at the product that Stay-Tuff produces 48 inch high and 4x4 galvanized.  Any help you may have is appreciated.

Miguel, What is the diameter of the barrel you plan to use?  My 55-gallon drum rocket stove, which is surrounding the burn chimney, gets to over 500 degf and I have actually measured temperatures greater than the range in my little infra red laser temperature sensor.  In such a small space you are designing, the size of the barrel and the heat output would drive you out of the space if allowed to get really hot.  So, heating such a small space would only require a very small rocket stove, usually not recommended in articles that I have read which say that 6-8 inch piping can be used.  Whatever you do, and whatever size of your rocket stove, make sure the walls in the corner are insulated with a metal "air wall" that has about 1 inch to 2 inches of clearance between the wall and the metal, also at the bottom of the air wall.  This allows air in to circulate by convection, thereby keeping the building wall cooler.  Also the wall behind the barrel should be fireproof.  If the system is designed properly the exit chimney temperature will be quite low in use, UNLESS THERE IS A PROBLEM, the normal 100-120 degf exit temperature could be compromised causing a fire if you do not install the chimney feed through properly with sufficient clearance and non flammable materials to handle such emergency conditions [like a chimney fire, for example].  My rocket mass heater is in a non insulated, translucent plastic, greenhouse that is 10 feet X 20 feet and 9.5 feet high at the apex.  The mass is a 17 foot X 2 foot high x 2 foot wide rock wall of sedimentary rock [bluestone] with two courses of 8 inch pipe and 2 tees for the return and clean outs.  The chimney exits and is about 12 feet tall.  Therefore the total pipe length is about 46 feet.  It works OK even in February when we are starting seedlings.  As further assurance to keep our plants warm, we use row cover and a 1KW electric heater at night with the thermostat turned to the lowest setting just above freezing.  I have an air wall over my barrel and do not experience any overheating problems even at 500 degf.