Wood burning savings

[On Our own]

Oh on burning hot but short lived wood, consider adding lots of thermal mass to soak up that spike of heat, and then release it slow. (It is what they do in Finland as the have no hardwood, but have a plenty cold climate..

ON, how would you do that? Please explain. I can't do it myself, but think it's smart.

Edited because I am a computer idiot.

Massive soap stone stoves.

Actually it isn't massive compared to other fireplaces. And the opening is actually much smaller.....

Look up wood burning masonry heaters, this is what we have, two keys soapstone and external combustion air.

If you cannot engineer the solution there are other ways of doing it such as surrounding your wood stove with brick or soap stone and/or placing a large tub of water on top and then just let it sit there and release the heat.

 

[old fashioned]

My husband encouraged me to try drying our clothes outside in summer (we live in WA where drying outside in winter would never happen).

Our clothes felt stiff and awful and the towels and blankets were especially bad. And it aggravated all of our allergies. We think it was the pollen getting on everything. But we had to actually re-wash the towels. No savings there!

So drying outside may not be the great idea it sounds like or how they make it look in commercials.

I tried this too several years ago when the kids were babies and had the same results. I don't remember that happening when I was a kid so it may be from hard water or whatever chemicals the water company puts in. Also did you use fabric softener in your loads? Maybe that would have helped.

 

[savingdogs]

My husband encouraged me to try drying our clothes outside in summer (we live in WA where drying outside in winter would never happen).

Our clothes felt stiff and awful and the towels and blankets were especially bad. And it aggravated all of our allergies. We think it was the pollen getting on everything. But we had to actually re-wash the towels. No savings there!

So drying outside may not be the great idea it sounds like or how they make it look in commercials.

I tried this too several years ago when the kids were babies and had the same results. I don't remember that happening when I was a kid so it may be from hard water or whatever chemicals the water company puts in. Also did you use fabric softener in your loads? Maybe that would have helped.

I was using fabric softener at the time and we have a well.

I now use my own laundry detergent that has no real scent to it which is what I prefer. My husband has skin that is sensitive to that stuff and I have allergies.

Even if the clothes had come out softer, we suffer so much from our allergies already, we really can't choose to let our clothes, sheets and towels fill up with pollen all day as they dry. We do have an inside rack we use by the woodstove to dry out wet coats and such in the winter and this is much more useful!

 

[BillyJean]

We are also using wood and charcoal in cooking our foods. It is really cheap and you can save a lot of money and the best thing about it is you are saving energy.

The only thing to do is to find woods that are struck down by the wind. Don't cut trees for wood burning because you will be put in jail. Used wood that have no used. this will help you to save money and energy an the good thing about it in one wood burning you can cook more than one dish.