Tuesday, December 8, 2009

This Winter It's Warmer


On the far left of the mantel, you can see that I've put my indoor thermometer to check how warm it's been getting above the stove.  What I'm getting is 75 degrees there, and 65 degrees across the room at the sofa.  This is a psychologically important 7 degrees warmer than it got at all last winter.  (Last winter, the warmest I EVER got the inside of this room was 58 degrees!)  Outside temperature this morning was 17 degrees and the inside temps are maintaining at 65-ish at the sofa.  So all  the work I did to tighten the house worked!  Woo hoo!  Thanks to everyone for the suggestions!

If I put this temperature gage on the floor, it'd be colder of course, because heat rises.  The Lehman's holiday catalog (thanks Chicken Mama for the suggestion!) has some heat-powered fans that sit on the stove and will move the hot air from above the woodstove, but they're spendy (to use a west coast term).  I think I'll research options for evening out the heat across the room.  I'm so thrilled that there's heat to even out!!


On the left side of this picture, you can see the single most useful thing I've bought in the last year, the hand truck.  I went through most of last winter carrying wood in by armloads.  Us woodstove people know that an armload of wood will get you a few hours at most, so it was a pain.  I bought the hand truck in February and it holds several days worth of wood.  It takes two hand truck-loads to fill the round thing near the wall.  With that full, and a full hand truck here, I can get through an entire week without carrying wood.  What a difference that made!

2 comments:

  1. If I could choose my stove, it would be red, just like yours. I LOVE THAT STOVE!! And I'm glad you are friends now. Several years ago when the power went out for several days, we kept the fireplaces going upstairs and down, but you know, they just don't do it like a good wood stove. Too much heat goes up the chimney and they just really look nice. It was rather frustrating. I like the log truck. Not everyone has one inside and outside too!! Perhaps you should put big red bows on them both!! How far is it from the woodshed to the stove??

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  2. You should be so proud of yourself for how much you've learned and how far you've progressed in one short year. Like with so many things, we have to learn how to do them . . . by doing them! Each circumstance (house, climate, piece of land) is so different that we have to live on and learn our own. We're STILL learning and we've been living in the country/wilderness for 45 years . . . 12+ years on this piece of property and we're still noticing certain things about it at different times of the year.

    Roy has one of those wood/hand truck thingies that he brings in wood on for the garage stove. Got it at a house sale for $15 and he says it's one of the best investments he's ever made.

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