4 Reasons to Heat With Wood On the Homestead
Who doesn’t love a warm fire on a cold winter evening? Here are 4 reasons you may choose to heat with wood on your homestead.
There’s really nothing like curling up next to a blazing fire on a cold night! Any other heat source – no matter how warm – just doesn’t give you the same cozy satisfaction. I’m not sure why – it must be something primal left over from our caveman days… Whatever the reason, many people do choose to heat with wood – especially when living off the grid.
If you’re a homesteader, you may already be heating with wood, but if you’re not, below are 4 good reasons to start. Of course, some of these will vary depending on your location and the availability of wood. For example, if you live somewhere without a lot of trees, wood may not be a very economical choice. However, if you have ready access to wood, it can be a wonderful source of heat for your home.
Check out these 4 reasons to heat with wood, from The Prairie Homestead:
It’s economical.
Notice I didn’t say ‘free’… Heating with wood still costs money. However, at least for us, heating with wood saves us a LOT of cash as compared to purchasing propane, especially when propane prices spike. Here’s a helpful article that compares costs of various heating methods. In our area, if you want a cord of wood that is already split and ready to go, you can expect to pay around $150/cord. We use around 5 cords per year. However, we prefer to get full logs, which drops our price down to around $100/cord…
It’s a renewable resource.
I know some of my readers have trees they harvest right from their land… And if that’s you, I’m exceedingly jealous. We only have a few trees here out on the Prairie Homestead, and there’s no way I’d ever cut them down for firewood. However, there are plenty of beetle-killed trees in the nearby mountains (about 1.5-2 hours away) and those make an excellent source of firewood.
It’s efficient.
Actually, this point should come with a caveat– heating with wood *can* be efficient, as long as you have the right stove. Older models can really burn through the wood and you’ll find yourself using a lot of extra fuel. However, newer stoves do a better job of creating maximum heat with a more minimal amount of wood.
It’s not dependent on electricity.
This was a BIG one for us. Previously when we only had the furnace, I was scared to death the power would go out for an extended period of time. If it were to take the power company several days to fix the problem (which has happened…) we would have no way to heat the house or even keep the pipes from bursting. I hated the feeling of being a sitting duck. With our wood stove, the power could be out for weeks and we’d be just fine. And bonus– I could even cook on the wood stove if I really needed to.
For more on how to heat with wood, check out the full article at ThePrairieHomestead.com…
