Woodburning for Energy Independence

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The annual cost of heating a home with wood is about half the cost of using oil.
The annual cost of heating a home with wood is about half the cost of using oil.
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"The New Woodburner’s Handbook" by Stephen Bushway explores the significance of fire and the economic benefits of woodburning to heat your home.
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Woodburning can be an intelligent and environmentally sound home heating option, whether it is used as a primary or supplemental source of heat.
Woodburning can be an intelligent and environmentally sound home heating option, whether it is used as a primary or supplemental source of heat.

The New Woodburner’s Handbook (Storey Publishing, 1992) is the essential layman’s guide to the age-old wisdom of heating with wood. Author Stephen Bushway presents first-time and long-time woodburners with all the information necessary to heat a home economically and safely, while safeguarding the environment. In the following excerpt, from Chapter 1, Bushway explains why woodburning can be an intelligent and environmentally sound way to heat your home.

Have you ever noticed how people gather around a fireplace in a ski lodge or common room? It’s a lot like being with people at the seashore. No one owns the ocean but it’s an elemental part of our world, and we gather around it. And so it is with fire. Fire is nature’s way of giving us the sun’s warmth. Burning wood isn’t only about energy independence, resourcefulness, or economics. It’s about the hearth and its rightful place in our homes.

Woodburning can be an intelligent and environmentally sound home heating option, whether it is used as a primary or supplemental source of heat. Among the other home heating fuels, wood is the one renewable fuel that can be harvested with one’s own labor and a modest investment in equipment. Forested land provides us with storm-damaged trees; trees cleared for development, or roadway and utility maintenance; and standing dead and deadfall timber. Sound woodlot management yields significant firewood from the process of thinning out crooked, non-lumber-grade trees and less desirable species. The byproduct of logging operations leaves firewood from unusable limbs and trees cut for access roads.

In any wooded environment, there is both oxygen production from growing trees and the release of carbon dioxide — the “greenhouse” gas — as dead wood decays. Since these gases are products of a natural cycle, we may as well use them to heat our homes, as long as our woodburning is done responsibly and in harmony with the environment.

  • Published on Sep 9, 2014
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