by Joilene Rasmussen

Created on: September 01, 2008

Hungry Stove = Cold Family

My husband and I have used wood burning stoves for heating and cooking for several years now, over some long, harsh winters. We relied on our two stoves to keep our family alive during last year's eight-and-a-half months of severe cold and snow.

We began in late summer to prepare our stock of wood, cutting, splitting, and stacking what we calculated would be enough for three-and-a-half hard months enough for an average winter.

By late November, we were scraping up bark from the wood room floor, and scooping snow with the tractor to see if there was anything serviceable buried in the back lots. We had to go find and cut more downed trees at intervals until mid May, when spring finally tiptoed in. We had gone through more than thirteen cords.

This year, some flocks of ducks are migrating earlier than usual, but several of the local plants are behind their fruiting schedules by more than a month. We are taking no chances, this year, and have begun to prepare our winter fuel.

SO WHAT ABOUT YOU?
How much firewood will you need? It's hard to say. In an average winter, with sunny days interspersed, we go through approximately a mounded pickup box load (nearly a cord) per month, for each of our stoves one small cookstove, which has average to poor efficiency, and one heating stove, which is quite efficient. Your requirements may be different, and may change, depending on how much you rely on your stove(s) for heat, how drafty your house is (ours is terrible), how cold the weather gets (the average day last winter was about fifteen degrees F., with wind chill), how efficient your stove is, how efficient an operator you are, and whether the wood is split. We use ours nearly 24 hours a day, seven days a week, until summer weather gets underway and warms the walls of the house. That did not happen until late June last year.

For figuring potential wood use, begin with how much you spent last winter in natural gas costs (or how much you would have spent). For ease of figuring, let's say, $1,000. Take 75% of that, or $750. Divide by $70, or whatever a cord of wood would have cost you. This should give you an estimate in cords. This formula should also work with inflation, as long as you know a figure to start with, and how much an average cord of would costs in your area.
Make sure you know what you will do if you lack space for a whole year's supply of wood, and if you cannot reliably have delivered or otherwise obtain the next installment. Due to being

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