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bask in these sunny areas; you can dress warmly while keeping the heat down in your home; You can take seriously the task of winterizing your home, ridding it of places where you lose heat such as around windows and under doors and through attic vents; in summer turn off the air-conditioner and open the windows and take advantage of natures cooling breezes.

Or you can get involved in indirect solar heating now by chopping or buying your own wood and using this rougher, less popular yet less expensive method of heating your home. Did I say solar heating? Yes. I never thought of wood heat as solar heat but it is. It was the power of the sun that grew the tree that you chop down (or gather) and when it is burned the energy stored in the wood is released and warms the surrounding space.

I never thought of wood burning exactly in this way until I researched the topic of alternative home heating on the Internet. Now I will never think of it as low-down and dirty and of little consequence for the future ever again. The site I explored is a Canadian not for profit government site (Wood Heat Organization) that woos visitors into changing their minds about this unorthodox method of home heating.

For me all they had to do was to align it with solar heating. I have been in love with this idea of future rejuvenation of our diminishing energy sources for years; in fact, I have been eagerly reading reviews since the mid 1990s. California of course was leading the way in the United States and still is; overall it is third in the world that supports and implements solar energy. Japan is first and Germany is third.

I found it extremely interesting that in Japan where solar energy is king, and Germany the second country aligned for solar energy, is far behind California where sunshine is concerned. Statistics tell me that California has "forty percent more sunlight than Germany, and twenty percent more sunlight than Japan."

Why the stall then in development? It takes time, is expensive and is not something hastily done. California is in there though, and plans to have "three thousand megawatts of solar power in use by 2018". That will be five percent of their power use.

When the supply meets the demand the price of heating with this alternative power source will come down and more people will be able to afford it thus reducing the price ever further. The power of the sun is immediate, but how to harness it inexpensively for the cloudy days remains the sixty-four dollar question.

In the meantime, we need hot air and a lot of it. And that brings me back to wood heat. What happens when one lives unobtrusively out in rural areas where wood is more plentiful and is respected for the power source it is? A love affair with wood begins of often is a lifetime affair. To learn more just check in with the wood heating site I mentioned and have them sell you on solar heating, the affordable way.

They will have you convinced in no time that God had it right from the beginning. We must earn our keep. Nothing comes easy, but the best things in life are free, but first we must respect them enough to work for them. Only then will we truly appreciate life and all that it entails. Become a tree hugger in earnest.

Source:
http://www.woodheat.org
Tesky, Diane http://www.suite101.com/articl e/cfm/ecology/55032alternateen ergy

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