My free wood piled near the driveway,  some split & stacked (off to the left):

One of the great advantages of a Radiant Heater is the fact that you can burn wood that most people consider garbage.  I have seen people respond to this information differently – some skeptics refuse to believe, some want to know how it can burn pine, and still others simply get excited about the idea.

Whatever your response to this information, you’ll have to admit, it would be nice to have someone give you your winter fuel for free.

This year, God provided for me a whopping pile of wood, cut from the property of a man that considered it “junk.”  He paid for the privilege of having the wood removed from his property, and so the costs associated with getting this fuel to my land was absolutely nothing but time.

Some of the brothers from the church came, and in a morning’s time the trees were down, limbed, and cut to length.  From there a few trips and I had three piles of wood on my yard.  I don’t have it all split just yet, but suspect that I have more than 4 cords of wood – for free!

This amount of wood, some pine, some ash, and a little poplar, would heat a home of 2000 square feet all winter long, with perhaps as much as a cord left over!

Getting the wood

There’s a number of sources for this, from neighbors needing trees cut down to professional arborists who need to dispose of trees they are removing and who would like nothing more than to have someone come remove the cut trees for them – some will even bring it to you for free!

Anyone building anything with lumber is going to have scrap pieces left over.  2x4s, 2x6s, 2x8s and 2x10s ranging from six to 18 inches are commonly something that needs to be dealt with on any construction site.  Most contractors would be glad to set aside this wood for you to pick up.  They have to clean it up anyway, and either haul it away, or pay to have it hauled away.  They might even burn it out back periodically, but then they have to have someone keep an eye on it until the fire’s out.  The point is, these cut off pieces of lumber are a cost to the contractor that needs to be dealt with in some way or another.

Lumber is typically kiln dried, and covered in the lumber yard and on the work site.  This means that if you get it before it soaks in a waste pile through a few good rainstorms you’ve got premium fast burning fuel at no cost.

Many contractors will be glad to keep a waste can next to their saws, and if you can come pick it up every day or two during the framing phases of the job you’ll have a great fuel that you often times don’t have to cut or split (I do typically split 2x6s ad 2x8s).

This is more effort than calling the oil company, until you think about what you have to do to earn the money, year after year, to earn the oil company’s interest (they won’t bring you free fuel, no matter what you burn it in).  I’ll pick away at this pile through the spring, a little exercise each day, and then it’ll have the summer to start drying.  I know I’ve got more than one year’s fuel here, and that’s a cozy feeling, even when the stove’s not warm!

How do I turn this free junk wood into high octane masonry heater fuel?  Basically that means three things:

Split it appropriately, stack it in a good spot, and cover it well for the right amount of time.  If you’ve got 2×4 scraps it’s already dry and well split, simply storing it correctly until you need it will be a breeze.  With logs and such there’s more involved, but it can be fun and very cost effective if done well.  I leave you with the following thought as we prepare for the task of splitting, stacking, and storing our wood:

“The soul of the sluggard desires, and has nothing: but the soul of the diligent shall be made fat.”

From the 13^th proverb.

I think it’s worth taking time out from other things to share something that might simply make you smile.

This week I completed a prototype heater install in my home.  It’s something I’m working on for an inexpensive heater for those who’d like to heat just a few rooms or a small very well insulated house.

My mother and father were visiting for the week, and they had never seen a stove get built before.  Since I’d just gotten the parts I needed to build up version 2.2 of the stove and was terribly excited about trying it out, I figured they would be tickled to have a mud slinging mess of masonry, complete with screaming diamond saws and grinders as a part of their relaxing week in Maine.

The metal insulated chimney got installed just before they arrived, and the tools got set up.  2 days later, the prototype was installed, at least to the point of usability.

Typically a heater in the field follows a prescribed and careful break in process to be sure that all the parts dry out and complete their initial warming gently.  All the pieces will move and flex, and the inner work of the stove will find the point of least stress this way.  It’s so important that violating the procedure voids the warranty.

In my own home, of course, the break in procedure was a little different…

The final screw holding the door in place was tightened, and I ran to the workshop to get some 2X4 scraps.  Excitedly I split them in half, and somehow managed to walk, not run, back in to the waiting stove.  I dropped the wood next to the stove, and then went up to the roof, to take the black plastic bag off the top of the chimney that I had put on when it was installed in order to keep heat from flowing out of the trailer while the stove was being built.

I hardly even looked at the bag as I pulled it off, and then I headed back down the ladder to the living room, where my father had pulled up a chair and had a cup of tea in his hand.

“All ready?”  He asked.

“Here we go.”

I made a big ball of newspaper in the firebox, which is my preferred test for combustion in a new stove prior to involving wood.  It gives me a sense of confidence that everything is working well before committing to the first load of wood fuel.

I lit it, and as a big wad of newspaper typically does, it made big orange flames.  It balled up really well, so well we called my mother to check it out; and that’s when the stove started smoking.

At first it was just a wisp of smoke coming out the door.

I frowned and closed it.

I watched the increasingly thick smoke curl around in the firebox.  My mother was commenting on how it’s normal for a stove to smoke when it’s new when I looked up and pronounced judgment on my prototype.  Even though I had only changed a few things in between the workshop and the home, the judgment was fast, sure, and final:

“This is the worst stove I have ever built.”

In my mind I ran back through all the internal measurements, recalling that I had checked each one against the plans.  I thought about the gas slot size, and wondered if anything could have fallen down into a channel without my knowing.

In utter frustration and as much to get out of the room as for any other reason I got up and walked outside.  I thought I might be able to see something up on the roof, which was the only other place that made any sense to look.  After all, I couldn’t see anything inside….

While I was outside, my father sat watching the stove and sipping his tea.  This was all far less intense for him than it was for me.  All at once, and with no warning, the smoke that had started pouring out the air inlet reversed its self and sucked right back into the stove.

When I came back in he was excited to report his observation.

“I don’t know how it happened,” he started, “but all of the sudden the smoke just – zip! –  got sucked back in.

“Well dad, it’s simple.  You see, plastic bags don’t have much in the way of R value, so rather than lose heat through the plastic bag on top of the chimney while I was building the stove, I put my work vest on top of the chimney first….”

It’s now the next day, and I’m happy to say that the first few tweaks on the firebox are behind us, and the first serious load of wood has burned through the stove.  In fact, I’m right now seated in front of the as yet un-plastered prototype feeling the warmth ooze off of it.

Planning on including a small water coil on it and ducting it into my forced hot air system to see how that does soon.  I’ll keep you posted

I sell Masonry Heaters, why on earth would I want to include passive solar or off grid in my blog title? Is it simply that there’s cross marketing potential there?

I’ll admit there is a bit of that involved in the decision. The blog, after all, is not something that I’m taking up simply for the joy of putting words down on “paper.”

There are, however, topics that might better sell heaters, for example: “The masonry stove timber frame house blog” or “The ecological and economic collapse are just around the corner save yourself with a masonry stove blog” would both draw interest from confirmed masonry heater markets.

Well, stoves look very nice in timber frame homes, and timber framed homes are beautiful works of art in their own right, but the truth is that I’m a mason (brick and stone, not secret society), and that some of the expectation here is that I will enjoy sharing on this topic with others of like interest.

God made the sun. God made the earth. A home design that takes into account the energy that God freely gives brings honor to him. One might say that the use of a petrol based fuel takes advantage also of things God has provided, and it’s true, but God’s distribution system makes ours look pathetic by comparison.

Sun is distributed more or less evenly to every place on earth (some get more, some less, but they all get some). Trees grow almost every place, and where trees don’t grow, oftentimes suitable stove fuel will grow; for example grasses and brush.

God made the fuels to burn in an orderly way, and because of this we can build stoves that burn in an optimal way load after load. This gives a great number of benefits, some of which we will be looking at as we see together where this blog will go.

I do hope that you will stop by each week, and see what’s new on the blog. Sometimes it will be technical articles, sometimes conceptual musings, and I hope every now and then to throw in an article on good cooking on a wood fired masonry cook top. It’s all part of the package! Let me know what you like, and what you want to see more of, and I’ll do my best to get it up here.

In the end this blog is about you. You come here to discuss making your life better in some way, and my desire is to serve you in that.

Next weeks post will be a brief overview of what I have heard called in a Japanese book: “The firewood life.” What does it look like to live with a masonry heater and heat your house, your water, and cook your food this way?

Let me know what you want to know; and until then, keep warm, keep healthy, and keep the faith!