Soon after I began heating my shack with a small stove my
view of wood, and in turn fuel, changed. Experience alters how we think.
We all know wood is fuel, contains BTU’s, and can get you
through a cold winter day. But it rarely does.
We burn wood in campfires, bonfires, occasionally fireplaces. We feel its heat from time to time but it’s a
novelty, a show. Wood serves us as
building material, furniture, but rarely as a source of heat.
The fuel that sustains most of us through a Northern winter,
keeps the pipes from freezing, allows our potted plants stay alive, heats the
water, and cooks our food is invisible. In
my house its natural gas, piped in from who knows where, paid for monthly and automatically
online.
It combines with oxygen very efficiently in a burner the size of a
suitcase in the basement. The exhaust
escapes from a small plastic tube out my basement wall. I do nothing but change the furnace filters.
Few people have big wood-burning
furnaces in the basement, or wood burning stoves upstairs big enough to
distribute heat throughout their homes. For
some its electricity, which might be sustainably generated by solar panels, a
windmill, or something equally green but likely not. Instead it too is likely produced by burning
up some irreplaceable fossil fuel to make people warm and comfortable. And we rarely think about it. We just turn the thermostat up.
Like most things done small, burning wood in a tiny stove to
heat a little building puts heat on an observable and easily grasped scale. My Sardine stove, the smallest model made by
Navigator Stove Works (NVA) on Orcas Island off the northwest corner of
Washington State, is made mostly for sailboat cabins. Turns out it works equally well in tiny
houses.
The inside dimensions of the shack are 11’ x 11’. I worried that if I installed a
conventionally sized wood burner the heat would drive me out. Plus I wanted to be efficient. So I bought the small stove from NSV but only
after a conversation with the owner Andrew Moore. We talked on the phone. As we chatted he looked up heating degree
days in Ottawa, Illinois, ran some numbers, and figured if I built my shack with 2x6 studs packed with fiberglass
insulation the Sardine would be big enough in the shack to keep me warm through
most Illinois winters. It’s dimensions
are 12" x 12 "x 11".
He was right. But it
takes a while to get the shack warm when the temperature is below zero like it
was this week. Wednesday wasn’t
easy. Today’s not great. I keep my coat on for a while. Wear these gloves for starters when I write.
My right side gets warm first: cheek, shoulder, thigh. The stove is on my right, up against the east
wall which is a sliding patio door. You don’t get instant heat, but when it warms
up its damn cozy.
As for the efficiency of the stove, I offer this as an example. Every other day I cut up a batch of split wood
from the woodpile into stove-sized chunks
and it lasts me a day and a half to two in the shack depending on the
temperature. In this cold weather I have
been carrying a similar sized batch of logs into the house each night to burn
in the fireplace. We burn that same
batch up in the house in three hours.
Stoves give you real heat.
Fireplaces let the heat go up the chimney. If you’re serious about heating with wood buy
a stove.
Here’s the thing with wood.
It takes work. It has to be cut, split, stored, and
dried. It takes planning and preparation
to put together a winter’s supply of wood.
It’s a year-round deal. Even when its ready to burn you have to lug
it to the stove and stoke it yourself. And
for this little stove, it has to be cut once again to stove sized chunks. The
top of the stove has only a 5-inch
diameter opening.
Fortunately, I live on a double lot on the edge of a ravine
and have a lot of trees. So far, I’ve
burned only wood that has been produced around me, mostly oak. Oak is my main fuel, a hardwood providing most of the BTU’s. It burns slow and long. It’s great stuff. But you can’t just throw a match into a stove
full of oak and have a fire.
The fuel that starts the oak comes from everywhere it seems. I kept all the scraps from building the shack in dog food bags. Before I retired, when I moonlighted
as a my own contractor, I shoved
the bags under the building. SPF (spruce,
pine fir) 2x scraps, fir flooring, cedar siding, treated porch plank ends. I kept it all. It’s long gone, as is the dog, but it was wonderful kindling. All that finished dried lumber splits and
burns great, especially the cedar. It’s
like butter. I could go on. Here’s the formula for a shack fire.
Half a brown paper grocery bag, a handful of pine or some other
quick starting, fast burning fuel, a
couple chunks of oak, followed when you hear it roar by more oak. Replenish throughout a cold day. You can start that all happening and light a
stick of incense with one match. I’ve
heard it said that all men are pyromaniacs.
However I think people are, men and women both.
It strikes me there is something wonderfully human about
starting and enjoying fire. Because once
you start it you can sit back and reap the benefit of what you’ve done. It’s immediate success or failure. And the saving grace is if it doesn’t start
the first time you get endless chances.
There’s no judging when you’re alone in a shack.
This winter a new friend of the family gave me garbage bags full
of pine cones. Pine cones make lovely
fire starters. I keep an old grease
bucket off the farm filled with them. I
fill the bottom of half a brown paper bag, stick it in the stove, pile kindling
on the bag, and top it with an oak chunk.
After the paper lights the pine cones they blaze big and take everything
else along with them. You can hear the fire crackle.
In regard to fuel I have an embarrassment of riches. A fishing buddy gives me the wood scraps of
an annual project he does in his wife’s store.
My brother the woodworker, a.k.a. cabinetmaker, fulfiller of family
project requests, gives me wood scraps from his shop. All manner of wood: chunks, slices, grooved
surfaces, mistakes, ugly pieces, of every species. I’m having a hell of a time burning the
walnut though. There is something wrong
with burning walnut. I find myself
setting it aside, protecting it from the stove.
“David that walnut’s too small to do anything with. Trust me, if it was bigger I wouldn’t have
tossed it in the scrap bucket.”
“I know Denny but its walnut. It’s too pretty and fine. “
“Too pretty and fine for what? You going to make a miniature dollhouse? Burn it.
It’s good hardwood. It will keep you warm. What’s oak
then? Oak’s a great wood and your burn
it all the time. Burn the walnut. It’s not so different. That’s why I give it to you.”
If I had walnut trees growing all around me I might feel
differently. But I have oak trees. I just planted one. Two have come up volunteer, planted I’m
pretty sure by forgetful squirrels. As
the big oaks age the young oaks grow. I have a good feeling about burning oak
in this stove. Like it’s meant to
be. Burning walnut? It still feels like a sin.
A very nice woman gives me corn cobs she picks up in her
field. Corn cobs are perfect for
extending a fire when you’re at the end of your time in the shack. Rather than firing up more oak I throw on
corn cobs for a short burst of intense heat.
Among the fuels I use in the shack, cobs have the most passion. They heat up fast, give you everything, and
then they’re done. And sustainable? The number of cobs burned for fuel in America
is infinitesimal. If you live anywhere
in Illinois outside Chicago there are acres and acres of cobs all around
you. The farmers ignore them, discarding
them back on the field to enrich the soil.
All that good fuel, just laying there.
With a pile of cobs as big as one crib’s worth, a mountain of cobs like
those produced when we shelled out the my
Dad’s corn crib each year as a kid, I could heat this shack for three years I
think. I’ll never get the chance to
prove that.
And so I have a good feeling about this stove, the future of
the shack, and the sustainability of this little local system. Cut wood, burn it, write in the shack when
its warm. This deal could go on way
longer than me. For example, as I type
these words there is a sizeable dead branch hanging outside the very window I
see through when I look above my computer screen.
At one time I would have looked upon it sadly as the
diminishment of a once thriving tree.
Now when I see it I think of where I will put the ladder and make the
cut with the chainsaw so the branch falls at the edge of the ravine, ready to
be cut into pieces and carried to the woodshed.
It’s a subtle change in thinking but important. What once was a tree is now stored fuel,
ready to heat me up next winter. Life is
a cycle. Too bad humans don’t serve some
similarly useful purpose, stacked up and waiting, ready to provide someone
benefit after they die.
Thoughts About The
Blog
To be honest I hesitate to write about Dave in the
Shack. The blog is nothing but a digital
chimera that carries these words. I
suppose I could care less about the details and structure of the blog, but I
can‘t imagine how. My kids encouraged me
to write it, not that it took much encouragement. Aside from the name of the blog, and the
picture of the shack, Dean and Maureen chose the colors, the font, and the
template. All I do is write my thoughts,
copy and paste a Word file into the blog, insert a picture or two, and post it. Then you read it. Which is only right. All
that matters is the writing and reading, just as in music it is playing and hearing. writing is a personal human interaction, and an important one at that. The vehicle doesn’t matter. Although digital beats paper all to hell I
must admit. I wouldn’t be mailing this
to you at 49 cents a pop that’s for sure.
I know how many blogs I write and how many people open the
link to it through a digital report I get each week from Blogspot. This is my 32nd blog post of 2017, down from 44 posts each of the two
previous years. Readership varies
widely. I always make triple digits,
besting 99 readers. My highest read blog
before a few weeks ago was “A Week Away” about fishing in Canada. 963 people opened that link to supposedly
read that Ontario tale. I have a
sneaking suspicion from the comments that piece made it to younger readers, who
share things on FaceBook more readily.
That was the most read blog post until I posted “Food and
Shelter” the week before Thanksgiving.
Something amazing happened with that post. It was shared on FaceBook 50 times or so and has so far been opened by 10,057
individuals. That’s shocking. That post about homeless people and
homelessness is ten times more popular, if you gauge popularity by supposed
reads, than anything else I’ve written in five years. Heck let’s face it, anything I've written ever. If only one day each of those readers would
buy my book. But I’m making
progress. I doubt more than ten
people ever read any grant I ever put together for YSB.
If I knew what was so compelling about that homeless story I would write more like it, but
I don’t. Thank you however for reading
it. The next post, “Getting the Tree”, had my second highest readership ever at
1,303, and now the blog is returning to normal.
I have a good feeling about you though, one of my loyal regular readers. The relationship we have feels sustainable,
not unlike wood. But for those readers
who sometimes still ask if it’s OK to share my writing, let me say once again
loudly.
YES.
I’ve learned two things about writing. Nobody likes your stuff more than you, and
every writer wants more readers. If you
think your friends would enjoy one of these posts by all means share it. More is better. That is what the internet is for.
Thanks for reading all the way to the end. I hope the new year finds you filled with hope. The past 365 days were wonderful for
me. I hope both you and I have a similarly
great 2018. It’s the year I get
published I think. But then I said that
last year. I hope everything you desire happens in 2018. Happy New Year.
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