Fall: Heater Filters, Wood Stoves, and Duct Cleaning
The days are getting shorter, but what really bums me out is that we’re closing windows and getting ready to run the heater. I hate dry, canned air, and no matter how much I run the humidifier, it still sucks.
Last spring we had a wood stove installed. Honestly, wood isn’t cheaper than gas heat right now ($350+ per cord) unless you truck it in from more rural areas.
And I got burned — 2 guys from the South Shore were supposed to bring me 2 cords for $440. I’ll be lucky if I get one out of what they dumped in my driveway (a cord is 4′ high, 8′ long, and 4′ wide, stacked). Worse, I paid cash, so good luck reporting them to the state.
But, once in a while, if you have a chainsaw and a truck, you can score a month’s worth of free heat. I look for the big orange tree and brush trucks — the guys who run them are always glad to give you the wood they’re supposed to feed into the chipper (apparently it isn’t as fun as it looks), and sometimes you can get a tree removal service to drop a whole tree, in pieces, in your yard. It doesn’t hurt me that my neighbor lets me use his log splitter (thanks, Mike!).
Remember you can’t burn green wood — it needs to dry out. And — watch for termites and carpenter ants. If you get them, you have to get rid of them ASAP. That means poison, as much as I hate to say it. You can’t be all vegan about termites unless you live in a yurt.
I think we’re going to get some Biobricks to supplement our cord wood — Biobricks are made from waste wood (sawdust) like pellets. We decided against a pellet stove because we wanted to be able to burn found wood (oak pallets, scrap lumber — anything that isn’t treated or varnished or painted), but they are very clean and very efficient, when the lumberyards don’t run out of the fuel. Biobricks are the same stuff, but engineered for regular wood burners. And no bugs.
Why not run the gas heater instead? Well…nobody’s dieing because of Biobrick, and I’d rather spend money burning a waste product than a fossil fuel. Sawdust, in industrial quantities, can be a pollutant; in Biobrick, it’s a clean fuel. That matters to me. And we like sitting by the fire. I’d have a wood stove if I lived in Georgia.
The chimney was brutal — $2,000 for a stove was okay, especially as the it was a housewarming gift from a very special person, but the chimney ran us almost that much. We had to run 6″ Metalbestos stainless stell chimney pipe up the back of our house, and that’s often cheaper than rehabbing an old masonry chimney. Pellet stoves cost significantly less to install because they use a shorter, small pipe, and becuase the temperatures of the vented gas are lower than the temperatures inside a woodstove chimney. Seriously consider going for a pellet stove if you have little space (they’re great for condos) or if you know you’re going to buy your fuel anyway.
One other big issue is air quality. Our VT Castings stove claims to be very environmentally sound, but I know I’m going to get particulate. So, I have a 4 part plan to burn wood and stay healthy.
First, I’m going to run a HEPA air filtration unit in the living room near the stove. I already use one in my bedroom at night when I sleep in a/c or enclosed rooms. This will grab particulate at the source.
Second, I’m going to have my ducts cleaned. Sounds dirty, I know, but they hook vacuums up to the ducts of your heating system and suck all of the nastiness out into a big truck.
Third, I’m putting a HEPA filter on the furnace. I’m thinking of getting them for the grills of the ducts, too, to keep dust out of the ducting from both ends. I will run the blower on the furnace all the time when the wood stove is heating, and hopefully the filter(s) and the furnace will catch most of the particulate in the house, keeping the general level down.
Fourth, I had them put one of those spinning chimney caps on top of the chimney — I’m wasn’t waiting to see if it needed one. I want it to draw perfectly all of the time, even on windy days on the North Shore.
