Would you like to stay warm in the winter without the high heating costs from using electricity? It’s more than possible with a wood stove.
A wood stove is a small box-shaped stove that produces heat from burning wood. Wood stoves are fairly inexpensive, simple to use, and easy to clean and maintain. If you’ve never thought about owning a wood stove, you’re missing out.
Here are 5 good reasons to get one:
1. A wood burning stove will heat your home better than a fireplace
Have you ever noticed that a fireplace only provides warmth when you’re huddled up close to the flames? That’s because fireplaces aren’t designed to radiate heat throughout your whole house. On the other hand, wood stoves are designed exactly for that purpose.
Most wood burning stoves are made from cast iron, which radiates heat outward throughout the room. Other wood stoves are built with fire brick and other materials that hold heat for a longer period of time.
Use bricks to hold heat longer
Since brick holds heat longer than cast iron, people who own cast iron wood stoves stack bricks around their stove to capture and radiate the heat more efficiently. It also helps to place a few bricks on top of the stove to capture and hold the heat.
If you’re the DIY type, consider replacing your fireplace with an impressive brick and cast iron custom-built wood burning stove. You can get as crazy and creative with the style as you want.
2. You can cook on a wood burning stove
When the power goes out, you can’t cook in the microwave or on your range. Even gas-powered stoves require electricity to work. You can, however, cook on top of a wood burning stove.
Some wood burning stoves come with built-in burners on top to make it look like a real stove, but you don’t need anything beyond a flat surface.
Use cast iron cookware to cook on a wood stove
To cook on a wood stove, you need to use cast iron cookware and not aluminum pots and pans. A wood stove will usually burn hot enough to melt aluminum, but you’ll never melt cast iron.
3. A compact wood stove is great for emergencies
When you live in a house, it’s easy to install a wood stove pipe through the roof or wall. If you live in an apartment, you won’t be so lucky. In an apartment building, there’s no easy way to vent a wood stove, even if you could get permission from your landlord, which is highly unlikely due to the fire hazard and expense of installing ventilation.
However, you can still own a smaller, compact portable wood stove. It’s important to note that you should never, ever use a portable wood stove inside a building, including your home. All portable wood stoves should always be used outside in the open air to prevent carbon monoxide poisoning and smoke inhalation.
By owning a portable wood stove, sometimes called a rocket stove, you’ll have the ability to boil water and cook food when the electricity goes out. Just remember to take it outside to cook.
4. You’ll learn how to make amazing fires
It’s easy to make a fire in the fireplace, especially when you use those special fire starter logs. Building a fire in a wood stove is a little more challenging and requires some skill. For example, it’s harder to get a fire going in warmer temperatures and you’ll need to adjust the way you build your fire.
In cold weather, making a roaring fire is much easier and when you learn the right tricks, you won’t need kindling.
By the time you’re done experimenting with making a fire in your wood stove, you’ll be a pro at knowing how to stack your wood, where to put kindling if you choose to use it, and what types of wood to burn. For example, hard woods burn longer and slower while softer woods burn hotter and faster. You can control how hot the fire burns (to a degree) provided you have a variety of wood.
5. A wood stove is a great way to practice self-sufficiency
One of the hallmarks of being self-sufficient is being able to build fires to keep warm and cook food. A wood stove will train you to do both. It’s a simple way to start building your self-sufficiency skills.
If you’ve never used a wood stove, but have always wanted one, today is a great day to start looking for a stove that will keep you warm in winter and fed when the power goes out.
