Firewood Gives You Freedom - Cooking & Heating

With the cold snap gone it's worth evaluating what went well and what didn't. 

I like to also think what would happen if the power got switched off and water pipes froze? Remember that help often takes a long time to come from some service providers (they've been "fixing" a leaking gas main down our road for over a year now...). Maybe would be left without heat, as it is many are worried about the cost of their heating and having it on less as a result. 

When I put in our wood fired range it did feel like a bit of an extravagance. It was a lot of money at the time and created a huge amount of work with the fireplace alterations. 

Building A New Fireplace

Last week was another hard one, made worse by the fact I broke my toe! I just limped a bit - it was only my little one thankfully!

It was finally time to tackle the fireplace!

A little bit of me has always hated this old open fireplace. We used to hide it with an old bookcase I made my wife for Christmas years ago.

Trouble was it was built with the same iron hard bricks and mortar as the rest of the house - not easy to take down I can tell you!

Moving Firewood

 Last Saturday, between the rain showers, I managed to get organised with the rest of our firewood.

Moving firewood the easy way

As the ground was quite dry I decided to move all the pallets of wood I split in the spring up with the tractor. There's still some to split so I stored these in a separate pallet as a job to keep me warm in the winter (all the big difficult bits unfortunately)! 

Firewood split and stored in pallets covered with a sheet

It's not the prettiest way of storing firewood but it means I can move it easily and the bottom layer won't rot on the ground. I do have the first load of wood stored in an old shed but until I can get planning to build some more buildings this is looking like my best option.
Five pallets cut and split. I'd say three of these can be burnt this year (the tree was felled last year) and two need another year to season (which I hope they will in this storage - I might drill holes in the sides of the pallet collars to let the air circulate more), I've marked them up ready and I'm already planning where more of our firewood is coming from.
Anyone else have ideas for firewood storage?

Firewood

Our first year using wood to provide some of our heat has shown me how woefully under prepared we were!

Quite a bit of wood lying around that needs splitting and storing

 Luckily we had my tree surgeon brother to bail us out and provide (give) us more seasoned wood when we needed it. The trouble is I had plenty of wood cut from trees that we'd felled, I just didn't do anything with it. Chucked outside in a heap it isn't going to heat anyone.
This year I'm going to make more of an effort with using wood fuel. Every night I'm splitting some wood and storing it in an old shed I absolutely hate, but I also need to finish cleaning out this shed from the last people who lived here (anyone want a workout gym from the 70's or a collection of plastic snooker trophies?). The shed is falling down slowly but it should last long enough to season some firewood for a winter or two.
I think by the time I've split and stacked all the wood and the wood I get from work as kindling, we should have enough for a few winters.

This sheds very existence offends me, but while I've got it I might as well use it

 As well as this I'm going to look into putting in a wood burner in the summer as our open fire is just too wasteful of wood. So tips and advice on wood burners will be gratefully taken! Also doing this will let us lay out the sitting room differently, which in turn might help some of our space issues.

Who can tell me what the top tool is called?

How do other people tackle the cutting, splitting and storing of their firewood? And what time of year do you normally do all of these things?

Keeping Warm

The nights are really drawing in now and things are starting to get a little cold. You can already tell the difference having insulation in the loft and walls is making to our little house though.

I don't mind the cold too much though - not like my wife anyway! I guess it's because I work outside everyday and I grew up working and playing outdoors more than most. When I lived at my parents farm they didn't even have central heating or double glazing (they installed both shortly after I left). The curtains in my room would blow with the wind and freeze up on the inside. I'd just put another jumper on though, knowing how to dress is half the battle.

Our open fire - We now have a second fire guard around it as well to prevent a crawling baby!

Heating our house at the moment we're trying not to use the oil central heating too much, although with a young baby our house is definitely kept warmer than it used to be when it was just the two of us. I'm trying to use the open fire as much as possible, being a carpenter I'm never short of wood to start the fire with and my tree surgeon of a brother keeps me stocked with logs. But the open fire doesn't give off much heat, most of it goes up the chimney, but it does warm the living room and makes it feel cosy. I'd like to fit a log burner at some point but I think I'd have to completely remodel the living room to fit one in and extending the house should really be our first job.

Having an open fire made me realise how out of practise I was at lighting fires, I've been on quite a few survival courses ad grew up being a borderline pyromaniac, I've started fire with friction using a bow, used fire steels and a battery with iron wool but I forgot the most important skill with something like this - practise! Now I up on my practise and limit myself to starting the fire with one match and I might even remove that luxury soon!

Mind you I'm much better than my wife - I've brought her some fire lighters so she at leasts stands a chance of getting a fire going!

How do you light your fires?