Bakers’ Choice

During the winter we heat our home with wood. For many years while I was growing up, the primary heat source in my family’s home was from an old wood stove in the kitchen. My grandfather had salvaged the stove from a local junk pile, and, after a little work on it, it kept my family warm during many cold Illinois winters. Well, in that old house, it kept us warm when we were near it in the kitchen. We didn’t heat the bedrooms in that house.

The first winter after we moved to Kentucky, I installed a wood stove. The previous occupants in the mobile home that we currently live in had put in an insulated chimney through the roof in the kitchen area. I moved an old wood heat stove that was in the garage into the house, and we heated with that. I removed the old electric furnace and made a pantry closet where it had been located – we weren’t going to use it (the duct work served as an interstate system for the resident mice, let alone the amount of electricity the furnace would be sure to consume).

After two winters of heating with that old stove, we purchased a new wood stove, one with which we could heat our house and cook and bake. After doing some research, we decided that we would be better off with a new stove rather than buying an old one with unknown problems and difficulties. The criteria we used in determining what stove to buy were price and capability of heating our home. We ended up buying a Bakers’ Choice wood cook stove.

We love our stove! It’s utilitarian, designed by an Amish man for heating and cooking – just what we wanted. It’s also one of the least expensive new wood cook stoves available.

With the Bakers’ Choice, we can cook and bake. It takes a little getting used to in order to cook on a wood stove. You can’t control the heat as readily as a gas or electric stove. You are able to use the entire cook surface, which is more than on a conventional cook stove. You soon learn that different areas are hotter or cooler than others. So, you move your pot to where the temperature is what you want. We cook everything on our stove. Anne even cans – hot water bath and pressure – on it.

Using the oven also takes getting used to. The temperature is slower to respond to your inputs than a conventional stove, and it’s harder to get the heat exactly as the recipe may call for. You’ve got to be flexible. You also need to remember to turn what it is you're baking during the process because the oven often tends to be hotter toward the back and on the side toward the firebox.

We also purchased the hot water reservoir that is an option for the stove. It holds about 7.5 gallons of water. While using the stove for heat, we keep the reservoir filled and use the hot water for washing dishes.

As far as heating our home is concerned, we seldom are cold. The firebox is nicely sized, allowing a fair bit of wood to be put in it at one time. The stove is also airtight, allowing the burn to be controlled quite well. I load the stove at night before going to bed and set the draft control so the fire continues to burn slowly (we only need some heat during the night). Eight or ten hours later in the morning, there are still plenty of coals and/or wood in the stove so that it’s very easy to get a good hot fire going to warm up the place.

During the last two months, we’ve cooked and baked exclusively on our Bakers’ Choice. We’ve actually turned off the circuit breaker for our electric cook stove since we’re not using it.

Our stove is also useful as a clothes dryer. We hang clothes on drying racks near the stove rather than use our propane clothes dryer. We’ve also dried herbs and food by hanging them from the ceiling near the stove. It’s definitely a useful part of our home that we would be hard put to do without.

Supplying the stove with enough wood during the winter isn’t a problem. There are lots of trees available for firewood in this area. We’ve mostly cut firewood from the tops of trees on neighbors’ properties that were left after the properties were logged. This has been good wood that would otherwise just lay there and rot. I estimate that we burn less than three cords of wood a year (a cord is a 4’x4’x8’ stack of wood).

There’s nothing quite like the heat from a wood stove when it’s cold outside. It’s a kind of warmth that you can just soak up and enjoy. No forced air furnace could ever duplicate the comfort of wood heat. Being able to cook with the same heat is great, too.

A home heating contemplation

I’ve been thinking more about the work that I have to do on the house this year. There are a lot of details to be ironed out and a lot of work to be done. I enjoy trying to creatively approach some of the challenges of the building process, and it’s great fun trying to come up with ideas for providing some basic services in efficient and low energy input forms.

We heat with wood. We have a nice wood cook stove that is also designed to heat a home. It works well. Perhaps the biggest drawback of a wood stove has to do with distribution of heat. It’s warmest near the stove. That’s not all bad, of course, especially when you come in from outside and want to warm up. The challenge is to circulate that heat through the rest of the house in an efficient and low energy usage manner. Fans help, but they also move a lot of dust and contribute excess noise to the home environment.

So, I’ve been toying with ideas to distribute the heat from the stove into the various rooms and corners of the house, specifically the house we’re building (I don’t want to spend the time retrofitting and building a system for this old mobile home we currently live in). I toyed with the idea of an outdoor wood furnace. There are some nice things about those, primarily that the mess of burning wood stays outside. However, there are some drawbacks. They are expensive to purchase, and building one may require skills I don’t yet have. They can also consume a lot more wood than we currently burn. Additionally, most of them are connected to some kind of furnace-blower system inside, something that requires an amount of energy I don’t want to support. I want some system that will not consume very much energy so that it can be powered in the event of electrical service disruption.

I’m already planning on installing a domestic hot water system that will utilize heat from the wood stove in the winter when we’re using it and that will also have solar collectors for the summer months. We can buy a hot water coil that fits onto our stove which uses the heat in the firebox to heat our domestic hot water. The heated water naturally flows into a tank via thermo-convection, drawing cooler water from the tank back through the coil. It’s a nice system that can produce some very hot water with no extra expense.

So, tonight I got to thinking about how to draw upon this hot water source to spread the heat of the wood stove throughout the house. My idea involves radiant heating tubes installed in the floors (probably only the first floor). However, water directly from the hot water tank would oftentimes be too hot for such an application. So, I envision another tank to supply the radiant heating system. Here’s a diagram of my idea (hopefully, it’s clear enough to understand – you can see a larger version by clicking on it):

Does this look like it would work? Any ideas, thoughts, suggestions, improvements? I envision the low-wattage pumps being small enough to be run off of solar power. I would have to determine what thermostatic controls are available and that would work with this system.

I solicit all input. I’m curious about the feasibility and workability of this idea. Someone else may have had a similar one and may have developed it, I don’t know. This is just the product of my thinking this evening.

Firewood and another video

Dad and I cut a truck load of firewood this morning. He posted a photo essay about our wood-cutting activity. We used the 1979 F250, and it worked fine. It’s easier backing it into position than a 16 foot trailer. We dumped the firewood near Danny’s newly constructed wood shed. It seemed like a good thing to do. He “complained” about the work we left for him, but I think he was able to get it stacked inside. He also said that he would be willing to accept some more if we need to get rid of it.

Since yesterday evening, after putting together a video for the first time, I’ve been thinking about making some more videos. Someone asked for some with your younguns. That one will have to wait until I have material together. When talking about using Windows Movie Maker to put together the 1950 John Deere MT video, Mom mentioned the possibility of using it to put together some photos of our timber frame raising. She and Dad took a series of photos at different stages of the raising that flow together to create an animation. So, this evening I put another video together using photos. I think it turned out pretty good.

Merry Saturnalia? A good day to split firewood

Today is a special day of the year for many people in the US and around the world. It’s never been more than a day off from regular work throughout my life. I’ve never celebrated Christmas, not because I’m not a believer in and follower of the Messiah. I am. The history and origins of this “Christian” celebration prevent me from embracing it. I wonder how many celebrants of this “birthday of Jesus” really know about the origins of their celebration? How many care? I do. It’s not my job to convince or require anyone else to change what they do on Christmas. That’s a personal choice. I, for one, cannot in good conscience pretend to worship and honor my God using practices and traditions that are rooted in ungodliness. I don’t believe He wants me to do that.

Here are some links if you’re interested in some of the history of this festival:

• Christmas - Wikipedia
• The Real Story of Christmas
• Saturnalia

So, today has not been different from any other day, except that the sun is shining brightly which is different than the previous couple of days. Dad and I split some more firewood this morning. There’s another trailer load waiting to be picked up. The ground is too muddy today to drive over to get it. This is nice firewood; it’s all white oak from a tree that’s been dead for a few years already.

Keeping warm during winter

The winters we've experienced here in Kentucky have been quite mild in comparison to some I remember on the plains of Central Illinois. However, that doesn't mean it doesn't get cold here. In fact, the temperature dropped to about 5 degrees last night. It was only in the low 20s today, but we're expecting a high of about 58 degrees on Wednesday.

Our vision of homesteading guides our adventures and endeavors. We want to provide for as many of our needs as we can, limiting our dependence on other systems and service providers. One area in which we have limited our dependence is for heat in our home when it gets cold outside. We heat with wood. To completely restrict our dependence on outside resources, I'd have to cut all of our firewood without the aid of my chainsaw. That could be done, but since it's not necessary at this point, I have not made the move to do without my Stihl MS250. Part or our intent is to be prepared for a time when services and conveniences may not be available. So, we still have utility bills and appreciate "modern conveniences."

To provide heat, we purchased an Amish-built, dual-purpose heating and cooking stove three years ago. It's a Bakers' Choice. We really like it. Previously, we used a wood heating stove that was in the garage when we moved here. There was already an insulated chimney installed through the roof in the mobile home. Yeah, most regulations say you're not supposed to have a wood stove in a mobile home, but for various reasons, I'm not concerned about those regulations. We are safe and responsible, and I'm enough of a Libertarian to believe that what I choose to do is none of the government's or anyone else's business.

I installed a new double-wall, insulated chimney when we bought our new stove. It has a 7" diameter rather than the usual 6". That's what the stove is made for, and the old 6" that was here previously needed to be replaced anyway.

Our heating needs so far have required only about 3 cords of wood each year. It doesn't take too long to cut that amount of wood, especially if it is easy to get to. By that, I mean if it doesn't require too much carrying up steep hillsides in order to get it out of the gully in which it lies. Most of what we've burned so far has been cut on other people's property. Why cut my own trees when others have dead trees or tops left from logging readily available? One neighbor friend is allowing us to cut up the tops from trees on the 40 acres he had logged. There is years' worth of wood in there, and we can drive right up to most of it. Dad, Danny, and I can several cords of wood in a day.

Today, the sun was shining, and it was quite a beautiful day. The temperature was only in the low 20s, though. I had some logs laying on the neighbors property across the fence from our home that Dad and I had drug up out of the gully this fall. We drug it with the tractor using several chains. These logs were from a couple of trees that had blown over early this summer. One was a cherry tree with three trunks ranging in diameter at the but end from 10 inches to 14 inches. The other was a maple tree that had blown over. It was much bigger, close to 24 inches in diameter. So, I decided to cut these logs into firewood today.

I cut them into 16 inch lengths, on average, a size that fits nicely in our stove. Most of these pieces needed splitting. So, after running one tank of gas through the saw, I began splitting them into the proper sizes. Dad showed up after a while with his splitting maul and helped split. He said he needed some exercise since he'd not been doing much because of all the rain we've been having. So, we split what I'd cut. Then, after lunch, I cut the rest of the logs into lengths, and Dad and I split them all into firewood.

After finishing all of the splitting, we loaded the wood on my 16 foot trailer. It's actually still on the trailer, because by the time we finished it was time to begin my chores. There ended up being a fairly nice load of wood out of the logs. I saved four small cherry logs (about 6 feet long) and one maple log to mill into lumber. I want to have cherry runners and maple risers for the stairway in our new house. I'll unload the trailer tomorrow, I expect. Tomorrow, Dad and I are planning to begin cutting up a big, old white oak that we drug out of another gully this fall. There will be two or three times as much wood out of it.

Prior to heading down the hill to do my chores, I snapped a few photos of the sunset. There was a bit of nice color. This one turned out nice. So, I thought I'd share.