Be Careful What You Wish For
You might get it.
One should note my last home_effinomic entry dates back to February. In that entry, I noted the addition of a new fireplace insert. Since then, I have spent most of my free time feeding the beast. My backyard (visible in the lower half of my usepic) now has several distinct piles of newly acquired firewood in various states of cutting and chopping. The biggest, the remains of a neighbor's cherry tree that fell prey to age and a termite infestation, stands as a simple pile four feet high. It only slightly dwarfs a similarly shaped pile of cedar from a tree downed onto a friend's swimming pool in last November's windstorm.
(I just tried taking a picture of the piles, but the camera batteries died. Ah, well.)
It's weird. My dad some years ago let me know he would be happy to spend some of his retirement free time hauling cut and split firewood from the forests surrounding his property. It's only about 70 miles away. I assured him, though, that we seldom used the fireplace since it, well, sucked. Now that we have the insert, and have used it most every cold day since it was installed in December, we still don't need his assistance. Why? Once I told my neighbors that I would be happy to take any dimensional waste wood off their hands (thus saving them the cost of green disposal), whole trees have been given to me. Most came from neighbors not 70 miles away, but less than 70 feet! The cherry, for example, hung some of its branches over my backyard until was felled. You can see it in the usepic casting the largest shadow over my yard.
This free and neaby wood could harldly make me happier, except that all this chopping, cutting, stacking and the most recent building of a simple shelter for the wood -- it seems dry wood puts out more heat! -- has taken most of the time I would normally put toward other effin' around the house.
Not to worry. I grew up chopping and cutting. Though time-consuming, it's cathectic. And as a great-grandfather once said, firewood keeps you warm twice; once when you cut it and again when it burns. Still, I can see why people who spent their lives messing with saws and axes for any heat at all gladly gave up the necessity when oil and gas furnaces were first installed.
So, yeah, things are going to prove a lot cheaper on the heating oil front this year. How much cheaper is going to depend on the next deliveries and waiting a year from the install to compare the bills before and after. Just eyeballing the furnace run time meter (a little something I installed a few years ago), we should save about 300 or more gallons with the insert heat. At over $3 a gallon delivered, that insert should pay for itself in three or four years, depending upon the cold we experience. Not too shabby!
In the meantime, I got what I wished for. . . and am paying the price.
One should note my last home_effinomic entry dates back to February. In that entry, I noted the addition of a new fireplace insert. Since then, I have spent most of my free time feeding the beast. My backyard (visible in the lower half of my usepic) now has several distinct piles of newly acquired firewood in various states of cutting and chopping. The biggest, the remains of a neighbor's cherry tree that fell prey to age and a termite infestation, stands as a simple pile four feet high. It only slightly dwarfs a similarly shaped pile of cedar from a tree downed onto a friend's swimming pool in last November's windstorm.
(I just tried taking a picture of the piles, but the camera batteries died. Ah, well.)
It's weird. My dad some years ago let me know he would be happy to spend some of his retirement free time hauling cut and split firewood from the forests surrounding his property. It's only about 70 miles away. I assured him, though, that we seldom used the fireplace since it, well, sucked. Now that we have the insert, and have used it most every cold day since it was installed in December, we still don't need his assistance. Why? Once I told my neighbors that I would be happy to take any dimensional waste wood off their hands (thus saving them the cost of green disposal), whole trees have been given to me. Most came from neighbors not 70 miles away, but less than 70 feet! The cherry, for example, hung some of its branches over my backyard until was felled. You can see it in the usepic casting the largest shadow over my yard.
This free and neaby wood could harldly make me happier, except that all this chopping, cutting, stacking and the most recent building of a simple shelter for the wood -- it seems dry wood puts out more heat! -- has taken most of the time I would normally put toward other effin' around the house.
Not to worry. I grew up chopping and cutting. Though time-consuming, it's cathectic. And as a great-grandfather once said, firewood keeps you warm twice; once when you cut it and again when it burns. Still, I can see why people who spent their lives messing with saws and axes for any heat at all gladly gave up the necessity when oil and gas furnaces were first installed.
So, yeah, things are going to prove a lot cheaper on the heating oil front this year. How much cheaper is going to depend on the next deliveries and waiting a year from the install to compare the bills before and after. Just eyeballing the furnace run time meter (a little something I installed a few years ago), we should save about 300 or more gallons with the insert heat. At over $3 a gallon delivered, that insert should pay for itself in three or four years, depending upon the cold we experience. Not too shabby!
In the meantime, I got what I wished for. . . and am paying the price.