To The Editor:
I'd like to respond to The Valley Reporter’s three great articles on wood heat with information about wood cook stoves. At our house, from October through April, we use our wood cook stove instead of our propane stove for all of our cooking, both stove top and oven. We harvest all our wood from our woodlot in a respectful way thinking of the future. Our house is 2,441 square feet and we can keep the temp around 70 with just the wood cook stove.
When the outside temp goes below 25, we fire up the big woodstove in the cellar, which helps heat by convection. We use no electricity to operate either stove. It's nice to not have to rely on power to heat your whole house, especially during power outages. Much of this efficiency is due to the fact that our house is a tower construction with a lot of passive solar heat due to the numerous windows. Our house uses convection to move the heat from the stoves upward to the second and third floors.
Baking in the oven is a treat since everything seems to retain moisture and having a stew or soup simmering on the top on a cold wintery day is so satisfying.
Ned Kelley
Fayston
