“Where there’s smoke, there’s fire.” This is not true with wood stoves. Where there’s smoke, there’s a fire that won’t ignite. If you don’t have a bellows, you’ll be huffing and puffing until you get dizzy.
In the last decade or so they have been using newspapers with fire retardants. Great for slowing down house fires but so frustrating for wood burners. The paper smolders while you pump away on the bellows saying “c’mon, c’mon, you #*@….”
I do have a propane furnace and love it. My ex-husband would only have wood heat so having a furnace and a programmable thermostat is a luxury for me that others take for granted. Being able to get up in the morning and just ‘turn on the heat’ is fantastic! The whole house heated up in such a short time…… WOW! I program it to be on when I come home from work because I found coming home to a warm house makes me happy; coming home to a cold house is depressing.
When it reaches 22C, it shuts off and I start a fire. If I start it while the furnace is on, the air pressure pulls smoke out of the stove, pouring into the house. Even shutting the stove doors doesn’t work; smoke shoots out of the little draft holes. Then I have to open all the windows and doors losing the expensive propane heat. Only did that a couple of times before I caught on.
Just heating with propane would be so expensive I would have to work full-time just to heat my house. Besides, having lived with wood heat most of my life it would be very hard to give it up. I love everything about it; buying it, stacking it, burning it…. and I love being very, very warm. Not shivering in heavy sweaters all winter.
When a fire is burning properly, there shouldn’t be much smoke. That way it is combusting most of the gasses. When it’s not burning, it smolders and smokes. Then you have to poke and blow it.
Wow, is this ever boring. Maybe I should have written about smoking pot. About how tired I get of everyone happily holding their wine glasses and getting tight while smoking pot still makes you a pariah, a degenerate. I find drunkenness neither fun nor funny. There is a HUGE double standard when it comes to alcohol vs. marijuana. I hope it gets better when it’s legal next year.
But for now, I didn’t say that.
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