As I drove by the houses in our city recently, I learned something shocking.
There are a lot of people in our area that still use wood-burning stoves for heat.
This has always surprised me. When I was a kid, my family never had wood heat. We always used a furnace for heat, and I didn’t realize that there were other forms of heat. When I understood an HVAC system, I understood that a large machine in our basement created heat that came out of the vent. In fact, I didn’t know anything about wood heat until I was a teenager, living in a smaller house in the South. I didn’t understand why people would want to use wood as a source of heat when they could have a furnace. With a furnace, your house would be heated all day and all night with very little effort from you. All you had to do was make sure that your bills were paid and that you adjusted the thermostat to the temperature that you thought was comfortable. With wood-burning heating systems, you would have to work hard to split the wood, haul the wood, kindle the fire, and keep the fire going. You could try to keep the fire going while you were sleeping, but there was always an inherent risk that your house would catch fire or that the fire would go out. Some people claim that wood-stoves are cheaper to use than furnaces, but that is only true if you are willing to cut the wood down on your own land. Buying wood from others is expensive. The only advantage that I can think of is that you can use these heaters without electricity.