As I sit by the crackling fire in my cabin, surrounded by the serene winter landscape, the city life seems a lifetime away. The decision to move from the city to this secluded haven, in the middle of winter, was a rollercoaster of adventures, challenges and of re-learning everything I took for granted. But it was all worth it.
I'm sharing my personal experience to help you avoid some of my mistakes, so you can embark on your journey being better prepared than I was.
The first post in this series is all about: heating a cabin - much more than flipping a switch...
I'll be real – I had no clue what I was getting into. Winter preps went from a casual email from building management about HVAC turning to heat on a random date, to a full-blown survival mission. It's a full project to prepare for winter before the cold months arrive, but it's a whole different thing to move in the dead of winter and do it in real time as you go.
Unlike the city or suburbs, while a cabin in the woods might be connected to the grid - things work differently out there in the wilderness.
If your cabin is equipped with a furnace, running on oil or gas, odds are that it's supplied by a tank located just outside the cabin. And once that tank is empty - your heat is out. Depending on your location and provider, filling the tanks will be a different process. in our case, the gas company offered deliveries during winter - but when they arrived, we learned that our driveway was too steep and icy for the large truck..
Firewood is another heat source that we learned to rely on, and not just for the aesthetic and s'mors. We had no idea how much firewood is actually needed to heat a cabin, and ran out of wood within 2 weeks. good luck finding a wood supplier in the middle of the winter!
lesson learned: make sure your heating source is at full capacity before you move in, and have a refill plan in place. It's crucial to inspect your remaining amount regularly, to not be left without heat in a snowstorm. gas tanks have monitors that can show the remaining amount, and your pile of wood will speak for itself.
Ever tried making friends with a wood stove? It's an art, a dance, a relationship. I thought starting the fire was the difficult part, until I realized that keeping the fire burning efficiently overnight was going to be a long battle. I made every mistake regarding firewood that one can make, some are more obviest and some are more advanced.
Lessons learned:
A. size matters: firewood logs should fit the wood stove size (you don't want to chop wood at 10pm in PJs) - Make sure to chop your wood upon purchase if necessary, or order the wood size to fit your wood stove.
B. Get a moisture meter: test each piece of wood before shoving it in the stove and struggling to get it to light up. The moisture level of each log in your pile can vary, depending if it was exposed to rain, fell in the snow, etc. Use anything with 20% moisture or less - and leave the higher % one's for later, as they continue to dry.
C. Fire starting material: turns out, lighting a match is not enough. A faster burning material will be crucial in heating up your stove until the logs are able to catch fire. Fire starters can be as simple as brown paper lunch bags, or as fancy as specialty fire starting wood or kits. I found having a bunch of options is helpful, especially for those stubborn logs.
D. Stack your wood stove in a particular order: filling the firebox with a bunch of logs and lighting them all at once could result in a short lived fire, and you'll be wasting so much more wood than necessary (which is costly, but also - supplies are limited in the middle of winter, as we learned). The goal is to keep a steady warm fire for a long time, not just to fill the firebox with huge flames. There are several methods, which could vary according to your wood stove and personal preference - take note of what works best and repeat.
E. Use the choke to control airflow into the wood stove: Did you know you can adjust the fire size by controlling the air flowing in? Fire needs oxygen. A lot of air will create a large fire, no air will kill the fire, and anything in the middle will yield a long lasting and cozy fire. Each wood stove is different, but as a rule of thumb it's best to keep the stove door open after starting the fire, to feed it and get it started, and also to burn off any buildup in the chimney. After 10 min, close the wood stove door and lower the choke. *do not leave open fire unattended!
So you made it through the sourcing of oil, gas and firewood - well done! But who knew chimneys were so high-maintenance? I certainly didn't. Ensuring your chimney is clear and functional will make all the difference between wasting your energy (no pun intended) and heating your cabin safely.
Lesson learned:
A. Chimney sweep: Make sure to schedule a chimney sweep. that will ensure both efficiency and safety. build up in your chimney (Creosote build up) will harm the airflow, causing smoke to build up - a recipe for a chimney fire, which can become a house fire.
B. Chimney liner and cover: Liner codes have changed over the years. If you're living in an older cabin, have a professional (the same person sweeping the chimney) inspect your liner is insulated and the chimney is covered, sheltered from birds, squirrels and rain. All those things are a matter of safety and preventing chimney fires.
C. Chimney Flue set up: If your heating systems includes more than one method (e.g: firewood + furnace), make sure each system has its own separate flue. It might sound intuitive, but as different heating solutions became available, homeowners were adding them to their existing flue system. That might have made financial sense at the time, but it's a recipe for toxic fumes and a fast track for filling your home with carbon monoxide. Each heating system must be vented separately.