We have been burning wood for over ten years now and learned a LOT in the process.  We have stoves all over to keep the earthship, shop, greenhouse and even our stock water tank from freezing in the winter.  We go through about 20 cords of wood a year and are always looking to find ways to make the process simpler and easier.  Stoves can have a huge impact on the amount of wood and work involved.

Store purchased wood stove

Our first stove cost over $2200 CDN and was supposed to heat a home anywhere from 800 - 2000 square feet in size.  We purchased it for the earthship that would end up being 1500 square feet so we thought it would suffice.  

We liked the stove because of the glass front which would allow us to watch the fire and it lite up the room at night very nicely.  It had a reasonable sized fire box which would almost last the night if I stoked it just before going to bed at 11pm or midnight.  Carey would then re-start it or stoke it when she got up at 5 or 6am.  

Some of the challenges we ran into was having to clean it out.  We needed the fire to burn out in order to clean the ash as it did not fall into a tray that could be emptied out even while the fire is going.  We don't have a lot of hard wood, so we were burning soft wood dead trees, poplar mainly.  They don't typically have the high btu's of a nicely cured hard wood would have.  So the wood tends to burn more quickly.  We lived in a garage for nearly three years when we first started our project and at -45C, the stove could barely keep up.  After 10 years, the welds were breaking and the top had to be removed to expose the top of the fire box.  It also took a long time to heat up which surprised us.  The fire brick also had to be replaced after about 6-7 years of use.  

It would be a nice stove to have for ambiance in a home.  However, for living off grid, I would not spend that kind of money for what we got.  It has now been removed from the earthship and relegated for being the shop heater.  It does just fine to keep the shop from freezing which helps keep our live stock water from freezing as well.  We store water for our livestock in the shop during the winter.  

The wood/coal cook stove

I got this stove from my dad's estate when he passed away.  However, you can still find them for about $400-$1000 if you look around and are willing to make repairs to them.  This stove had natural gas fittings put into it years ago and I had to remove them, replace some fire brick and then it was good to use.  We pulled out the stove I talked about above and replaced it with this stove.  We LOVE IT!!!  It heats up quickly and can keep the room warm just as much or even better than the more modern stove.  We burn our fires hot so we don't ever have to worry about creosote in our chimneys.  This stove gave us the opportunity to keep water hot at all times, especially during the winter and we essentially turned off our gas stove.  It is only used in the summer now.  If we ever run out of propane, we always have a way to cook our meals.  The stove has an ash tray, so I can easily empty the ash even when the fire is burning.  It does have a small fire box, so we do have to feed it every 1/2 hour or so.  

The downside to the stove is that it does not burn long and has a very small fire box.  So I cannot stoke it at night and have it burn all night long.  For us, that is not that big of a deal as the earthship can easily maintain a warm environment through the night.  So we only burn it during the day and don't worry about fires at night.  If we were in the garage or other stick built structures, not burning at night would be problematic.  So the Earthship easily accommodates this type of stove.

The other downside to the stove is having to split the wood in smaller pieces in order to fit into the fire box.  We cannot burn large pieces of wood, so it does requires a lot of splitting effort to get the wood ready for this stove.  It also seems to burn more quickly, so I suspect that it does burn more wood than the first stove.  We choose NOT to burn coal as it is not easy for us to get it any more and because of how dirty it is.  The coal was solve a lot of these problems and the stove is designed to burn it as well.  However, we choose not to go down that path as it is not something that we can harvest from the land that we are stewarding.  

The home made barrel stove

I was given a barrel kit from a dear friend and I had a heavy gage metal barrel to use to put it together.  So with a bit of time, I made a stove that has a very large fire box and kicks out a lot of heat.  With the first two stoves I could not get the temperature more than 27C in the earthship, even on a full burn.  The thermal mass of the building would not allow anything higher than that.  But when I fired up the barrel stove for the first time, it easily got the building to 31C.

The stove easily can burn through the night by stoking it with larger logs.  The logs would burn slowly and through the night.  I can also save myself a ton of work as I don't have to do nearly as much splitting or cutting as I can make the logs up to 32-34 inches long rather than the 12 - 16 inches for the other two stoves.  I don't have to stoke it nearly as often which also reduces the amount of labour involved.  

Because of the design, I cannot cook on it and it takes a while to heat up water as I cannot get the pots directly onto the stove.  But the price is right for this stove as it only cost me about $5.00 to make it and the amount of work to harvest wood is nearly cut in half.  It could easily heat a large room even if it was -50C out side.  So now that I have a stove that can kick out the heat and a stove that I can cook with, I believe we have now found a way to make it all work and it did not cost me anything to do.  

I was given a barrel kit from a dear friend and I had a heavy gauge metal barrel to use to put it together.  So with a bit of time, I made a stove that has a very large fire box and kicks out a lot of heat.  With the first two stoves I could not get the temperature more than 27C in the earthship, even on a full burn.  The thermal mass of the building would not allow anything higher than that.  But when I fired up the barrel stove for the first time, it easily got the building to 31C and it would have gone hire if I had fully stoked the stove.

I would not consider purchasing a stove ever again.  As for the environmental concerns, I find that once the fire is lite and the stove is at optimum temperature, the amount of smoke disappears and the risk for creosote significantly reduces as well.  Cold, slow burning stoves are a big problem.  Having a hot fire at least once a day reduces those risks and the more I can keep the stoves from smoking, the better it is!  It is an art form and I'm still learning.  

My other stoves around the yard

I use home made stoves all over and I usually get the vessel from the local transfer station so the costs are almost zero.  This stove is an old water pressure tank turn on its side.  I cut a hole at one end and open up the other to create the stove.  Buried in dirt, it then can heat the stock water and keep it from freezing for up to three days in extreme cold temperatures.

This one is a simple barrel used for making cold fires so that we can smoke meat.  Works great and again, it was free.

This is also an old water pressure tank and this time I kept it standing up right and submerged in water to heat the hot tub.  By putting a 5 inch stove pipe in the hole, I force fresh air to the bottom of the stove so that it can breath.  I can heat about 300 gallons of water to 40C in about 5 hours.  Works great!

Safety

With wood stoves, one still needs to be careful about not burning the house down.  I still need to make sure I have the proper stove pipe and venting so that I don't create a fire hazard.  So knowing the temperatures of the gasses, distances between the stove & walls and that sort of thing is still very critical.  Especially with home made wood stoves that can easily hit 800C.  I have a digital thermometer that I can use to monitor the temperatures of the walls and surrounding material to make sure things don't get too hot.  Some wood will ignite when it hits 110C, which is not that hot.  Paper and other materials is even less.  So I had to do my homework and take 100% responsibility to ensure that I don't create a fire hazard with my home made stoves.