Cold Times — How to Prepare for the Mini Ice Age

by Dr. Anita Bailey

  Ventless propane heaters comes in many sizes and styles. Fancy and pricy ones are designed to look like fireplaces with nice mantel pieces around them. Moderately priced (around $300) plain heaters can be hung on a wall with propane plumbed to them. It will heat the central area of a home without any more effort than setting the onboard dial to the level of heat desired.

  A well-insulated home can be heated to a comfortable level with moderate propane usage. Our leaky old farmhouse, for example, used less than 500 gallons in two heaters over winter. At about 70 cents per gallon at the time, we heated for an entire winter for less than $400. In June 2017, propane was $1.19/gallon delivered in the Midwest.

  Setting up a propane system requires the holding tank, piping (some must be underground and some goes through your home), the propane heater(s), AND propane. A new 1000 gallon tank runs about $1000 – supports are extra. Piping is several hundred dollars. Backhoe work could run another couple hundred. Testing for seals is usually done by whomever installed the pipes, but your area may have requirements for specialists to certify that. Ask about legal requirements at your nearby propane company.

  Filling tanks in summer is generally quite a bit less expensive than during the winter, perhaps ½ the cost or even less. Propane trucks will come to your location and fill your tanks on whatever schedule you need – once a year, or once a month. You pay on delivery.

  Consider a propane heater as a backup to primary wood heat. That way, you’re mostly using a replaceable product (wood) but have a workable propane heater to fall back on. Or, if it is tremendously cold and the wood heater doesn’t keep the house warm, you turn on the propane to assist and bring up the temperature. The propane can also be left on at a low level, say, enough to keep the house at 45oF-55oF if you have to be away for a while. That way, water pipes won’t freeze.

  A thousand gallons, used frugally for cooking and occasional heating would readily last 2 or 3 years, or even 5 years if you’re very careful. Two thousand gallons might well last a decade with just occasional use. Even used very cautiously, eventually propane runs out. If you’re able to get more, that would be wonderful – but don’t place any bets on it just yet. Propane will get you through the initial difficult Zen-slap years, though, so you have a chance to adjust to the rhythms and labors associated with wood heat.

  Heating With Wood

  For the Zen-slap and Hang-on periods, a solid wood heating stove with a flat surface on which pots and pans can be placed for cooking, is still the most sensible alternative. It might take an armload of wood to keep the house warm during a freezing night, but if you have woodland and chainsaws or handsaws, you’ve got it made. The next generation or two, during the Hang-on phase, might be able to continue to use that old stove or changes may need to be made to make the stove more efficient. The idea is that there will be time to perform those changes. Your people have got to make it to that point first.

  Wood Stoves

  Farm writer Gene Logsdon stated that there is one important quality you need to seek out in a wood stove: mass. Basically, the heavier the stove is, the better. The greater the mass, the longer the stove will hold heat. The greater the mass, the longer it will take to warm the stove up, too – but once it’s warm, it will keep generating heat, even after the fire has gone out.

  Typically, a stove is heavy because it is made from cast iron, and that is why it can hold heat so successfully. However, some manufacturers are building new wood heating stoves with the option of a soapstone exterior, another successful approach to holding and slowly releasing stored heat.

  Wood stoves, in general, are more efficient heaters than using a fireplace. Fireplaces pull in room air at a high rate, tend to burn fast, and lose a good deal of heat up the chimney. Stoves, on the other hand, that close up tightly have “dampers” that allow you to adjust the air intake and the chimney outflow, thereby controlling the rate at which the fire burns. Control that, and you can make a fire hot and fast by opening up the dampers, or make it slow and long-lasting by closing down the dampers. You never close the chimney damper all the way because that will prevent smoke from leaving the stove.

  Stoves come in all shapes and sizes. Low cost homemade stoves constructed from metal barrels are just as good at heating a home as a fancy chrome and porcelain model. A typical modern stove, new, will run around $1200-$4000, not including chimney pipes. Old, functional stoves, refurbished, might be half as much. Unrefurbished old stoves can be found for a couple hundred dollars. Even an ugly old stove can heat a house.

  Wood Stove Cooking

  Most wood heating stoves have a flat top surface that can be used as a hot zone to cook on using your existing pots and pans. Many winter-time soups have slow cooked all day on a wood heating stove, ready for you when you return from the cold outdoors. A hot wood heater can also be used for quick cooking meats or boiling water, too, depending where on the top you place your pan. There will be hotter and cooler zones on your stove top.

  A wood-fired cook stove is also a great way to heat a room while preparing meals. Old, restored wood cook stoves typically run from $800 up to $1800. If you’re handy and find a run-down stove without cracks in the metal and an intact firebox (the spot that holds the wood or coal), these can be restored to perfect function without too much effort. I have seen these old reliables sell for a couple hundred dollars at country auctions. Prettier ones usually sell higher.

  If you have outstanding insulation, say, in an underground home, a wood cook stove might be a good option for cooking and heating. They have a large top cooking surface, a baking oven, and sometimes a warming shelf above the stovetop. Most cook stoves require a somewhat smaller piece of wood than wood heaters do – which either means you have to cut and chop wood into smaller pieces, or you can use more fallen small branches to keep it going.

  Additionally, most cook stoves need to have their burning wood replenished much more frequently than a wood heater, roughly every 40 minutes, so they are best if there is someone in the house to keep an eye on it. This works if that someone is cooking an extensive meal, making jam, or canning pickles at the time. In a larger home, the wood cook stove is unlikely to be able to keep up with generating enough heat, especially if it’s very cold outside, but makes nice additional backup heat.

  Hot Water on a Wood Stove

  Typically, a household would have a kettle of water on the stove to humidify the air and provide a quick hot cup of tea as needed. More creative individuals have attached metal side containers to their stoves, having metal spigots to act as hot water reservoirs. These humidify and provide enough water to wash dishes, take a sponge bath, or hand wash a small bucket of laundry as well. Five gallons of water beside the stove also banks the heat a bit, and keeps the temperatures that reach the room from swinging wildly between highs and lows. You just have to remember to refill any water removed from it right away, or else you risk warping and damaging the reservoir metals.

  Wood Stove Mistakes

  If you are looking for a stove, do not get one that requires an electric fan to operate. If the power goes off, your stove will become much less efficient and negate a large part of its off-grid value. That means that the fashion of building a stove and water heater in a separate building, and piping the heat to the house underground, while a great idea in good times, is a bad idea if the grid is down. In this book, we assume the grid is down pretty much all the time. We are preparing you for the worst and hoping for the best.

  For the same reason, do NOT get a pellet stove. Pellet stoves use manufactured wood pellets, about the size of a small vitamin capsule, to fuel the stove. Pellets come in bags, are dumped into a hopper at the top of the stove, and feed into the fire at whatever rate you set. You have to buy the bagged pellets, and it takes a room full of bags to get you through a cold winter. You can’t make pellets at home; they arrive at your stove via semi-truck through your retail store. Alternatively, you can power some pellet stoves with dried corn kernels. That’s not good for mu
ltiple reasons, including burning up your food. The controls for the rate of pellet feed are electric, too. So, pellet stoves have two strikes against them: you can’t make your own fuel, and you need electricity to run the stove.

  Failing to place your wood heater on a suitable fireproof surface, such as stonework – or put a fire resistant shield on the nearest wall – is one of the best ways to burn your house down. Wood heating and cooking stoves just aren’t the same as conventional heaters.

  Emptying the ash from a stove is something of an art form: you want the stove interior to have sufficient room for good airflow, but enough ash to retain heat and maintain coals overnight. Each stove is different, so you have to learn your stove’s “personality” and ash level that works best. It’s a mistake to remove all the ash, and a mistake to let it build up thickly; trial-and-error is your friend.

  Ash should be scooped with a metal shovel made for wood stoves into a metal pan. Even if you let it sit for a day or two, it can still have live coals in it, so don’t dump it where it might start a fire. Ash is outstanding on the garden, especially where you plan to grow potatoes or other root crops next year. Just dump it and work it in well in the spring. Ash dumped on snow or ice will help it melt because of the increased absorption of solar energy by the dark color. Additionally, hardwood ash is the primary ingredient in making lye for soap, so save some ash in dry metal buckets with closeable lids if you plan to make soap.

  Fire Woods

  Today, wood is widely available and comes in two broad types: hardwoods and softwoods. Hardwood is from trees that grow slowly, lose their leaves in the fall, and develop dense wood. Hardwoods include oak, cherry, alder, walnut, teak, hickory, and mahogany. Finer grades of these woods are typically used for furniture. Softwoods generally are evergreen, have needles, and grow quickly, including pine, fir, juniper, spruce and redwood. These are used in construction.

  Both types of wood burn, obviously. Whatever wood is available in your area is the wood you’ll use in a wood stove. However, hardwoods burn more slowly and release heat over time. Softwoods burn fast and hot, releasing heat quickly and then dying down to short-lived coals. Softwoods also generate more creosote than hardwoods. The best wood for a wood stove are the hardwoods that have been cut and aged for a year or a bit longer – then the wood is low in moisture, solid, and creates a long-lasting fire. If you live in a pine forest, just plan on cleaning your fireplace and chimney several times during the cold season.

  Buying and Cutting Firewood

  Right now, you can still buy cut, split firewood. Different regions identify a specific amount as a “rik” or a “cord”. In my region, a rik is as much cut wood as can be loaded in the back of a standard pickup, level with the top of the bed – a stack approximately 16” wide, 4 feet high and 8 feet long. Other regions call that a cord. Because there is so much variation, rather than buying a certain number of riks or cords, you may have to eyeball the quantity. Depending on your area, a rik might run anywhere from $40 to $120.

  It’s hard to estimate how much firewood any given home will require during a ‘typical’ winter. Factors such as the size of the home, insulation, type and efficiency of stove, how warm the home is kept, and quality of firewood all play a role. When weather gets colder and winter lasts longer, the ‘typical’ amount then becomes insufficient – and maybe double or triple the ordinary would be required to be comfortable.

  To give you a ballpark figure, we have a thousand-square foot, well-insulated home. In an ordinary winter, 4 rik will keep the place comfortable, using about a rik a month. Previously, when living in an old, uninsulated 1400 square foot 2-story farmhouse, it took a good 10 rik to keep it comfortable, and that was using one wood heater and one wood cookstove.

  Ideally, you’d have at least two years of wood cut and stacked at the start of the winter. That way, if the cold dragged on or you weren’t able to cut wood the next year, you’d have enough wood to get you through. Given that we’re heading to very cold times, it would be sensible to have 3 to 4 years’ worth of wood set back and ready to go. Old timers in New England built woodsheds, a simple covered area, to keep wood dry and easily accessed when everything was covered by deep snow; a very sensible idea.

  If you have plenty of woodland, you can just cut your firewood and leave it stacked out in the timber, as long as you can remember where it is when everything is covered in snow and ice…and don’t mind going out “to the back 40” to bring it up when you need it.

  Cutting firewood is a chore, no way around that. Today, using a chainsaw, one person can cut a month’s worth of heating firewood from downed trees and branches in a afternoon. A week’s worth of concentrated cutting and stacking can provide a winter’s worth of wood provided said person can work at it steadily. Most people today can’t work that hard and consistently at what is, effectively, a mindless physically-demanding task. Plus, that kind of labor is best done when the weather is cool and the woodlands aren’t overgrown, so it’s not a summer job.

  And that all assumes you’ve got two good-quality chainsaws -- two, because one is going to poop out on you at some point in the middle of the work and require a trip back to the workshop to get it fixed or sharpened. If you don’t have a set of good chainsaws, or don’t have gas to power it, you need a sharp wood axe PLUS a heavy-duty two-man saw, PLUS a wood maul for splitting the bigger pieces. And at least two people, although four people would be better, faster, and would reduce the labor load.

  Now, think about this for a few minutes and put yourself there. Can you chainsaw for hours at a stretch? Can you lift and stack hundreds of pounds of wood? Can you repair a chainsaw or sharpen the blades? Do you have multiple gallons of non-ethanol gasoline set back already, plus chainsaw oil? Replacement parts? Can you wield an axe without bouncing it off the wood and cutting your leg? Do you know how to stand up a large piece of wood so that it splits easily (hint: upside down)? Can you swing a maul so that it hits where you want it to? How will you transport your cut and split wood from the woodlands up to your house, especially if there’s been a serious downturn and gasoline is hard to come by?

  As strenuous as that may sound, I can assure you that you not only can but will if you have to. People already do that today. I’ve done it myself using an axe and maul, and hauling it with a Shetland pony pulling a homemade pony-cart. When the going gets rough, you will be able to do it too.

  If you think it through now, and begin the process of learning how to do it efficiently, you’ll save yourself a great deal of distress later. It’s just going to be an entirely different lifestyle – more physically demanding. Think of it as a “free gym workout” with a bonus pile of firewood at the end. It can even be enjoyable watching your pile of firewood grow.

  Now’s a good time to start building that firewood store. The more wood you put ahead, the less work you’ll have to do later when you have other things to concentrate on.

  Creosote

  Creosote is a black flaky or tarry substance left on the inside of your stove and its chimney, as a by-product of burning fuel. It’s perfectly natural, although it is also potentially dangerous if heavy build-ups are not removed, that is, by cleaning your chimney.

  More resinous woods, such as pine, generate more creosote when burned than do hardwoods. Burning woods at lower temperatures creates more creosote than burning at higher temperatures.

  The risk of extensive creosote buildup is that it can catch fire within the chimney itself. This causes an enormous. spectacular, very noisy flame to shoot out the top of your chimney – rather like a Roman candle firework. The flame quickly burns up the creosote, BUT it also can crack the inside flue of a masonry chimney, soften and bend metal chimneys, and set your roof and interior walls ablaze. Clearly, this is not something you’d like to have happen. Should you hear a great, roaring fire suddenly in your chimney, shut down all the dampers to cut off air to the fire. DO NOT PUT WATER ON YOUR STOVE OR CHIMNEY DURING A FLUE FIRE, as that will create a potentially d
eadly burst of steam or crack the metal. Leave the house and watch from outside.

  The best way to avoid a flue fire is to keep your chimney clean of excessive creosote. That means cleaning the chimney at least three times a year, once in summer, once in the middle of winter, and once at the end. Summer cleaning should take place if you’re using your stove at that time. Clearly, if you’re cleaning your chimney during the mid-winter, you’ll have to pick a relatively warm day and let the fire go out and the stove cool off completely beforehand. Use backup heating to prevent the house from cooling too much.

  Cleaning a chimney means taking the stove pipe down, and passing a chimney brush or wire brush through it to scrape the creosote. The black residue is messy and will be airborne easily, so do this outdoors. If you don’t have a chimney brush, fill an unwanted pillowcase with gravel or dirt, and rub that through the stove pipe until it is clean of creosote. Get up on the roof, tie the pillowcase to a rope, and pull it up and down the chimney on all sides. The process shouldn’t take more than a few minutes.

  Starting Your Fire

  It used to be that every kid knew how to kindle a fire. Camping and being outdoors was a part of ordinary living. Today, however, even adults have little experience with the simple art of making fire. Remember the scene in Tom Hanks’ movie Castaway, where he struggles with a drill and bow to get even a little flame going? And his joy at having a bonfire?