Warm Winter Nights
HappyEarth
4 Comments
Well it’s time to dust off the winter woollies and pull out the beanie, because the winter chills have arrived. Ways we’re keeping our place warm and toasty include:
- Insulating the ceiling
- Using heavy hemp curtains
- Sealing cracks in the windows, floors and around doors
- Heating only the room we’re using, and closing doors to other rooms
- Using the reversible ceiling fan
On those extra chilly nights we put our slow combustion wood heater on for a few hours. An efficient wood combustion heater (not an open fire), fed properly seasoned hardwood logs is the most environmentally friendly form of heating. It wins hands down over electric and gas heating, especially when you can use local, sustainably harvested timber. All of the timber for our fire will come from trees grown right here on our small suburban block (mainly fruit tree prunings). It’s cost neutral, carbon neutral heating! And the ash will be returned to our soil as a fertiliser at the end of winter. Sounds good to us!
For more info about the benefits of wood heating compared to other forms of heating, check out the following article written by David Holgrem: http://www.holmgren.com.au/DLFiles/PDFs/Firewood%20Web.pdf
Reader Comments (4)
Hi Guys, I bug you a lot on this blog!
Just wanted to say that wood heating is great, but it must be burned cleanly, I used to work on a Woodsmoke reduction program, it's not a huge issue down here, but I definitely see a few chimneys around in winter that I would have a thing or two to say about under the local government act. I think sometimes people in our area don't have a lot of background using wood heaters, and it's more of a novelty. one of the main issues is shutting off the air to make the wood 'last longer' when in actual fact what you are doing is sending incompletely combusted particles up the chimney which could have been burned to heat your house!In a house that is fairly well insulated it is better to burn faster and cleanly, and then allow the insulation to do the work.
Oh, and I hope the sustainable house day arrangements are going well.
Hi Meryl,
Thanks for raising these really important points. Pollution from incorrectly used wood fired, particularly open indoor fires, certainly is an issue people need to be aware of, and there definately needs to be more community education about correct burning techniques like you mentioned.
We love your comments on our blogs - keep them coming!
Hope all is going well for you guys at Futureworld - all is going great for Sustainable House Day in Sept, we will be open for the community to come and see our place, as will another house in Shellharbour.
Hello guys, WOuld love to hear about Sustainable house day. WOuld love to know the details and if you are opening up to the public as i would love to see what people are doing in there suburbain areas. Great to share ideas.
Donna fron North Wollongong.
Hey Donna,
We will be open for sustainable house day in September. We will post more details on the web as the date gets closer