Throwback Thursdays and my life with woodstoves #TBT
Posted By RichC on January 19, 2017
Heating with wood is in my genes, since my parents started heating with wood back when we lived on Lake Erie and were constantly without heat either due to power outages in the rural area we lived, floods forcing the power company to turn off utilities or the old finicky oil burner furnace (think “Christmas Story” IIIIIT’s a clinkerrr!!).
We moved when I was in high school and when hit with the Oil Embargo and inflation, installing a Buck Stove in our house seemed like a natural fit … and it was so much warmer than electric heat (besides my dad had two boys and a woods to cut and split firewood from … actually became a winter part time moneymaking job for me!)
When Brenda and I became homeowners (photo of house) it was natural to want to save a buck and so I built my own basement fireplace/ stove combination that heated an old water tank with fins welded on it (1982 photo below in Aurora, Ohio, hence #TBT). I piped the “heat chamber” into the existing “oil furnace” ductwork so we could circulate warmed air to the rest of the house. It worked great, although I’m sure it would not have passed code! 
After my daughter was born in 1986, we needed a bigger house and wanted some acreage with a woods and barn, so we moved to Hudson, Ohio and of course the first thing I did was remodel and put in a woodstove … two of them!
Eventually we remodeled, added natural gas and gave one of the stoves to my father-in-laws who was restoring an old farmhouse outside of Jamestown, NY. It was ideal for auxiliary heat for that older small house (had free gas) and eventually the “farmhouse” became their “downsized” permanent residence.
Fast forward to last year when I added the leftover woodstove (the one I burned coal in when in Hudson) to my garage shop and have been enjoying it ever since (lazy RichC in the photo at the top!)
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