The Hardy


This is supposed to be a blog about the dairy mostly but lately it seems I have been posting about the baby. But you have to excuse me there because she takes up more of my time now than the dairy.


In any case it came to my attention this afternoon, after my 3rd wheelbarrow load of wood, that I have neglected to document how we heat the house during the winter. This is our Hardy wood burning furnace. This isn't the best of pictures and was taken back in '04, but it will have to do until I can locate my camera.

Until I moved here I had never heard of a wood burning furnace. I don't understand (and therefore am unable to explain fully) how it all works but these are the basics: It runs off of electricity-to power the blower-and has a huge tank of water in it. The wood fire inside the furnace heats the water and that water is piped though copper coils and somehow the heat is blown off of that into the house. So, of couse, it only works with forced air heating systems. We have it hooked up to the hot water heater inside the house so that hot water is piped into the hot water heater as needed, which saves a bit on electricity.

This furnace will burn just about any kind of wood; dry, wet, you name it. You just have to keep up a demand for heat in the house or hot water in the water heater so that the fire keeps going. The main issue is to keep enough fuel on hand for it. We know people who have much, much larger furnaces than this one who keep it going on handouts from others. That is; they will burn any junk that anyone brings to them; old torn up buildings, old tires, all kinds of burnable garbage and stuff. If someone is cleaning up their place and need to get rid of the burnable stuff they just take it over to these people. Ick!

That's it for now. Running out of time.

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