Care to do the maths?, Take away the gas, leccy and coal.............................

[Scythe13]

(22 June 2013, 23:08)Gizmo Wrote:

(22 June 2013, 08:44)Scythe13 Wrote: I hate to sound like a smartarse, but I seem to be good at it.

Although storing more wood and other fuels does seem a logical solution to our problem, may I suggest an alternative, similar in thought process to the different lifestyle and insulation HL is speaking about.

Your alternatives are all well and good and of course you would minimize your use of fuel as that is just common sense

What you cant get away from though is the fact that if you are using wood as your main source of heat, cooking, boiling water etc then you will use a lot more wood than you may realise, which I think was the original point Northern Raider was making.

Until you live with an open fire or stove day in and day out most people don't realise how much wood they consume even just to heat one room. All that wood has to be collected, then cut, then split, then seasoned, and trust me it is time consuming and hard work.

People who see it as being easy probably haven't tried it in real life.

For all the hard work involved though, I would say that my stove (along with my water filter) is undoubtedly the best investment I have made in the event of tshtf

I know what you mean with this.

Our last flat me and the wife 'enjoyed' had no gas heating. We would have 1 electrical heater for the living room, and I would have 10 nightlight candles burning away in the bedroom, to heat that room up. It wasn't double glazed at all. Not far off the old frozen toilet seat spoken about earlier. I loved it, the wife hated it.

Currently our house does not have a gas supply. We are enjoying an open fire place, and storage heaters. We also have 1 electrical fire place (what a pile of crotch that is! Totally sucks!!! Looks hideous too!!!) that we'll be replacing with a log burner later this year.

The upside down fire burns for around 5 hours, without refuelling, and leaves....less than a handful of ash! The heat it gives out is beautifully intense too.

As for chopping wood...it can be difficult. I'm sure for the older on the forum, it's not ideal. Youngens will probably enjoy the workout, like I do, but I see how people with bad backs, like NR, might struggle with it. Also, people without a high level of fitness may struggle in the colder months with cutting the wood as required (but being prepared means you've already cut it, right?).

As for the idea of the rocket stove, it uses about 1/3 (one third) of the fuel of a normal fire. I've heard estimates of it using 1/5th of the fuel, but I'm being conservative in what I say.