Who Stokes the fire

With the small house + good insulation + a massive stove + well cured wood + living in NC + some luck, I can stoke it at night, damp it down and there'll still be coals in the morning and the house will still be warmish, despite the small firebox.


If there are no coals in the morning, the sun heats it during the day anyhow. If it's cloudy and nobody builds a fire, well, then..it gets cold.

But to answer your question, nobody stokes it at 3 am. When i wake up in the middle of the night to step outside, I'm really only interested in getting back to bed and to sleep as quickly as possible.

Ashes are great for the garden unless someone puts some funky wood in the fire.
Make sure the wood is clean- no paint,no preservatives, etc.!
It took me a long time to get that point across!

Isn't that what we men are supposed to do? Lol!

Our fire is usually allowed to go out in the middle of the night and the HVAC kicks on as back-up. I build a fire in the morning at about 04:30 and the wife adds wood before she goes to work. Whoever gets home first stokes it and whoever goes to bed last adds wood. I'd say the ash cleaning is definately my responsibility when I'm home and the griping about me getting ashes everywhere is her responsibility......lol......!

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Francismilker

"The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much" James 5:16

At my cabin it is the sober(ist) one....

DH normally cuts the firewood, I usually split it (we have a log splitter), we both stack it in the wood pile down by the barn, he usually hauls loads up from there to the patio for a heavy 3-4 day supply. I've told him as long as he keep me in stock with wood inside the house (meaning he carries it in), I will keep the fire going during the day and most of the night.

Since he usually gets up before me, I have asked him to please reload the fireplace in the mornings, but this is something that he gets lax on. Sometimes around supper time when I'm busy getting supper done, he'll tend to the fire.

We usually burn whatever kind of tree has fallen; we never have to cut trees down. We have oak, walnut and cottonwood mostly - and we live in a heavily forrested area. The cottonwood helps to get a hot fire started, so I like that mixed in too. Sometimes we go thru the wood faster than usual because of whatever wood we have at the moment, but we always have plenty of wood.

I also take care of the over the night loading of the fireplace. He's not real good for doing anything during the night hours. Once he's sleeping, it's a done deal!

I'd be real interested in hearing from you guys what type of stoves you have that you can load and not worry about the whole night through.

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A kind word, gesture or deed can mean more to someone than you may ever know. It may even change their life.

Dh handles it most time. If he's at work I'll add wood to the fire. He cleans out the ash tray maybe once a week. The 3:00 fire feeding is definitely done by him.

I do it ONLY if my husband isn't in the room watching (he apparently took the same Fire Technique Building 101 class that Cabin Fever took!).

whoever happens to be awake and alert when it needs it..it runs about 50 50..but Ron removes the ashes..

there was a promise when we got the outdoor wood furnace that i would never have to mess with it at all..like that was gonna happen