Yay, the wood stove is in!

I love my wood stove.  My husband loves our wood stove so much that we had to move it to the new house.  There was a Russo coal/wood stove with a metal flue in the new house, but it is really meant for coal first and we both agree we don't like burning coal.  Too dusty and we don't like the smell.  We really like our Vermont Castings Vigilant wood stove.  Bought about 20 years ago it has been the perfect size for heating our school house. Last year we didn't turn on the heat until December 23rd, just used the wood stove to take the chill off.  We don't really know how well this new house is insulated (if at all) and don't relish paying a large oil bill.  So we are hoping we can keep the house warm mainly with the wood stove.

We had our first fire last night and we were very happy with the way the stove warmed the house.  At the old house our wood stove was in a room with 13 foot tall ceilings.  It took quite a while for the heat to start warming up the first floor, even with the ceiling fan.  In the new house we could feel the heat almost immediately.  With the addition of a small fan to blow the warm air into the rest of the house we had the kitchen up to 70 within one hour.  While going down the stairs you could feel the heat rising up.  My daughter's bedroom is above the room with the wood stove and she was warm last night.  We actually had to stop adding wood to the fire around 7PM or we would have been too warm to sleep well.

I don't think I could ever be without a wood stove.  With the weather and number of power outages we get it is necessary for heat and cooking.  I use the wood stove to help dry laundry in the winter.  I have a great floor clothes drying rack from Lehman's that works great in the winter when I want to dry clothing in front of the wood stove.  A load of laundry will dry in a couple hours and the largest size is big enough to hold two large loads.  And drying the laundry in front of the fire puts humidity into the air. 

I am not the only one who is happy to have the wood stove burning again.  Lily is too.

And for the old house, we bought the exact same stove to put back where we took this one out.  It's a couple years older but the same model.  We knew the stove would fit well and I really wanted to sell the house with a stove in place.  And no we couldn't have just put the same model stove in the new house.  My husband knew who owned our stove before us and how they took care of it and how we took care of it. He was in love with this particular stove, not just any old Vigilant!