Your Wood Stove Burns Twice the Wood It Should. A $15 Gauge Fixes It

Built to Last — the old farm ways, all in one book: https://ezrakaine.com How do you make a wood stove burn less firewood? The first night I hung a $15 gauge on my stovepipe, the needle went past seven hundred degrees and stayed there. I thought I was running a good hot fire. I was heating the sky. We burned close to seven cords of wood that winter. The next winter, same stove, same house, same cold, we burned under four. Half of that was the gauge. The other half was something I couldn't see, feeding my fire air all night long, and a dollar bill found it. The stove store's answer is a new high-efficiency stove for three thousand dollars installed. Not one of them asked what my stovepipe was reading. My stove was fine. I was running it blind. WHAT YOU'LL LEARN • Where the heat from a wood stove actually goes • Using a stovepipe thermometer, and the three zones on the gauge • The dollar-bill test that finds a leaking door gasket • Replacing a stove gasket for about $15, and the mistake that ruins it • How to turn a fire down without smothering it or building creosote • The shoulder season: burning right in fall and spring • That little handle on the pipe: how to use a stovepipe damper • The top-down fire — lighting it upside down from how most of us were taught • Ash, coals, and moving the heat out of the stove corner STAY SAFE: put a carbon monoxide alarm and a smoke alarm in the house and test them every fall. In a tight house, a kitchen fan or dryer can pull against your chimney and push smoke back into the room. The video shows a simple match test for it. And if the needle ever climbs into the top of the red or the pipe starts to glow, shut the air down and keep the door closed. Tell me in the comments: what state are you in, what year is your stove, and what did your needle say the first time you checked it? I'll bet somebody out there beats my seven hundred. The stove was never the problem. It just never had anybody reading it. #WoodStove #HeatingWithWood #Firewood #WoodStoveTips #SaveFirewood #Creosote #ChimneySafety #HeatingBill #Homesteading #OldWaysAreBest #WinterPrep #SelfReliance