Moving Away From Fossil Fuels: Managing a Wood Store

Are you concerned about your carbon footprint and keen to move away from using fossil fuels to heat and run your home? Have you considered using wood for heating and cooking? Are you interested in the practicalities of relying on solid fuels such as wood? Here’s how we make wood burning work for us.

Introduction

Coming up with the best solution for heating, hot water and generally fueling your home can be a bit of a minefield. Most homes are set up for oil or gas central heating and hot water. But some governments are offering grants to incentivise a move away from fossil fuels towards greener initiatives.

Our cottage came with an oil central heating and hot water system. We have left that in place as a rarely-used back-up, and have installed a wood-burning range that for cooking, heating and hot water. Let me walk you through our thought=process and how we make this work for our home.

What is wrong with fossil fuels anyway?

Where to even begin?!

From an environmental standpoint, fossil fuels are the driver behind man-made climate change. Fossil fuels contain carbon that has been stored deep underground for many millions of years. Burning fossil fuels releases this carbon into the atmosphere, with devastating consequences for our planet.

As a global society, we must work together to stop burning fossil fuels as soon as possible.

From a self-sufficiency standpoint, reliance on outside materials such as fossil fuels creates a point of weakness in the system. We wanted a robust, sustainable alternative.

Why is wood a good alternative?

In Scotland and many places around the globe, wood is a locally-grown resource that is readily available at a reasonable price. Whilst there is a lot of mechanisation in modern wood-harvesting practices, it is a much less intensive process than extracting fossil fuels.

From an environmental point-of-view, wood contains carbon that that is part of the current carbon cycle. So, while burning wood does release carbon dioxide, it is not carbon that has been sequestered away for millennia, like fossil fuels.

The biggest incentive from a self-sufficiency perspective is that, with a reasonable parcel of land, a family can manage their own coppice rotation, eliminating much of the need for fossil fuels in harvesting and transporting the wood.

Are there any drawbacks to wood burning?

Although burning wood does not contribute to the rising levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, it can affect air quality if not done well.

To avoid these particulate emissions, it is essential that you are burning clean, dry wood in a well ventilated stove. Aim for a small, hot fire rather than a larger, smouldering one. Avoid overloading the fire box, for example by banking the fire up at night. Do not use wood that has been treated with any paints or chemicals. And perhaps most importantly, clean and maintain your stove properly and sweep your chimney regularly.

Cold winter mornings present another challenge. There are no timers or thermostats, no boilers or central heating. You have to get out of bed to light the fire! With practice, this can be done relatively swiftly while the kettle is boiling. Then you can hop back into bed and enjoy a hot cup of tea as the house warms up.

Sourcing and storing wood is the final big consideration. If you are unable to grow your own trees for coppicing, you have two options: either purchasing green wood that needs to split, stacked and left to dry, or buying dry wood that is ready to burn. You will need to weigh up the costs, both financially and in terms of your time, of these options.

If you choose to split and dry the wood yourself, then you need to get a year ahead to ensure that you are always burning dry wood. A sizeable storage area with separate bays for each year’s harvest is an absolute must.

Sourcing wood sustainably

If the aim of the game is to avoid burning fossil fuels, then purchasing wood from the other side of the world really is not going to cut the mustard. Sourcing your wood locally is absolutely essential.

Or better still, grow your own. Coppicing is the ultimate way to produce wood sustainably. You plant a stand of vigorous, fast-growing trees such as willow. Then each year cut a proportion of your trees back to small stools and harvest the trunks and branches. This can be done on a five-year cycle, for example, providing a rapidly regenerating source of wood fuel. The most amazing part about coppicing is that the root systems continue to store carbon away, even when the trunks are cut back.

Managing your woodstore

We have already covered the importance of thoroughly drying wood before burning. Soft woods will be dry enough to burn after 12 months, whereas hard woods require at least three years to fully dry.

So, you will need a covered but well ventilated storage area for your wood. Ideally, segregate the area into separate bays, which each have the capacity to store roughly one year’s worth of wood. You should aim to keep a year ahead of yourself, so that wood has a year to dry; so you will need at least two storage bays.

My husband designed and built our wood store, pictured above, with four bays which we rotate through. You will notice the study roof to keep the rain off, and the slatted sides which allow plenty of air to circulate and dry out the wood stacked within.

We aim to keep a mixture of soft and hard wood in stock. Soft wood, such as spruce, is ideal for getting a roaring fire going quickly. It’s perfect for those cold winter mornings, or when I need to get the oven up to temperature to bake some bread. The downside being that it burns away very quickly.

Hard woods, such as beech, burn more slowly. They are better for keeping a fire ticking over throughout the day during the colder months of the year.

Summary

Using wood as your main fuel source takes some planning and up-front investment. But seeing your year’s worth of fuel stacked neatly in the wood store is even more satisfying than having money in the bank.

We currently source a mixture of soft and hard wood from the farmer a little further along our lane. They deliver large logs which we split and stack ourselves.

Our longer term plan is to establish a willow coppice, which we will manage on a quick rotation.

Installing a wood-burning range cooker was one of the best decisions we have made. Yes, it is less convenient than an electric oven. But the warm glow and crackle of the fire adds so much to the ambience of our home. It is fantastic at radiating warmth throughout our house, to the point where we do not use the oil central heating. And with a kettle or a large pot of water constantly sitting on the hot plate, we essentially have an unlimited supply of hot water.