Hi you guys!!!

So this blog post is lonnnggg overdue.  But I wanted to answer some questions about our woodstove and add a little bit of details on design, function, and efficiency and to why we are so passionate about our Explorer II from Quadra-Fire.

So for those wondering what my hubby does for a living, its heating and cooling!  And if a heating and cooling man will chose an indoor woodstove over any type of furnace, that should tell you something!  We love the hot heat an indoor woodstove provides, and we don’t mind cutting wood to clean up the woods and fallen trees out back for free energy!  The Explorer II  from Quadra-Fire has a 12 hour burn time and with 78.3% efficiency means you can heat your space with less fuel!  We go through about a quarter less of wood to any outdoor wood burner that I know of!  I couldn’t imagine the amount of work and wood an outdoor wood burner has….. And to believe we considered that route!

We burn our woodstove just about 24/7 once winter hits.  And yes, I say “we” because even though starting fires aren’t my number one skill, I can do it!  And I do load the stove during the day without much fuss.  I love that the larger  stove makes it so much easier to stack wood in, and especially love the andirons it has inside so a log can’t roll back out at you.  That is such a wonderful feature!  We let it go out about once a week or as needed to clean it and empty ashes, but it sure is our main source of heat and we love it!  Our previous woodstove was just a tad too small which led for the new stove upgrade.  With the last stove we would stay up as late as we could to fill it just before bed and would awake early the next morning hoping for any hot ashes left to restart the fire in the morning.  Soooo, you can imagine the excitement we have with this new woodstove and its longer burn time.  (Insert happy dance here!)

Many have asked about the fan that sits on the top of the woodstove.  It runs off heat, so the hotter the woodstove is burning, the faster it spins to push that hot air off the top of the stove and across the room.  I have heard of others using blowers with their stove, but I love that this is silent and doesn’t cost a dime :P.  You can find this fan on amazon here.

When we bought our home it had a woodstove on the main floor, but with walls all around.  I swear that room could be 95 degrees, but the adjacent rooms 60. When we opened up the walls, we also moved our stairwell to the center of the home and added a ceiling fan in the room of the woodstove to help circulate the air.  That way when the hot air rises, it circulates up the stairwell and into the upstairs bedrooms 🙂

I also wanted to quickly chat about the design of the hearth and mantel.  I remember looking at a million Pinterest photos and Google images of woodstoves, try to get ideas on what others had done, and trying to decide what would work best for us.  We worked on other projects in the house and continued to ponder what in the world to do with this area.  Finally one day while I was at work, my husband decided he knew what he wanted. He started to build the platform you see here with rebar and mesh to hold the concrete and provide strength to the platform that his woodstove sits on.  I remember coming home close to midnight after work in tears.  I thought to myself, what are you doing??  I had never seen a woodstove sit so high and thought to myself it stood out why too much and as nothing I had imagined.  Well, when Mr. Practical finally gave me his reasoning’s.  He said he didn’t want to be bending over filling a woodstove the rest of his life. And that someday when we have kids, I would appreciate the stove sitting high enough that they can’t touch it or fall onto it.  Plus, to be honest, he had spent all day getting the platform built and ready for concrete that it was just too late to change it.  And that was that.  Now, five years later, I am SO thankful for this woodstove that sits up high.  I love that we have storage underneath for a fire extinguisher on hand (that I hope we never use).   And lastly, I love the ambiance it brings to the room as I can sit and watch the rolling flames for hours.

As always, please let me know if you have any questions and thank you for stopping by!