Fall is in the air, which means that football and firewood are on my mind. I’ve already seen my team, the Pittsburgh ‘Stillers’, play two regular season games and their performance is telling me this could be a long painful season. We got embarrassed by the Ravens and didn’t look like we were serious about the Seahawks (even though they scored a W).
I’m not one of those guys who sits all day in front of the TV watching football. Basically, I follow one team, the Steelers, and thanks to DirecTV and my DVR, I never miss one of their games. Living in the western U.S., most of the games start at 11:00am, so we usually record it and catch the action after dinner. All my relatives know that if they call on game day they are not to mention the game since I probably had not yet watched it.
It won’t be long before we’re watching football with snow on the ground. In fact, we’ve already had some sub-freezing nights here in northwest Montana. That means we’re now thinking about firewood.
Do you heat your log home with wood?
We have a woodstove and rely on it to heat our log home. We’ve been doing this for almost ten years now and to us, it’s just part of the experience and makes a long winter easier to bear. Unfortunately, there is additional work involved to enjoy this bone-warming heat. Getting enough wood put-up and maintaining the stove & chimney is an annual ritual.
Last weekend I cleaned the chimney. Do you do that yourself or do you hire a chimney sweep? Years ago I bought one of those DIY rigs that work quite well. The fiberglass poles come in 6’ lengths and you screw one on to the other to snake your way up the chimney and scrape out the soot. It’s a dirty chore, but I hate paying people to do work that I’m capable of doing.
Stack outside our door. The BIG stack is off to the side.
I had a couple marathon weekends last summer cutting & splitting firewood, but I still don’t have enough put up to get me through a typical Montana winter. I need to get busy before the snow flies or I will need to buy a couple of cords. Wish me luck.
Fire Prevention
Speaking of firewood and fires and log homes, I follow many log home related blogs and an interesting article caught my attention last week. On the PrecisionCraft blog they published a short article about “Fire Prevention Landscaping” that will be of interest to most log home owners who live in rural areas.