Masonry stoves have been around for a really long time. The process of safely installing, using, and maintaining a woodstove for your home is, of course, a big endeavor, so be sure to check out these excellent resources as you switch your home to wood-fired heat. Quick to install, (relatively) easy to move, and available in sizes from tiny to gigantic, the woodstove offers most any home the option of taking their heating needs off-grid. Introduced in 1742 by none other than Benjamin Franklin, the “fireplace in a box” was a far more efficient improvement over the open hearths and fireplaces that had been a feature of homes for time immemorial. WoodstoveĪ good woodstove is like a living, breathing heart in the off-grid home. Here are some different styles of wood-fired heat to consider.
#Off grid heating how to#
As you learn how to source your own fuel, I recommend reading through books like “Keeping Warm with an Axe” and “The Woodland Steward.” We also have articles here on Insteading about how to find free firewood. If you’re planning to use only off-grid heating, you’ll need to take the time to acquire the skills to do it. It’s a huge body of knowledge that’s built by experience.
So too, is knowing how to safely fell, limb, and buck fallen trees, and split, dry, and store firewood as well as knowing what woods are best to burn and how to clean your own chimneys to prevent creosote buildup. Managing a woodlot, therefore, is crucial to the heating-the-home-with-wood equation.
Instead, we’ll be focusing on wood-fired elements as they’re something you can feasibly source from your own land. As such, I’ll not be mentioning pellet stoves, coal-burning stoves, or their kin. Even if the heating unit is off-grid in the home, it is still somewhat on-grid if you have to purchase all your own fuel from some outside source. Heating your off-grid home with fire is not constrained to the act of loading fuel in the firebox and sitting back to enjoy the warmth.
Since then, we’ve contrived an amazing array of means and methods for teaming up with that warm, flickering flame, and keeping ourselves cozy when the snow is blowing outside.īefore I get into some specific fire-heating methods, I’d be remiss if I didn’t add a pertinent note. Fire has been the heat source for humans around the world since we first figured out how to harness it. Now, I know Sarah wanted to discuss alternatives to woodstoves for keeping a home warm, and we certainly will after this point, but the simple fact is there are few better ways to warm an off-grid home. That said, let’s get started with ideas on how to heat the off-grid home. I hope, instead, to point you in some interesting directions and share compelling resources that you can research further. Heating the off-grid home is a lot more detailed and complicated. With an adventurous outlook, you are sure to find a method or idea that suits your specific homestead.įor the record, none of the information I’m sharing today is presented as a complete answer. And even in this modern age, we can draw from both our ancestors’ innovations and modern inventions for making a house livable in the cold, wintry months. Since the vast majority of human history has employed off-grid heating to some degree, there is a huge, multi-cultural host of options for heating a home. Sarah wants to know about “Heat alternatives that don’t require the grid, solar, or a woodstove.”Īnd Heather writes “I can’t go off-grid in my current home, but I’m wondering about heating a greenhouse through off-grid means.
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