Cooking Wood

The "winter" season has started and our Kozi woodstove is working most of the time. Throughout the summer we've gathered wood and stored it away in our floating woodshed. Smaller wood and kindling is stored in large plastic tubs under the front porch and up in the onshore storage shed.

Recently, we acquired some damp lumber trimmings from our good friend John. He's building a new cabin and gives us his leftover wood scraps. It's good for him. He doesn't have to find a way to discard them. And it's good for us, we get a constant supply of easy to burn chunks.

But you don't want to burn wet wood. It is less efficient (decreased heat output) and increases creosote buildup (and potential chimney fires). So on sunny days, you'll find us "cooking" our wet wood. We spread it out on the deck and flip it like pancakes several times throughout the day. When the sun goes down, in comes our wood. After several days of cooking and air drying under the porch it is ready for the wood stove.

Stay tuned! Our Kozi wood stove is soon to have a new purpose. We are picking up our new TEGPower.com thermoelectric generator this weekend. By next week it will be installed and helping us to charge our cabin battery bank. This winter we'll have more electricity than ever before. What an exciting prospect! Have you ever used a thermoelectric generator? I would love to hear about your experiences. - Margy