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I am sooooo tired of 'worshipping' on my knees, several hours every day, 5-6 months a year, just to create a tolerable temperature in which to live and work! To be quite honest... This is somewhere between 70-95% of my reason for choosing Hawaii as my next destination.
Been here a while? What are your memories of this sort of thing? With what did you fill those 'empty' hours? Do you ( gasp) miss it at all? etc.?
About to come to Hawaii or strongly considering it? How strong would you consider the 'woodstove' factor in your decision?
Endemic to Hawaii and don't really understand the questions or issue? Ask.... It's OK... ;-}
Location: Southernmost tip of the southernmost island in the southernmost state
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Ummmm, if you are still considering Oceanview, be aware, unless you choose to live in the bottom of the subdivision, you likely won't escape your good friend the woodstove. Many houses here at 2000' and above have them. It does get "Hawaii cold" here at night. Mornings in the mid 50's are routine and if you live higher up, you'll get in the 40's.
Sure, that doesn't sound cold, until you have been here a while and are acclimated to warmer temps.
Coming from Northern California and Alaska I have always had woodstoves, sort of miss having one here.
But 50's and 40's are cold, ask anyone on the mainland what temperature it is inside their house and most of them keep it 60 or above. Since a lot of our houses in Hawaii don't have heaters, when it's in the 50's or 40's "cold" outside, it's also the same temperature inside where that actually IS cold.
If I lived on the mainland in someplace that heated with wood fires, I'd look into the old Roman hypocaust systems as well as the newer "Husta" stoves. With lots of thermal mass.
I awakened this morning to 5°f. The high temps forecast for today are going to be in the toasty mid-teens. I won't mind at all... having to build a small morning fire to take the 50° chill off...
Having to tend it all day for survival kinda sux tho....
A lot of mainland wood stoves seem to be for heating up the whole house, too, not just the people in them. Keeping that volume of space heated probably takes a lot more wood than if you were to just try to heat the people. If you were to wear whatever it is you wear outside then you'd probably not have to heat the house so much. Some folks used to live in ice houses, so they'd not be able to heat up the whole house and they managed to survive. Fur lined clothing might save on having to keep the wood stove running as much.
You can tell when it's wintertime around here. We occasionally shut the doors or windows to keep out the cold instead of just rain. And we break out the socks and a flannel shirt or two. We also have the electric blanket plugged in. So, it's officially in the deep dark of winter. It also goes dark from about 6:30 pm to about 6:00 am, so that's our long dark nights, too. Doesn't change much over the year, though, summer it gets an hour or two more daylight, but not as much as some places on the mainland manage.
Aren't there wood stoves available over in HOVE? Someone said a store there sold them.
Location: Southernmost tip of the southernmost island in the southernmost state
982 posts, read 1,169,465 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by hotzcatz
A lot of mainland wood stoves seem to be for heating up the whole house, too, not just the people in them. Keeping that volume of space heated probably takes a lot more wood than if you were to just try to heat the people. If you were to wear whatever it is you wear outside then you'd probably not have to heat the house so much. Some folks used to live in ice houses, so they'd not be able to heat up the whole house and they managed to survive. Fur lined clothing might save on having to keep the wood stove running as much.
You can tell when it's wintertime around here. We occasionally shut the doors or windows to keep out the cold instead of just rain. And we break out the socks and a flannel shirt or two. We also have the electric blanket plugged in. So, it's officially in the deep dark of winter. It also goes dark from about 6:30 pm to about 6:00 am, so that's our long dark nights, too. Doesn't change much over the year, though, summer it gets an hour or two more daylight, but not as much as some places on the mainland manage.
Aren't there wood stoves available over in HOVE? Someone said a store there sold them.
Yes, the Ace Hardware store has some small ones for sale.
When I woke up this morning, it was -2 degrees. Now that it's mid afternoon, it warmed up to a whopping +3 degrees with a wind chill of -12. But sometimes the lows can be -20 or colder with highs of about -5, and wind chills as cold as about -60 degrees. Sunrise in the winter is about 7:30 AM and its dark by 4:30 PM. So, I feel your pain.
If you're dependent on exclusively wood heat, and live in a cold climate, you should scale up your wood heating system. I know a guy in Minnesota who only heats with wood and has been doing so for about 20 years. He has a large outbuilding wood stove. The wood stove is large enough to heat three homes and has a wood auto feeder. The wood stove heats up water, which is piped underground to his house. The house is heated with radiant heat from the hot water. His system is large enough that he thought about melting the snow and ice from his driveway with the system. He has a wooded 30 acre lot, so there's an endless supply of wood. However, he buys scrap wood since its easier than cutting, splitting, stacking, and drying the wood.
I prefer to use a high efficiency natural gas furnace to heat my home, even though I could set up a wood burning system. Heating with wood is a hassle. Heating with wood generates a lot of air pollution too. I think it's a lot easier to heat your home using a cleaner method than wood, although its more expensive. If you invest in educating yourself in a higher paying career, you can afford to heat your home using clean heat instead of wood heat.
If you're dependent on exclusively wood heat, and live in a cold climate...
This is the Hawai'i forum, so most of what you wrote does not apply here.
We don't have that kind of cold in Hawai'i, nor do we have natural gas, and propane is gawdawful expensive and inconvenient to deal with. Fortunately we're talking about woodstoves for occasional use to take off the chill on cold rainy nights. And firewood for stoves is cheap, especially in the Puna area, with its proximity to so many forest areas, and lots of people looking to pick up a few bucks by harvesting it and delivering it.
According to the US Census woodstoves and fireplaces are the most popular heating source in Volcano, which is at about 4,000' altitude. And despite the occasional dip to the 30s at night, during the winter, another 1/3 of the residents have no heating system at all. As Hotzcatz said, electric blankets are efficient and effective.
But it's well advised to have a good windbreaker with you when you go to view the lava lake at Kilauea.
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