What do I ask for from Santa?
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~ Health & Family ~
^^^ What @Alan Merklin said ^^^
After health and family, you should ask for a nicely sized type 4 with a turbocharger, air-air intercooler, and EFI. Ask Santa to make sure it won't overheat and that it fits nicely inside your engine compartment. And some tasty eggnog.
Or a cordless 3/8" drill. Maybe a DeWalt. Those are nice, too.
A heated jacket to extend the driving season a month or two. I am sold on Milwaukee Axis.
If you have to ask others what to ask for, maybe you shouldn't be playing?
World peace. Duh!
Right after asking for a 12 pack of 10mm sockets we should think not about what we need but what others might need. All of us here have the resources to buy what we need/want when we need/want it, within reason. So let's take the time to think about those who can't do that and give to the organizations that can help them.
We could wish for all of those lofty things that will never happen or are completely out of our control but if we can make the lives of those nearer to us then that is a start to achieving the greater good.
@Gordon Nichols posted:Or a cordless 3/8" drill. Maybe a DeWalt. Those are nice, too.
3/8"?
That's cute.
I hit a wall again this year and asked nicely for no presents for me. If they feel they need to spend money, we can donate to a really good charity that repurposes restaurant and grocery store expiring food in excellent soup and stews for those facing ridiculous food prices.
I don't need a thing. Maybe fuel oil that's doubled this year to $1800 a fill up 
@WNGD posted:I hit a wall again this year and asked nicely for no presents for me. If they feel they need to spend money, we can donate to a really good charity that repurposes restaurant and grocery store expiring food in excellent soup and stews for those facing ridiculous food prices.
I don't need a thing. Maybe fuel oil that's doubled this year to $1800 a fill up
Yeah. I'll take a tank of heating oil any day.
Burning lots of firewood. At least I can actually see my money going up in smoke...
been burning oak for years, rarely turn on heat...get the wood from trees that fell on property and my neighbors ditto...lotta work but little cost,,,it is hard to get up on COLD nites to add more wood 3 times a nite..pee break is add firewood time..:}
@barncobob posted:Been burning brain cells for years, rarely...
Here's a new one: complete the sentence.
If I crossed a line, I'll delete. It just struck me as funny.
@Bob: IM S6 posted:Yeah. I'll take a tank of heating oil any day.
Burning lots of firewood. At least I can actually see my money going up in smoke...
I have 2 bush cords laid in and ready.
I've burned 5 days a week Winters before, it's a lot of work but I love to fire the woodstove up from Friday to Sunday nights and the cold stuff is on the way.
There was a short clip on the local news just the other night that in a neighboring town they're selling seasoned Cordwood for $500 per cord. 
@Gordon Nichols posted:There was a short clip on the local news just the other night that in a neighboring town they're selling seasoned Cordwood for $500 per cord.
That's gotta be a bush cord, lots of people don't know the difference.
I was still able to get a bush cord for $300 last few years, this year it was $400. Tons of ash has died up here, lots available.
@WNGD posted:That's gotta be a bush cord, lots of people don't know the difference.
I was still able to get a bush cord for $300 last few years, this year it was $400. Tons of ash has died up here, lots available.
I stay away from Ash - the name is accurate, lots of ash, but unfortunately, not great for heat. Maple, Oak, Beech etc. are nice woods for burning.
Our kitchen wood cookstove is on 24 hours a day once the cold weather starts, and the living room stove is fired up when I feel energetic enough to keep two stoves going.
Wood - the only fuel that heats you multiple times: cutting, splitting, piling, loading.
When we were heating with wood (1980 - 2000), I usually ended up with mostly Maple and some white Oak mixed in. Stayed away from the Red Oak as it tends to be smelly when it burns. On holidays or just for a nice evening I could throw some apple wood onto the fireplace for a nice aroma but, like Ash, it didn't give off a lot of heat.
We had forced hot air heat in the house back then and I tied a wood fired heater into the cold air return so I could heat the entire house with it. It was pretty big - Toss in a wheelbarrow load of wood when you went to bed and it was still heating in the morning but it was too big to use until the outside temps stayed below 40F or so. We would usually go through 6 - 7 cords each winter but we lived on the family farm and there was plenty of free wood. I would cut a wide cord at 60" or so, because the stove would take 30" logs. Our DIY splitter could split 60" stuff, too. Get them home, cut them in two and they were stove ready. My two assistant lumberjacks helped out a lot, too.
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@Bob: IM S6 posted:I stay away from Ash - the name is accurate, lots of ash, but unfortunately, not great for heat. Maple, Oak, Beech etc. are nice woods for burning.
Our kitchen wood cookstove is on 24 hours a day once the cold weather starts, and the living room stove is fired up when I feel energetic enough to keep two stoves going.
Wood - the only fuel that heats you multiple times: cutting, splitting, piling, loading.
Ash has almost as many BTUs as oak.
About 20 cords split and stacked into 10 Norwegian Holz Hausens
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I have never seen those, very cool.
Up north in cottage country, a blight came through and took out most of the beach which is nice and clean to handle/burn. Around here, a ton of ash have died so sometimes, you use what nature gives you.
We just had two massive and I mean massive dead black walnut trees dropped. Seems a shame to burn it, we looked into having it turned into flooring and it wasn't worth it. And furniture guys don't want to/can't pick it up.
When I built my house 10 years ago I brought in a sawmill and cut up all of the wood for use in the house. My living room posts are 10x10 cherry trees.
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In California we have never used as much wood for heating as anywhere else. Today, even less, as burning wood in your fireplace is banned unless it's your primary heating source. Occasionally we have what are called "clean air days" and we're allowed to burn wood in the fireplace.
When wood burning was still allowed and I was newly engaged to my wife, I decided I needed to impress my father-in-law to be. He had an old eucalyptus tree on the ranch that needed to come down. This tree had a circumference of about 18' and it was very tall. To impress him I told him I would fell the tree and clear it off the land. Being 21 or 22 at the time I was pretty much unstoppable, or at least I thought I was. I brought a couple chainsaws to the ranch, scaled that tree as high as I could, and started cutting off the massive branches. When it was just the 12' tall trunk of the tree I had to figure out how to finish cutting it down. I got my saw with the longest blade on it and I took off the safety tip, started the saw, and inserted it into the trunk. To my surprise the trunk was only about 5" thick. Apparently the tree had been diseased for some time and the center of it had rotted out. Somehow it was still standing. After cutting all the way around supporting what I had already cut with wedges I pulled the trunk over with the tractor. I brought a trailer mounted wood splitter and split everything into what seemed like a half dozen cords of wood. I gave a cord to my friend whose splitter I used and took the rest to my parent's house. My father-in-law to be didn't have a fireplace and he didn't want any of the wood. In our fireplace insert at home my parents burned that eucalyptus for a few years. That stuff burns very well and very hot. Cutting that tree down was when I decided I didn't want to be a tree cutter.
I sometimes (quite rarely, actually) see those Norwegian wood piles here in the Northeast, but didn't know the origin of them. They look (a.) very cool and (b.) like a lot of work!
My Dad and I built a big shed at his house to store snowmobiles in and, after the mid-1980's, he used it to dry firewood for a train-depot pot-bellied stove in his main shop. The shed was about 18' X 30' and had a roof of corrugated semi-clear fiberglass. We usually cut firewood in the dead of winter in the wet or swampy parts of the farm (frozen ground made it easier to get in and out) so it could season over the summer, but his wood we could cut in the late Summer, store it in the shed and with the sun beating down on it the wood would be dried in about a month and ready for the stove without threat of soot/creosote build-up. It always seemed a bit lazy cutting trees down in warm weather and not freezing my butt off, but you had to contend with black flies and sweat in the summer 😉
@Cartod - You sir, are the man.
My friend Mike(machinist and all-around Porsche 911 guru) stacks his firewood in those circular piles. Now I know what they're called, thanks.
"Isn't it good, Norwegian wood?" LOL!
I used to split firewood in the cold. It splits easier by hand when it's frozen(it explodes!), and no bugs. Plus you work up a good sweat. I used to be out there in 10-20F weather in a T-shirt.
Danny wrote: "I used to split firewood in the cold. It splits easier by hand when it's frozen (it explodes!), and no bugs."
Yup - Get out there below 20F and wood, especially Maple, splits really easily once you find the right splitting maul and get the technique down. An old Vermonter showed me the technique on fallen logs cut to four feet or so, and when I first saw him (an old man, for sure) split a lying, 4' log like nothing I thought it had to be magic.
We have relatives in Vermont who were burning a lot of wood in their sap evaporators when making Maple Syrup. The sap season was the month of March back then and a single wood-fired evaporator would burn through 2 cords per week. We would be cutting and splitting next years wood in January/February when it was really cold and the sap was down in the roots, boil sap in March and then go out to gather next years wood to the Sugar House when the snow was gone and things dried out. It was a ton of work - No wonder people went to plastic tubing to the tree taps instead of hanging buckets and then went to either oil or natural gas to fire the evaporators. I was out slogging through chest-deep snow gathering sap and Kathy was working in the Sugar house, getting her hair all sticky from the sugar-laden steam. It was a family affair..... Worked really hard all day and slept like logs at night.
Every contractor I know builds their "big house" (the one they wish they'd been able to raise their family in) just about the time their kids are grown up. Dad did it. I did it.
When I was 17, my dad built his "big house", just as the economy was beginning to crater at the end of the Carter administration. Mid-project, interest on mortgages hit nearly 20%. Dad was very, very close to insolvency.
As a young man, he had done pretty much everything on the carpentry side (block laying, concrete, framing, drywall, trim, and painting), and had then apprenticed and obtained his license in plumbing, heating, and electrical. He truly could do anything pertaining to construction, and had built several homes by this point in his life (on the side, while making a living as a plumber). Anyhow, in this house - he laid an enormous masonry fireplace in this house (patterned on a Swiss chalet), tile liner, block bones, and skinned with stones we collected, and hauled up from the creek bed. It was 35 ft of exposed rock chimney, running right up through the living room.
We had a second fireplace in the finished walk-out basement. Both fireplaces had a liner, complete with a fan setup. Either was capable of heating the entire house, but the one downstairs was ducted into the main system.
Whereas dad was out of money, and had a 17 year old son - the solution was obvious. I cut and split wood with dad for 2 years, then by myself as his business came back and I was in his full time employ. I have no idea how much wood I cut, split, and stacked. All I know is that it was my full time job for my entire 20th winter.
I don't think I've ever cut firewood since, even when we lived in PNG and used wood for heating and cooking. Even when I built my own "big house" (just as my kids were ready to move out) with my own masonry fireplace.
My current home has a high-end gas fireplace. It's about 50% as excellent, but it comes on when I push the button on the remote.
As long as I have the resources, this is how I'm going to do it.
One of the first things I built when we bought this property 30 years ago (after the firepit I dug even as the movers were carrying in boxes) was a 12X15 shed with porch just for storing firewood. Partially heating with wood is alot of work but the heat is better, it's just different and the beautiful smell.
Splitting firewood is my happy place. Not cutting it down and cutting it up but splitting. Security is a full freezer and a buldging woodshed 
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My contractor son-in-law is currently building their "Dream Home" and it is almost exactly like @Cartod's, with the garage on the other end. Their son is just about to head off to college so I guess their timing is right on. 🙄 Same deal on land, too - They're in the middle of 11 wooded acres and he would "like" to partially heat with wood, but it seems the experience on here is that contractors, when they're busy, rarely have the time needed to drop, cut, split and stack wood, regardless if it "Heats you four times" - (cutting, splitting, stacking and burning).
I built my own forced hot air, wood-fired furnace. The firebox was a 4' X 30" home propane tank with the valve end cut off and welded horizontally to a 3/8" thick steel plate, 4' X 4'. I used a piece of 6" steel well casing for the internal flue and then into the chimney from the cellar. That monstrosity (you should have seen us getting it down the bulkhead and into position in the cellar) was set inside of a 4' cube, sheet metal box with openings cut in the bottom of one side and top of the other and I ducted the air return from the house through that box and then, in series, into the regular oil-fired hot air furnace. Once you got a good fire going you just shut down the oil burner and went onto the "Wood Standard". The air temp coming out of the oil burner or wood furnace was about the same... 80 - 90F And the house stayed really cozy. When it was running on wood you could put your hand on the top of the metal box and it was hot, but not burn you.
There is absolutely no way in God's green Earth that my wood furnace would come even close to meeting code, today..... Period. It was simple, it worked great and the only problem we ever had was when we ran it way down with the drafts almost closed and then it would soot up the flue right quick because it was overkill in size for the house. I may have mentioned my failing to pass my Thermodynamics class in college and that bit me in the end. Chimney flue Fires are no joke, so we (I) learned to wait til it was good and cold out to switch over to wood.
Never had a 'big' house; never wanted one. My rural neighbours built a giant house a few years ago - you could house four refugee families in it. Now both of their kids are gone. To me, that is a waste of money.
More to heat, to clean, to dust, to furnish, to paint, etc.
You can only be in one room at a time...
I agree Bob and prefer acreage to sq footage.
My friend in Florida has ten acres he just " has to mow " weekly ( why ?) When I walk into a large vaulted ceiling home the first thing that comes to mind is all the costly heat just sitting " up there ." We retired and sold our total electric 5 BR home w/ shop in PA, yes we miss it but not the winter electric bills $700 electric and ever increasing taxes. Our 2BR town home w/ a large 2 car heated garage in WV has electric bill of just $85 and natural gas heat bill of $90. The 2nd BR has a pull-out sofa so ppl don't stay long :~)
After heating our first two houses with wood, I took the same approach as@Stan Galat, gas fireplaces rated as furnaces in our subsequent houses I missed the wood smoke smell, but loved the instant heat and convenience.
In our final house, the builder forgot to put any kind of heating at all. I guess surf was up that morning.
Hey, Mike!
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^^^^ Me too!
@Cartod posted:
@Gordon Nichols posted:My contractor son-in-law is currently building their "Dream Home" and it is almost exactly like @Cartod's, with the garage on the other end. Their son is just about to head off to college so I guess their timing is right on.
That's what I meant when I said,
"Every contractor I know builds their "big house" (the one they wish they'd been able to raise their family in) just about the time their kids are grown up."
We're all (self-employed tradesmen) pretty much the same. When there's time, there's no money. When there's money, there's no time. When the kids are young, and the business is just starting to roll - there's neither time nor money. It's not until later that there's enough of both.
BTW: really nice spread, @Cartod.
Thank you, I don’t consider the house to be too big actually. It has a big roof but it’s a 3 bedroom ranch with a full basement. There is 11” of insulation in the ceilings and the exterior wall were built with 2x6s for added wall insulation. We decided to build this vacation type cottage here in WV because neither of us are retiring anytime too soon and wanted to feel like we are on vacation all the time. We also have the added benefit of our kids loving to come back home and enjoy the amenities with us, and not to mention we are both the oldest of 5 kids so there is lots of family. I know it’s not for everyone but it’s how we wanted to do it. No regrets so far. Merry Christmas@Stan Galat posted:
That's what I meant when I said,
"Every contractor I know builds their "big house" (the one they wish they'd been able to raise their family in) just about the time their kids are grown up."
We're all (self-employed tradesmen) pretty much the same. When there's time, there's no money. When there's money, there's no time. When the kids are young, and the business is just starting to roll - there's neither time nor money. It's not until later that there's enough of both.
BTW: really nice spread, @Cartod.
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Exactly @Cartod - the house doesn't have to be "big" to be the big house - just the one you would have liked to raise your kids in. I'm glad you've got a nice place for your family to enjoy.
Through a series of really strange circumstances, we sold "the big house" after only 10 years of being there. We moved for a variety of reasons - but Jeanie wanted a town house (not a "townhouse", a house in town), so we built something smaller and unique, then proceeded to buy everything around us (because I don't like living on top of people and I'm a control freak). Believe me when I say that what you did makes a lot more sense. I really love the setting of your home.
BTW: I've also got 10" of spray foam on the roofline, 2x6 exterior walls with 2" of spray foam and R15 batts on top of that.