Sources of Heat #1

When I was growing up in the city, we heated our house with a gas stove in the middle of the living room.  It heated the whole house quite well as long as you kept your bedroom door open but pretty chilly otherwise.  We also had a gas hot water heater and cooked on a gas kitchen stove.  They all worked amazingly well, especially during winter storms.  We had heat and could cook during one particularly bad ice storm in the early '70's that left the roads and lawns as one big skating rink.  We lit the ornamental oil lamp of my mom's and we were pretty cozy!

The down side of using gas, though (and for me, it's a big downside) is the whole pilot light thing.  Mostly my dad lit the hot water heater and living room stove when they would go out but my mom often had to light the kitchen stove herself if she wanted to have the meal ready right when dad got home from work (she was pretty good with that precision-thing, unlike myself!).  I know she was terrified but managed to do it when absolutely necessary, without blowing us up.  She certainly deferred to dad whenever she could, though!

I have that whole  I'm-terrified-that-I'm-going-to-blow-us-all-up  thing going on myself.  Hubby did not grow up around gas so he's not so brave, either.  Plus he has the legitimate excuse that he doesn't want to come in from the barn or the back-40 just to light the pilot light.  He grew up with a wood furnace and since wood is free if you don't count labour and since free is good, then wood it is!

Growing up in the city, though, I knew of no one who burned wood, unlike now.  Wood stoves were just for farmers, just for poor people and after all, 3rd world countries still used wood.  People had used wood for centuries and were tired of the mess of ashes and wood chips and wood was very labour-intensive.  They were more than happy to leave all that behind and turn instead to the much cleaner and much more convenient oil, gas or propane.

All these years later, we know that's not the case.  Any type of fuel we burn has a repercussion on the environment, prices have risen drastically and the earth will eventually run dry, not that anyone cared back then, not that most people knew back then.  It used to be recommended that you use an oil hot water heater insted of an electric hot water heater as oil was cheaper than hydro but not anymore.  Oil prices have risen and, of course, so have hydro prices.  Nothing is cheap and 'clean' anymore - except perhaps wood.

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