Sustainable Wood Fire Heating
We only use our wood fire for heating our house. As our home is under trees we wrestled with the concept of solar/thermal energy for heating but we do not receive enough direct sunlight to achieve this. We did not feel that it was sustainable to cut down our bush to gain access to sunlight. As the reason we had chosen this house initially was because of the bush (trees) and the beautiful wildlife biodiversity it provides. Cutting this exact bush down did not provide us with the moral answer. Also living under the trees also provides us with much desired shade in summer.
Firewood collection - sustainably.
Instead we manage and source all our firewood from our bush block in a sustainable manner. We feel that this is probably the most sustainable heating fuel option as it is truely a fuel that can provide a current and renewable energy source. Fossil based fuels source energy which is millions of years old, but the energy in the trees we use for fuel has been generated in less than 100 years and can be recycled within or lifetime.
After ensuring that our need to heat is as low as possible by improving insulation and reducing drafts within the home some concepts we consider to improve the sustainability of this home heating option are:
- Use trees that are already dead, but we don’t take every dead tree.
- Ensure that dead trees with good hollows are left as habitat.
- Leave some dead trees on the ground as logs to rot and provide habitat and nutrients to the forest.
- Only burn wood that has been thoroughly dried – no green wood.
- Protect and manage our bush habitat by reducing weeds and ensuring regeneration for future use.
- Planting indigenous trees as required in un-treed areas for future use and as habitat improvements.
Harvesting wood can be a sustainable product for human consumption such as heating, but this does not endorse some of the harvesting practices that are used in native forests around where we live. But the logging of native forests debate is a whole other issue for another blog post!
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