Heating Options When Living Remotely:

Our primary source of heat is and has been a wood stove. We have a Yotul stove that keeps our cabin nice and warm. Yotul stoves started in Norway in the mid 1800's and they also have an operation here in the USA. The radiant heat from the cast iron stove is wonderful. Because our cabin is small we have a small wood stove. As such we had to get up at night to put wood on the stove to keep the heat even throughout our home. Getting up to fuel the stove is not a problem as you get older as I generally get up a couple times anyway to use the rest room. 

What is a problem is sometimes getting back to sleep after getting the stove going again. We therefore decided that we would supplement the wood stove with two ETS units we bought from the Electric Co-op. ETS stands for electrical thermal system. It is a heater that runs on electricity and has three heating elements that heat ceramic bricks. The bricks hold the heat and distribute it as needed when the thermostat reaches a certain temperature. We set ours at 65 degrees and the unit comes on and quietly blows heat when it starts to get cooler than 65 degrees. 

These units are very efficient and part of the joy of owning them is that the Electric Coop gives us off peak rates at certain times of the day so our electric bill is much lower. It is during the off peak times that the units charge up. We put one unit in the back of the house and one in the front. We no longer have to feed the wood stove at night and wake up to comfortable 65 degrees in the morning. We can then take our time to get the wood stove going and the heat from it takes us well into the night. 

We have found that this combination is very efficient. We still have to cut up firewood but that has never been a burden to us. We considered several different sources of heat but this works well for us. As part of the $30.00 fee we pay each month as per our agreement with the Coop we get maintenance service to keep the units working efficiently and if anything goes wrong they will repair the units.