One thing about using a wood stove as a primary or secondary heating source in the house is that you get pretty good at starting fires and keeping them going.

I don’t think I ever really appreciated the beauty of a bed of hot coals until I owned a wood stove. A roaring fire is really a waste of heat, much of it sails right up the chimney and out into the cold.

But a solid bed of red-hot coals just radiates heat for hours, and once you get it going well, you can add new logs and they’ll quickly turn into coals as well, so it is self-perpetuating. And as a nice bonus, if you get it burning right, they tend to burn down to nothing but ashes, so it is easy to clean out.