There are numerous benefits that come with heating your home with wood, some of which are obvious, and some not quite as prominent. This is especially true if you have never had the joy of sitting next to a toasty wood stove as you warm yourself up after a trip out into the cold.

Today's wood stoves are much more energy-efficient that those of yesteryear, and they now maintain efficiency of 70 percent or more. Here are the most important reasons you might consider a wood stove for your home heating needs:

1. Self Reliance

Using a wood stove is a step in the direction of self-reliance. Heating choices like coal, oil or gas are non-renewable and beyond a person’s control. However, a sustainably maintained forest is a renewable, healthy, and self-propagating alternative.

Home owners can cut and manage their own firewood and know exactly where it came from. With other heating options, you have no clue how it is handled and are at the mercy of the large utility companies. Well-maintained forests can be a source of heat practically forever.

2. Get in Shape

Taking a dip into the wood heat pool comes with the added benefit of gym-free, vigorous exercise. After all, wood doesn’t cut, split, stack and move itself, does it?

The winter months offer a great opportunity to feel some invigorating fresh air as you work up a sweat splitting your wood. By the time you're done stacking your wood inside the garage door, you may be warm enough that you won’t need to burn as many logs to feel warm in your house.

3. Save Money

In general, heating with wood is cheaper than fossil fuel. If you can gather your own wood, then it can be as cheap as the tools to chop it.

Even having wood for our stove delivered still cost under 100 bucks a cord. That is a significant savings over typical heating costs through the major utility companies. Even better is that your money spent on firewood is money invested into your local community.

4. Heat More Efficiently

With typical heating setups, a large amount of energy goes to waste. Do you really need a baseboard heater in the bathroom when the door is open 95% of the time? Do the bedrooms need to be the same temperature as the rest of the house? Of course not, and with a wood stove you can directly heat the areas that you want to be the warmest, such as your living room or kitchen. Heating only the spaces where you need it is good for your wallet, and our natural resources.

These are just a few of the many benefits to using a wood stove to heat your home. Besides the obvious, a fire just warms a home, both literally and figuratively.

Image Credit: Creative Commons photo by Kentishman