I took a walk along the park’s scenic highway this morning and noticed some significant stacks of firewood along the way. They are the result of the hard work that some volunteer crews have been doing in getting the downed logs out of the forest from the steeper, more difficult areas that were mitigated for wildfire in recent years.
The thought occurred to me that we just completed our fifth year of heating the Horseshoe Lodge with the wood that we pull out of these forests. Over five winters, we have burned a fair share of firewood to transfer the solar energy that is stored in the wood into the the loop of water that circulates throughout the lodge’s 14,000 square feet, keeping it warm and comfortable (also heating the water for domestic needs like showers). Had we not installed this heating woody biomass heating system, we would have burned so many thousands of gallons of propane at a cost that very well would have been unaffordable.
Thanks to this heating system, we utilize the logs from our mitigation efforts to heat the lodge, we have a healthier forest by thinning the unnaturally overgrown forest, the park and surrounding area is less vulnerable to catastrophic wildfire, we utilize a local source of energy, we prevent the burning of thousands of gallons of fossil fuels (and the carbon from ancient carbon cycles that these fuels release when burned), and we provide local jobs in managing the forest health / wildfire mitigation efforts and the biomass heating system.
After five years, the heating system has more than paid for itself in recouping the initial cost of installing the system in savings from projected propane costs. It would be fair to say that, had we had to go with a propane heating system, the renovation of the Horseshoe Lodge would very possibly not have been done, due to the projected astronomical costs of buying propane to heat the building. A win-win-win situation if you ask me!