As a kid in the 1960s, on Narragansett Bay in Rhode Island, the house I was born into had oil-fired heat by a forced hot air (FHA) furnace. I can’t picture the furnace, but I still have a visual of the uninsulated ductwork in the basement, probably since that was a highway for rats that lived in the seawall four feet from our house.
Similarly, when mom and dad moved us to Nay Pond in West Milan in 1970, I have even less recollection of a furnace. There was a woodstove in the living room, as I recall, but that could be fiction. I know there was a propane tank outside, but that may have just been for the kitchen range. What did I know about such things then, I was just eight years old.
Same goes for the house in Gorham, on the Androscoggin River. I knew nothing about heating systems and was just learning about transistor radios – I got one as a Christmas present in 1971, and it was made in Japan.
What I remember best about heating systems when I was a kid was the cast-iron woodstove in our next house in South Sutton, near Blaisdell Lake. It had four mica windows in the front door, for ambiance. The warm glow through them on a deep freeze in January accentuated the intense heat and, therefore, my feelings of warmth and safety. The radiant and convective heat the stove gave off became intense, which was fine first thing in the morning when nary a hot coal remained but soon were abundant once the kindling was replaced by hardwood ablaze. To get the whole thing really cooking the side door remained open an inch or two so the fire was seemingly force-fed room air by the high negative draft that pulled it through the combustion process and up the cinder block chimney.
While that all seems cozy and reassuring as far as heating systems go, it surely was not an automatically run system. Someone had to make the fire for it didn’t start itself. Then, that person – yes, just one person got the stove going and up to temperature, had to be on standby as the attendant during the initial start-up. Once the fire was established with dry wood, then it was more an automatic perpetual combustion machine, that is, only if more wood was chucked onto the base of coals and flaming dense oak, beech, maple or birch of some color – yellow, white or silver. Get distracted by something else, and the fire might need to be re-started. Otherwise, just a few log quarters atop the base coals and flame every so often and the fire produced heat in abundance.
Certainly, no wood equals no fire. Likewise, no dry wood, no fire. In either case, no heat equals frozen hot-water and cold-water pipes in some cranny of construction near a leaky rim joist or sill.
Not intentionally, my work ethic began its life-long course with sawing and chopping down trees to burn with a misery whip or axe with hard maple handle that felt good in my hands, that is, when the handle was new. After a series of unintended missed connections with the axe head and the log to be split, the handle wood smash against the log and too much of this would cause the handle to splinter in time, needing for it to be replaced. This was especially the case in our first year of cutting wood. We had no chainsaw and all thirteen cords of wood four-feet by four-feet by eight-feet on volume each were cut manually. Most of this wood was cut by me and my Irish twin brother, Paul. We were ten and eleven. I had three other brothers, who helped but in the pecking order Paul and I somehow won the wood-cutting lottery and what we won in the end was our very survival. No wood/no heat/no warmth/no water/no life. That’s how it works. And there are no substitutes in a very poor family of ten, two Newfoundland dogs and a gray cat.
All thirteen family members vied for space around the Franklin cast-iron woodstove. There was no oil or gas-fired furnace appliance. The only appliances we owned were a washer and dryer, a kitchen range powered by electricity, an electric water heater and the trusted wood stove. This was the case for the next six years, with the exception that dad bought a small, affordable Poulan chainsaw the second year, then Paul bought his own Jonsered chainsaw with money he earned doing odd jobs the third year. The misery whip was retired, along with the buck saws and bow saws. The chainsaws, splitting mauls and wedges were the primary tools, until we ran out of gas or 2-cycle oil or chain oil.
That is the boiled-down version of burning wood as a sole source of fuel used for heating a home. To add a little flavor to the process, I should add some real-world factors to this story. Cutting green (wet) wood to burn right away leads to fires that won’t start no matter how much newspaper and kindling one uses to get one going, it will only smolder and produce lots of creosote, which will lead to a chimney fire eventually. Throwing used crank-case oil on the wet wood will typically only result in a crank-case oil fire. When it’s gone, it leaves behind hot, wet, steaming green wood. Throwing gasoline, denatured alcohol, turpentine, acetone, paint thinner and the like on a pile of green wet wood can result in a severely burned fire attendant and a house aflame.
The answer to wet wood for fuel is to already have a large established fire with plenty of dry fuel left below it. Only then can one or two wet logs be thrown atop it with reasonable expectation that it will burn. Still, creosote will collect in the smoke-pipe and chimney flue if this practice continues for long. And if the firebox is small, well, good luck getting wet wood to burn at all. There is a good reason why water is used for putting out fires – it is not flammable! Green wood is replete with water, and in most instances, it too is not flammable. If you want to put out a fire, throw lots of green wood on top of it.
The solution to wet wood is to season it for at least a year. Then, the fibers will likely dry and they will ignite easily with enough paper and kindling – usually dry finely split logs and tree branches – for starting the logs above. To keep the pile of wood from being soaked with each rainstorm, throw a plastic tarp over it, but leave the lower levels open so the pile can dehumidify when it isn’t raining. Store the wood piles in the sun, not shade. Use the ashes from spent fires to mix with animal/people urine to create excellent fertilizer for gardening or use it plain for mulch to control weeds.
If that process seems too much for you, plus the very heavy lifting, dragging, splitting, stacking is beyond your physical capabilities, then you are going to need coal, fuel oil, kerosene, or propane, and solar power generation and storage for what’s coming dead ahead: the worst economic collapse of an empire in recorded history.
If you don’t believe this, then perhaps you will believe me when I have a bridge that you can buy. But that would just be a bridge to nowhere. Pry your eyes open with a wonder bar and read this…
The Looming Debt Crisis: Is America Following the Path of Collapsed Empires?
by Nick Giambruno
Debt can topple even the most powerful empires.
Whether it’s Rome, Spain, France, Britain, or the Soviet Union, excessive debt has played a critical role in their decline.
The typical pattern in these examples of collapsing empires is:
Stage #1: Empires achieve success and become overconfident.
Stage #2: Overconfidence leads to extravagant spending on luxuries and wars.
Stage #3: Empires finance this lavish spending by going into debt.
Stage #4: The debt grows to an unsustainable level and creates a crushing burden.
Stage #5: Empires finance the debt through taxation and currency debasement.
Stage #6: The populace bears the brunt of debt repayment as empires raise taxes and debase the currency—to the maximum extent—until it causes internal instability.
Stage #7: Empires cannot finance their militaries because of their debt burden. This is usually the tipping point.
Stage #8: Underfunded militaries plus internal instability make empires vulnerable to foreign invasion, domestic revolution, civil war, and other existential dangers.
Stage #9: The empire collapses.
Now, it’s the US Empire’s turn.
The US federal government has the biggest debt in the history of the world. And it’s continuing to grow at a rapid, unstoppable pace.
Annualized interest on the federal debt exceeded $1.2 trillion recently and is shooting higher at an exponential rate.
The federal debt’s annualized interest cost is already higher than the defense budget.
It’s on track to exceed Social Security and become the BIGGEST item in the federal budget.
Historian Niall Ferguson summed it up nicely:
“Any great power that spends more on debt service (interest payments on the national debt) than on defense will not stay great for very long.”
Consider this:
1. The American populace is nearing its breaking point as taxation and inflation rise.
2. Interest on the federal debt exceeds defense spending and is set to become the BIGGEST expenditure, and it will keep growing from there.
As a result, the US Empire is somewhere between Stage #6 and #7 in the empire collapse pattern I described above. It is nearing the point where its crushing debt burden will make it difficult to finance existing military spending.
As we saw in the historical examples, a tipping point is reached once an empire’s debt burden becomes so great that it struggles to pay for its military. It’s like someone waving a big red flag.
The US government will soon have to choose to:
1. Cut defense spending amid the most chaotic geopolitical period since WW2.
2. Default on its promises regarding Social Security, Medicare, Veterans’ Benefits, and welfare generally.
Though it may try, the US government cannot continue to pay for entitlements and defense even if their current levels stay flat into the future. But they won’t stay flat. Both are set to grow significantly in the years ahead.
Tens of millions of Baby Boomers—about 20% of the population—will enter retirement in the coming years. Cutting Social Security and Medicare is a sure way to lose an election.
With the most precarious geopolitical situation since World War 2, defense spending is unlikely to be cut. Instead, defense spending is all but certain to increase.
Former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates recently said: “Barely staying even with inflation or worse is wholly inadequate. Significant additional resources for defense are necessary and urgent.”
The most likely outcome is that the US will try to have its cake and eat it too by paying for both growing defense and domestic obligations via currency debasement. However, it will likely end up just like other powerful collapsed empires that preceded it—with an underfunded military and domestic instability.
The truth is that Trump cannot make America great again any more than Gorbachev could save the Soviet Union.
Once an empire struggles to pay for its military, the decline is impossible to reverse.
Consider this.
The Denarius—the Roman silver coin—lost nearly all its silver content between 180 and 280 AD.
The US dollar has lost over 98% of its value against gold since 1971.
Just as the Roman citizens realized their government was defaulting on its promises to them through currency debasement, I am confident that Social Security and Medicare recipients and others who have been promised something from the US federal government will notice they are being paid in debased currency. They won’t be happy.
Just as Roman soldiers realized they were being paid in debased currency, I am confident American soldiers will realize the same thing, and they won’t be happy either.
In short, the US will soon reach the tipping point that has caused the collapse of other powerful empires.
Its crushing debt burden is nearing the point where it will cause the military to be underfunded and internal instability as average citizens bear the brunt of debt repayment through increased taxation, inflation, and broken promises on Social Security and other programs.
Remember, the interest expense is set to exceed Social Security and become the BIGGEST item in the budget. It will only get bigger from there as the debt continues to grow at an unstoppable and exponential rate.
Therefore, I don’t think it will be long before the exploding interest expense crowds out funding for defense, Social Security, and other domestic commitments.
As that happens, I expect the US is headed for a disaster of historical proportions.
I am confident that the collapse of the US Empire, which has been in place since the end of WW2—otherwise known as the US-led world order—could happen a lot sooner than most realize.
The global geopolitical situation was already trending towards a multipolar world order.
The US debt crisis is compounding its geopolitical problems and will accelerate this established trend.
That means we’re likely to see the end of the US-led world order and the emergence of a multipolar world order in the not-so-distant future.
Many people will be unprepared for the collapse of the US Empire.
However, when you look at the Big Picture, that is where I think we’re headed. And just like the collapse of previous empires, debt will play a significant role.
When private businesses go bankrupt, shareholders get wiped out.
When governments go bankrupt, those who hold its fiat currency get wiped out.
Given the historical examples, one thing I think we can be sure of is that the US government will try to service its debt costs with currency debasement, just like many empires that collapsed before it.
That’s terrible news for the US dollar.
The consequences of this debt crisis will extend far beyond geopolitics.
As the US government resorts to increasingly aggressive currency debasement to fund its obligations, the value of the dollar will continue to erode—and capital will seek refuge in scarce assets.
Gold will likely be one of the primary beneficiaries. But silver could offer even greater speculative upside.
So, it is time to face the reality that the United States economy will soon collapse, and the Trump & Netanyahu fomented war is all scripted so Mr. Global can control the collapse in the direction that sets he and his cronies/actors in a place of dominance in the New World Order. Ignore this and you will likely die in the very near future.
To remain alive in the next few years, you will need shelter, heat, food and water as a basis for human survival. Then, you will need the means to defend those assets.
This story is about heat as a mandatory asset, and the only fuel that is of great abundance in New Hampshire: firewood. Just like shelter, food and water, if you don’t have wood, you will not survive – you will die in the first winter of the collapse. You can survive without electricity, which also will be going away during the collapse, but lack of it will make it hard to collect water, and if you don’t have filtered/purified water, you will die.
Call me a conspiracy theorist, a stupid person, a pessimist, a doomsayer, an ignoramus, a negative ninny and I will, in turn, call you naïve and too trusting of the system which we all live within. Trump won’t save you. The governor won’t save you. The legislature – state or federal – won’t save you. Perhaps, the local government may help, but only if they are not controlled in some way. In reality, when have they ever represented you beyond a small-town level? Do the research ongoing and anyone will discern they represent moneyed interests, secret societies, intelligence agencies, the military industrial complex, the technocrats, the pedophiles, the religious institutions, and the Big Club that you and I are not in. Regardless of party affiliation. When the collapse comes, only you will represent you, your family and dearest friends, and your pets.
With that out of the way, let’s shift to why you should be planning to install a wood stove, a wood-fired boiler and a wood-fired gravity hot air furnace.
A wood-fired boiler can be installed indoors or outdoors. If it is indoors, all the better… in most cases. To utilize a wood boiler indoors, you will need several things.
- A chimney that is in good condition: solid brick and block and solid mortar between them. For all of human inhabitation of earth, people have used chimneys, lined and unlined, to vent wood fires into the outdoors. Without them, one will succumb to flue gas poisoning. All flue gasses must be exhausted outdoors! A badly maintained chimney with crumbling brick and mortar can be a source of flue gas poisoning. A new chimney with or without a tile lining will work great to vent combustion gas. I know, most will say that the chimney needs a stainless-steel or tile lining. But those are relatively recent innovations that help to prevent combustion gasses from leaking into occupied dwellings, and, yes, they are required by code in most towns. That said, a wood-fired appliance will vent acceptably in an unlined chimney of solid construction. They have for the entirety of human civilization, so let us not get hung up on this. A crumbling chimney should be fixed whether or not it is lined!
- A continuous source for dry wood.
- A wood-fired boiler and a huge plus, an indirect-fired water heater. This water heater consists of a coil inside it that boiler (stagnant) water circulates through, either by convective force or by an electrically driven circulator. Really, I am talking about a re-circulator, as in the means for continuously recirculating heated boiler water through the boiler, then through the pipes between the boiler and the water heater coil, then through the coil and then back to the boiler “return” inlet and back through the boiler and out the “supply” outlet and repeating the cycle through the entire “loop” over and over again until the water heater water is “up to temperature.” The coil inside the water heater is surrounded by potable (drinkable) water and absorbs the heat from the boiler water inside the coil. Otherwise known as, domestic hot water. Heat always moves in the direction of less heat. Hot only goes to cold. This is why re-circulation can occur without an electrically powered circulator (which is not a pump). This used to be called Gravity Hot Water, that is, before electricity was available.
- Human labor to cut, split, stack, haul wood and set it afire with a reliable ignition source. Then, maintain the fire for as long as it is needed.
Secondly, wood can be burned indoors in a forced hot air furnace. Instead of water, air is re-circulated through the space, but it can’t be used to heat potable water.
Thirdly, an outside boiler can be used when no indoor chimney is available. However, the fire must be burned continuously, or it will need to have non-toxic propylene-glycol anti-freeze so the system components outside don’t freeze and break under hydraulic pressure. When water freezes it expands and will break steel, plastic and copper pipes, under the right conditions. You’ll want to make sure this never happens!
Yes, and outside boiler can heat an indirect-fired water heater that is installed indoors.
Once more, no wood/no fire/no heat/frozen water pipes/death. In that order. This is not hyperbole! This is survival 101.
Here’s the pitch:
I grew up in a home for six years that had no central heating system, just a woodstove, and if that doesn’t kill you – it can be very hard, physically – it will create deep satisfaction sitting in front of the wood-burning appliance, or, at least, it will create a lasting work ethic. I know. I lived it. Ironically, I became a heating technician and technologist focusing on central heating systems, chimneys and fuel sources. Therefore, I know how to create heating systems comprised of a wood-burning combustion chamber and means for re-circulating heated air and water/anti-freeze.
I have been in the Heating, Ventilating, Air Conditioning and (HVAC) and Refrigeration trade since Tech School in 1980. I have been in business since 1988. I became an inventor of numerous industry standard mechanical devices and have my own mechanical product line that I have made in New England and right here in New Hampshire. I am a licensed propane, natural gas and oil heating systems designer, installer and service and maintenance technician and then some.
I design and install wood-fired stoves, furnaces and boilers. After 46 years in this industry, I am a master at most things in HVAC and Indoor Climate Control, including air cleanliness and humidity control. I can design the perfect wood-fired system for your needs and that will keep you warm during the nearby economic collapse, but you’d better not wait. The intentional war of choice is going to make even simple commodities so expensive that many will not be able to afford them.
Call me now!
800-598-5949
Let’s discuss your needs. There’s very little time left for waiting.
