To heat your house with wood, you’ll need a good wood source. The best wood sources are woodpiles, which can be found in most suburban backyards in early fall. You should gather your wood very early in the morning, wearing dark clothing and a loaded sidearm. You should try to gather hardwoods, such as veneer, because these extinguish themselves automatically seconds after you light them, which makes them very safe. You should avoid the softwoods, such as cork, because these burn far too easily. You can cause a piece of softwood to explode into flame merely by dropping it on the ground.

The principle behind wood heat is that wood contains a certain number of British Thermal Units, or Btu’s. Btu’s are these little thermal units invented by the British to tell you how much heat you have in your wood, and like everything else invented by the British, they don’t work. Let’s say you have a log made of oak. Now a British person would claim that you’re going to get maybe 10,000 Btu’s of heat when you burn your log, but in fact you’re going to get 6 Btu’s of heat and 9,994 Btu’s of smoke. This is why virtually everyone in England wears sweaters all the time.

Now you’ll need someplace to burn your wood. You should not use your fireplace, because scientists now believe that, contrary to popular opinion, fireplaces actually remove heat from houses. Really, that’s what scientists believe. In fact, many scientists actually use their fireplaces to cool their houses in the summer. If you visit a scientist’s house on a sultry August day, you’ll find a cheerful fire roaring on the hearth and the scientist sitting nearby, remarking on how cool he is and drinking heavily.

Instead of a fireplace, you should heat your house with a woodstove, preferably one that is airtight. To test for airtightness, leave a smallish animal that your children have not grown fond of, such as a chicken, inside the stove for several days. You can use the chicken later to clean your chimney.