We also were smart to add a wood stove to our house to supplement the central heating system, and it definitely helps.
After living in the hot south for two decades straight, I was happy to move back to my home state when my wife sold her business two years ago. We decided to live off my income for a while because I received a promotion and suddenly had the ability to work remotely as well. However, going back up north took some time to adjust to such a drastic shift in climate conditions outside. For one, winters in the north last for anywhere between six and seven months some years, and it seems to just be getting worse with climate change. You can’t get comfortable when temperatures outside are far below zero. You need a house that has good insulation inside and can retain warm temperatures whenever you have the central heating system running. On top of that, the cost of heating alone is so high that it’s really intimidating if you’re not solid on finances like my wife and I are right now. We also were smart to add a wood stove to our house to supplement the central heating system, and it definitely helps. Here’s a great example of why a wood stove is helpful when using it in tandem with a furnace. If you come home and your heat is off and your house is as cold as the air outside, it’s going to require a ton of energy to get your furnace to raise the temperatures enough to get them back into the 50s or 60s to where you want them to stay overnight. But by starting a fire in your wood stove, you can preheat your house before turning on your furnace, thus saving all of that energy you would have otherwise consumed.