We have a regency free standing mid size stove tucked in the corner of the open main floor, which is concrete which helps for keeping the temperature stable all day. The stove is right beside the back door for easy loading and little mess, and then our stairs going up is open into main floor, so lots of air natural air movement, so it actually heats both floors quite well!
If it it gets to like -30C with windchill we would keep the bedroom doors open a few inches if you want it warm in those rooms.
This design was mostly dumb luck as the woodstove was a bit of an after thought, but it works great for heating with a small amount of wood and minimal PITA factor.
If I built again, I would certainly include a wood stove and design around it with a bit more thought, as it takes care of a lot of potential problems in the winter, as now power failures are just a fun day or two off, saves some money, provide you some paid exercise, and gives you an excuse to have some saws and cut down trees!
How did you manage to dice up the huge tree trunks on your driveway? They aren't my favorite to deal with!
I had one dying fence line Ash tree taken down by an arborist. It was about 3.5' diameter up to about 18', and then it got bigger with 20" branches going in all directions. I left a lot of big crotches in the woods and just cut up the mostly straight-ish grain parts, as it was but even then it was almost 3 cords!
I have a 36" bar and full skip chain for my 372 for stuff like that, but it was still working the saw pretty good! I went down one side cutting with the 36", then switched back the other side to finish the cuts. Each wagon wheel was around 500lbs, so I cut a bit of notch to help start splitting it, then flopped it down and split it with the maul into firewood size.
