As I set out to document my adventures in lowering my family's carbon footprint, I should probably start at the beginning. Which means rewinding to right when we moved into our new home last year.

Fortunately for the sake of this project (although not for the sake of carbon emissions), the previous owners of our home didn't use their wood stove (they were afraid of it) and they didn't have a programmable thermostat. One of the first things I did as we were getting settled here was replace the thermostat with a programmable model, then fire up our EPA Certified Wood Burning Stove.

While I don't know the exact details of how our home's previous tenants set their thermostat, I do have records of how much natural gas they burned keeping the place warm. And so I can say that, even though I work from home and keep the place nice and toasty almost all winter long, I've slashed our natural gas bill in HALF just by programming my thermostat to drop to 60 degrees during times when nobody's home or when I'm burning wood. And that savings more than paid for the cord of pine and the cord of almond I burned last year, plus the cost of having our chimney cleaned at the end of the season.

Some will say – I can hear them already – that burning wood means cutting down forests and belching smoke into the air. My response: Check out this fantastic rundown of why burning wood makes sense. If you disagree with the opinions and facts reported there, drop me a note. For me, the fact that the CO2 released during burning is part of the natural carbon/carbon dioxide cycle is most compelling. That means the CO2 released during a burn is CO2 the tree absorbed during its life, and therefore is not adding additional greenhouse gasses to the atmosphere the way fossil fuels do.

Others might attack my observations with mathematical formulas that show gas to be more efficient, and therefore economical in their particular circumstances. I say my experience speaks for itself; cutting natural gas use in half while adding the ambience of a crackling fire to our home sure feels like the right choice. And that doesn't factor in other benefits – such as the security of knowing I can heat my home if there's a power outage or disruption in my natural gas service. In an area where it can be below freezing for weeks at a time, that's an important consideration.

Click here for another good comparison of gas vs. wood stoves.

Next: L.E.D. Astray.