William Scott Anderson

The author/handyman William Scott Anderson has worked in the building trades for most of his life and lives with his wife Karin and their sons Forest and Oliver in Wisconsin, a place where the importance of home heating is second only to having good cheese. The author’s home, pictured on the cover, doesn’t look much different than other homes (other than being orange), but costs far less to heat. The house built in the mid 50’s, has been upgraded by the author into a super insulated home, heated by a high efficiency gas furnace and a wood furnace. The domestic hot water is heated by a vacuum tube solar system that can make it through some winters without the back-up gas water heater ever firing up. The house also has an air exchanger to provide fresh air and vent excess humidity, which also features an added intake air filter to filter out the smoke from an Outdoor Wood Boiler up the street. While his neighbor uses truck loads of wood to heat his house each winter, the author can heat his with only four cords of firewood and doesn’t smoke up the neighborhood in the process. The author has modified his wood furnace to include a simple post combustion air system made from a few pieces of plumbing pipe, that produces a smoke free fire. While not a Packer fan, (in WI that is enough to be) the “quirky” author, he does have more than a few tricks up his sleeve when it comes to saving money and finding a better way of keeping warm or cool even in hard times.