I have spent a few winters where our furnace was a wood stove.
And they were honestly hot winters indeed.
However, heating with a wood stove is quite labor intensive to be sure. There is a lot to it. This heating method requires yearly flue cleaning and maintenance. And of course, there is all manner of chopping, chopping and stacking of the wood. It was still a worthwhile venture and a unique experience that I will constantly remember. However, where I am now, I simply don’t think I would make it too long without modern Heating & A/C. This has nothing to do with the heating though. Our Winter is quite mild and does not require a fantastic deal of heating. But the several plus weeks of summer time are a completely odd matter. That heat and humidity is something that I just don’t think I could manage without the help of air conditioning. The temps outside hover around triple digits for at least several weeks. And it doesn’t cool off all that dramatically at evening. I can’t imagine what people went through prior to the heat pump. There was basically just an evaporative cooler. And I have been around those. Trust me, they are nothing care about a heat pump for cooling a home. Plus, they don’t mitigate the humidity levels at all. Nope, I’ll have to stick with the modern air conditioning to get through the summer time heat and humidity for sure. Without it, I’d have to head back up north and get back to a place where the summer time isn’t quite so hot. Even then, I think I’d still have to invest in a gas gas furnace to get through those winters now.