We love the toasty warmth our Kimberly wood stove throws off, but...it doesn't stay lit all night and it obviously doesn't continue burning when we're not here.

​For our first 18 months in the house, we relied on our DeLonghi portable radiant heater to augment the wood stove, even plugging in a second unit for the coldest days. We  kept the space heater(s) set at a base temp (between 64 and 70 degrees, depending on the last person to fiddle with the thermostat). While the heater is quiet, relatively efficient and effective, it takes up floor space and requires a cord. (Some of us have serious cord issues...) 

We continued looking for a more efficient, space-saving, cordless heat source. Thanks to other tiny house blogs like The Tiny Project, Tiny House Giant Journey and Jess and Tim's Tiny House, we knew to take a close look at the Envi convection heater. Its slim, wall-mounted design alone makes it a great tiny house fit—no floor space required! I also love that it blends in with our white walls. (If your walls aren't white, it can be painted.)

So, it's an obvious win-win when it comes to size and looks. But does it keep us warm?

The short answer: it certainly helps keep us warm. We chose to mount our Envi on the bathroom wall, a space the furthest away from our wood stove. Placing it in that walled space means it could never heat our entire tiny house. But we're impressed enough with the Envi's performance, that we're getting a second unit to mount in the main living space of the house. We think the two wall-mounted heaters will be sufficient to keep us at a base warm temp. Then we'll fire up the wood stove when we're here, and we want more heat. 

Some specs on the Envi:

• Low energy requirements  (475 watts; 3.95 Amps; 120 volts).
• One unit heats up to 130 square feet.
• Built-in thermostat.
• Corded and cordless models available.
• Space saver: wall-mounted and only two inches thick.
• Wallet-friendly pricing (less than $150).
• Quiet.
• Safe (even at its highest setting, it won't burn anyone).

Please click on the photos below for more details.

Sealing up our tiny house to keep rain and cold winds at bay seemed a no-brainer. But our "tight envelope" also means that moisture created inside the house doesn't have a way out unless we open a window or door. This is because one of our overlooked items was a ventilation system. Oops.

We looked at a thousand options: pricey HRVs (heat recovery ventilators), less-than-robust solar vent fans, bulky (read ugly) exhaust fans...and we didn't decide. And then we sort of forget to remember to figure out how we were going to deal with moisture in our tiny, well-sealed house.

Fast forward to winter. We cook with moisture-producing alcohol. We run water to wash our dishes. We take moisture-producing showers. We have moisture-producing bodies. You get the idea. As a result,  we have enough moisture in the air that condensation forms along the bottom of many of our windows on these sub-freezing days. (Today, with the outside temp at 12 degrees, ice crystals formed on the shaded windows.)

Leave too much moisture in a house too long and you'll find mold. Seal up a house too tight without moving air and you build up carbon dioxide in the air. Obviously, we don't want either of those.

Long term, we plan to find an exhaust fan for the bathroom to deal with both moisture and any odors. Having an intake vent on the other end of the house would bring a little fresh air near our bed. It would also bring in cold on days like today. That's where having an HRV comes in. Essentially the warm air going out heats up the cold air coming in. The smallest, most efficient HRV we've found is the Lunos e2—but it comes with a high price tag ($1000+) and it requires thicker walls than we have. We have to keep looking for a ventilation system to manage our air quality.

In the meantime, we crack windows when we cook on our alcohol stove and after we shower. Anytime the temperature gets high enough, we open enough windows and doors to move air through the house. Plus, we have a carbon monoxide detector to monitor air quality and a thermometer/hygrometer that tells us how much water vapor is in our air.

To tackle the moisture issue, we started with a low-tech silica moisture absorber, specifically the Eva-Dry E-500 that had been recommended by another tiny house dweller. As far as we can tell, it has no significant impact on the humidity of our house. Yes, it has absorbed some moisture (the beads have turned from blue to pink, so it's time to plug it in and "renew" its absorbency), but it's designed to work in a small, enclosed space—not a 250-square-foot house. So, we bought a "petite" dehumidifier, also by Eva Dry, that pulls water out of the air and deposits it into a tank. This works; we can see the water collect in the tank after we turn the dehumidifier on and we can watch the humidity reading go down on our thermo hygrometer. Plus, the machine is relatively quiet and doesn't draw much electricity.

Before we plugged in the dehumidifier, our humidity readings were regularly around 55%. Too moist. Right now, with the dehumidifier running, we're at 46%. Ideally, with the weather this cold outside and the house between 65 and 70 degrees, we would be at 35%, according to what I've read. 

Keeping the house warm in this weather, brings us to another purchase: our DeLonghi radiant heater. Actually, it's plural now; we bought a second heater, so we could position them on both ends of the house to keep things reasonably warm (around 64 degrees). We like the DeLonghi because it's quiet and efficient; once we get the house at a base temperature, we can leave the heaters on the energy efficient setting that draws lower amps.

When the weather dips in the evening, we fire up our Kimberly wood stove. With the stove burning, temps easily reach 75 degrees inside the house. We can feed the fire less and tamp it down to stay closer to 70, but lately we haven't minded the extra heat. (One important air quality note: the Kimberly stove draws air from outside—via a pipe that runs down through the floor—so that oxygen in the house isn't depleted.) The wood stove offers an added benefit, as well: it helps with our moisture issues by drying the air.