We Have Fire! And Camouflage.

It's so warm!  On Sunday Brandon and I were able to finish the stove pipe that goes from our new wood stove into the chimney liner inside the old brick chimney.  We had to use a hacksaw to cut some pipes to the right length, and use some special metal screws to hold it all together.  So far, everything is working like a charm and we don't have any smoke escaping.  Now, before the glass door gets all smoke stained, it's lovely to watch logs burn while we sit on the couches.  Steam comes from the dragons nostrils quickly, because the stove gets hot fast when the damper is open.  

Brandon thinks the stove pipe and the stove in front of the fireplace looks kind of strange, but I don't mind it.  I like strange.  You can see the heat shield that we installed over the horizontal pipe near the wood ceiling.  When Brandon told me the chimney liner installer said we needed a shield to protect the ceiling, I imagined a big shiny metal thing, but this is just a slightly larger black pipe that rests on ceramic spacers on screws on the chimney pipe, so there is a gap between the pipe and the shield. It looks okay to me.

This stove came with an electric fan that bolts to a plate that covers the back of the stove.  There's an inch or two of space between the back of the stove and the plate, and the fan blows air into this gap and sends warm air blowing out of that space and into the room.  Nice!  It's like setting a box fan behind the stove to blow the warm air around, which I've seen people do.  The fan is kind of noisy, but it has a handy switch so we can turn it off if we don't want it to blow.  I like being able to stand near the stove and have a warm breeze.

Now that we have a working stove, and Brandon has filled our wood shed, I'm almost ready for some cool weather.  Did you see the frost on the grass this morning?  Our hot tub has been out of order for months now, but a new part is on its way, and Brandon has a repair plan.  Once the hot tub is working again, I'll be ready to accept that winter is coming.  To block the cool breeze from the goats and donkey, I hung a lovely camouflage tarp on the north side of the shed, and on the gate near where the goats sleep.

Rufus was terrified of the tarp at first, but I think it was because he didn't want camouflage decor!

Peaches wasn't sure about the pattern either, but she has enough manners not to complain.

Once Rufus got used the flapping tarp, he discovered how much fun it is to yank on it and create chaos playing with the tarp.  I have a feeling we are going to be winterizing the barn with more sturdy materials very soon, since the tarp isn't going to last long now that it's his new favorite toy.  Silly donkey.

Wood for the Winter

If you remember my posts from last fall, we were busy building our rocket mass heater stove.  Last winter we used a combination of electric baseboard heaters and kerosene most of the time, since the rocket mass stove we built wasn't very reliable.  This year, the plan is to use our new wood stove, once we get all the pipes put together.  Just as a comparison, the rocket mass heater had hours and hours of labor invested in it, but only a few hundred dollars worth of duct work, straw, and perlite, since we scavenged the bricks and dug up the clay from the yard.  The new wood stove only took a few minutes to carry into the house, but the cost of the stove plus the expense of having a professional install a new liner in our chimney puts it closer to two thousand dollars.  If we get what we pay for, then this stove better work!  

We have some firewood already stockpiled, but we don't think it's enough to get through the winter. Fortunately, all of our big pretty ash trees that grow in our fence lines have died over the past few years due to the emerald ash borer.  This is sad, but also nice that we have several years worth of firewood standing and drying out, just waiting for Brandon to chop up.  He felled a few small ones, and then this big tree.  

Because the tree died recently, it still had most of the small branches, and when it crashed to the ground they broke into kindling laid out in a tree shape!  How handy, right?

 Now comes his favorite part - chopping up the logs!  Chop, Brandon, chop!!