Home of Julie.Anne.McRae and George.Brown
The Christmas stove
Lighting the first fire
This year’s Christmas present to ourselves was a new woodstove for the Balehouse. In a way, it is also a present to our guests as we were suspicious that the older stove was past its prime. Very fancy, by our standards, it is properly rated and can be as close as 16 inches from the wall. Unfortunately our last stove needed to be miles away and the stove pipe still dictates the placement of the new one. At least we were able to take out the sand/brick/box flooring and we laid out just the bricks making for a smaller footprint.
To make the most of the glass door we turned the stove to face into the room. That means we will have to rethink the flooring in front of it, but it also frees up a fair amount of space to the side.
Why is it when we put something together we need tools that are not where we are at the time? I think we could be assembling something in the toolshed itself, and still have to go search another compound building for some necessary implement. So it was to the house for the right screwdrivers, to the toolshed for the jigsaw, to the corral for the shovel and bucket, to the hayshed to hunt for the tinsnips, back to the house for a replacement jigsaw blade, and on and on it went. Apart from the exercise however, removing 1-1/2 inches from the existing stovepipe was the only fussy work required and the assembly went without cussing.
We lit the first fire, ceremoniously, with the leftover Christmas wrapping paper. The internal baffle design that is supposed to keep more of the heat in the stove, and less up the stovepipe made it a little bit harder to get started, but I don’t call me “One-Match McRae” for nothing. Because of the airtight door and oddly placed air vent, it is also harder to keep going too. Keeping the door ajar gets the oxygen flowing, but then it smokes into the room. The logs burned more slowly (good!) but the box is smaller and holds less (bad!) I spent the evening and night by myself up there and am not yet convinced that this is the right stove for the job.
George did buy one of those eco-fans that use the rising heat of the stovetop to turn fan blades and help distribute the heated air. That thing works like crazy. You can feel the warm breeze halfway across the room. I definitely noticed a more even temperature between the upstairs and downstairs space. Very cool.
3 Responses to “The Christmas stove”
shouldn’t that be “very warm”?
Glad to see the stove is working well and, more importantly, One Match McRae’s reputation still intact.
Fire good. Cold bad. Black box in balehouse make warm fire. Black box good. Me like black box. Hug black box to say thank you. AAAIIIIIIIIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE