Heating up the Holiday

Sometimes the simplest gestures can make all the difference.

Some friends gave us a wood stove (more like a wood burning furnace) that they no longer needed and we installed it in the workshop. I planned to run the pipe straight up and through the roof. That seemed the simplest plan. The lumberyard had an installation kit that had "everything you need to seal up around the stovepipe" for about $50. When I asked about insulation so I don't burn the shop down, the guy said, "Oh, yeah, you'll also need a high-temp adaptor for that."

"And how much is that?"

"About $200.00"

AAAHHHHHHHHHH!!!!

My neighbor suggested just busting a hole in the block wall, mortering an 8" drain tile into the hole and running the stove pipe out through the tile. I envisioned myself, a sledge hammer and a block wall... Images of Berlin a few years ago came to mind. Hmm... no, there must be a better way.

We have three windows in our workshop. Sort of. One is a good window in the end wall above our stationary workbench, and is irrelevant to this discussion. Another good window is near where I wanted to install the stove. It lets in light, but offers no view other than the dirt and grass sloping sharply up beside the shop. That's part of living on the side of a mountain. Opposite that window is a window-hole that I boarded up with a removable shutter so we could open it in the summer for extra light and ventilation, but remains closed in the winter because the window was broken out, frame smashed and I can't find replacement windows the same size.

I thought about moving the stove over to the opposite wall and running the stove pipe out through the boarded up window opening. But because of the tool arrangement, that would be very awkward. What to do, what to do?

So Marie says, "Why don't you leave the stove where it is and move the window. That way you have the heater where you want it, we get more light and our view out over the valley."

Duh! No wonder she's the boss.

It wasn't quite that simple -- nothing ever is -- but it did work out. I used a panel of cement board (Durock - fire proof) to fill in where I took the good window out of the back wall, cut a nice neat round hole for the stove pipe through that and we now have wood heat in the shop. We also have a lovely view down our front "yard" and across the valley to English Mountain, as well as a good view of the sunsets in the evening.

Before the wood stove, we used a small propane furnace as our primary heat source. I turned it down at night to keep the shop at 35° to 40° -- just enough to keep supplies from freezing, and around 60° during the day. Warm, sunny days helped considerably to stretch the fuel supply, but on average we were filling our 40 pound propane cylinder once per week, at $18 per pop. But the cost of propane is up from last year almost 50%. Now we use the propane just at night, and the same cylinder has lasted us 3 weeks -- including the recent cold snap where it was getting down into the teens at night. In normal temperatures, it will last even longer. That helps a lot.

Of course the trade-off is that we have to go wandering through the woods gathering up firewood once a week. And a lot of what we bring back is in the form of large branches and small logs that have to be cut up, but Mom gave us an electric chainsaw she brought with her when she moved from Nebraska. I have no idea what they were going to do with it. It had been used once by my half-brother; Brian. He neglected to set the tension on the chain before using starting it up, so it jumped it's track right way. Disgusted, he stuck it back in the box and never touched it again. It works fine if you do it right.

So our mornings are scented with the fragrance of wood smoke, the shop is warm and our forst gets cleaned up of deadwood. It's all good, and we're grateful for it all.

Merry Christmas!