Chores

[kevin_standlee]

On Sunday, the conditions were finally all right for doing some of the outside chores. Specifically, we needed to cut some of the firewood down to size. The truckload of stop-gap cottonwood we initially bought included some pieces that were too long for the fireplace. For safety reasons, Lisa doesn't like operating the chainsaw by herself, so she had to wait for me to be here to get it done. She got out the electric chainsaw and ear protection (unfortunately, her sister in Mehama ended up commandeering her really nice ear protectors, so Lisa is using the backup set and I had to rely upon earplugs) and I held pieces of wood while she cut them down to size.

When we were finished, we had another small pile of pieces that we can actually burn. The cottonwood seems to be somewhat denser than the pine and burns longer, but also seems to leave more ash behind.

There's still one piece that's too large, but for that we really need a splitting wedge, which we do not have here in Fernley (the tool I'm wielding in the icon is Lisa's father's and is still in Mehama) and we are not going to buy for just one or two pieces of wood.

In this photo you can see another angle on the wood box that Lisa built to hold about 3/4 cord of wood on the front side of the house. She also made a small box right by the front door out of scrap lumber from the removal of the damaged floor joists.

The rest of the two cords of nice split and seasoned pine we bought are stacked here on the back side of the house on the "dog run" concrete slab. During the day and when the weather isn't bad, we'll sometimes come get wood for the fire from here rather than from the ready supply in front of the house.

After cutting the cottonwood down to size, I helped Lisa move the rest of the two cords of wood from the front yard to the pile in the "dog run" storage area. Lisa moved nearly all of the wood herself after it was delivered a couple of weeks ago, but there was a small pile left in the yard and we made short work of it.

Comments

[howeird]

I'm curious - real wood vs artificial logs? Something tells me you have done the research. :-)

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

We haven't formally researched it, but on the surface, the cost of boxes of artificial logs didn't seem good compared to firewood. Neither is that good, but we have enough money to buy them, whereas we don't have the >$5K it would take to replace the Furnace of Death.

[maurinestarkey.livejournal.com]

Lisa is so smart to wait for you before operating something as lethal as a chain saw. Good for her.

We want to see pictures of the house. Inside and out!

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

Those photos as we have collected are in my Fernley House Set, although that also includes things like the underfloor inspection and whatnot. I think this photo, taken on a snow day a couple of weeks back, is the best one online so far.

Lisa says she'll have more pictures of the inside of the house when she feels that it's tidy enough to allow it. Things are still pretty chaotic, what with us using the living room (the only room we can consistently keep warm) as the office. It's going to be months before the place is fully habitable.

[scott-sanford.livejournal.com]

You're lucky to have brought a portable micro-house with you. I think we've all had moves that would have been helped by a trailer.

[msconduct.livejournal.com]

It seems that wherever you and Lisa go, the dreaded woodsplitting follows you! Perhaps you should have considered relocating to Hawaii;). On the other hand, it must be a pleasant change that the wood appears in pieces, rather than life-and-property-threatening tree form.

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

That it is. And the roof on this house is sound, too. One of the other houses at which we looked needed a new roof, and Lisa and I both said said, "No, not again, not even at a bargain price."

[paradoox.livejournal.com]

FYI, various people have told me that burning pine is bad and builds up tar in the flue which can lead to chimney fires.

On the other hand, other people have told that if you burn pine hot enough it doesn't really matter.

Your thoughts?

(My yard is pretty much all trash (not sugar) maples, so it hasn't been an issue for me. I did have one cedar that died and I would burn a log of that from time to time, but it is all gone.

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

Well, there's some truth in this. My father, a US Forest Service officer, laid in lots of firewood (I carried much of it while growing up), and one night we did in fact have a chimney fire (we lived in a double-wide mobile home with a nice stand-alone wood stove). Rather than call the local city fire department, Dad went out and watched the flames shoot out of the chimney to see if anything else would happen. Our roof did not catch fire (he had a hose handy in case it had) and nothing else happened. After a while, the flames stopped. Dad decided that the fire had burnt the build-up off and done no other harm, and we never had any more troubles.

Lisa points out that this is well-seasoned pine, not newly-cut, and that helps keep the fire hot and thus reduces build up. Also, the wood stove insert we have here has a catalytic element that re-burns the smoke (as long you keep the fire hot enough), and that also reduces build-up.

I prefer a nice hot fire. In fact, I don't like seeing any smoke come out of the chimney at all. It should only smoke when you first start it or when you're loading fresh wood.

Steam locomotives are the same way, incidentally. Big bellowing clouds of smoke from the stack may be photogenic, but they're inefficient and much more polluting than a nice hot fire in the firebox. A railroad fireman who consistently generated lots of smoke would end up searching for new employment eventually. Steam exhaust you expect, but not lots of smoke on a well-maintained steam locomotive.