Woodstove

Tonight I used my woodstove to heat the house. The first time since I last used the woodstove in the Spring.  It has been colder this past week.  Outside temperatures with highs in the 50s and lows of 20 degrees.  Inside the house it was now 53 degrees.  Time to heat the house up.  And the woodstove did.

Cold, rainy day

Today it rained most of the day.  Our high temperature was only 47 degrees, well below normal.  It got down to 52 degrees in the house so I had the first woodstove fire of the season to warm the house up.  An earlier fire than normal.  Daisy spent most of the day laying near the woodstove.  I didn't do much else either.

Tree stumps 6 and 7 in 2018

As I mentioned in my previous post, yesterday evening I burnt two rotting tree stumps.  As it started to sprinkle rain lightly after dark I figured the moisture would put an end to the fire's smoldering by morning.  But I checked today - after a rainy night and day - and the stumps were still smoldering.  I have hopes they will continue to smolder and burn all of the stumps.

Tree stump 6

Tree stump 6

Tree stump 6

Tree stump 7

Tree stump 7

Tree stump 7

The cattle came over to watch the fires with me.

Big Red

Speckles watching tree stump 7's fire

The next afternoon when I checked the tree stumps the cattle came over to see what I was doing.

In the previous post I mentioned I didn't bring back to split now all the logs I had cut recently.  I added some of them to this stack of logs to be split.  The tall 'logs' on the left front are from the tree stumps I burnt last night.  The outside 'shell' of the stumps fell apart revealing the rotting stumps underneath.  I think it happened this way because for a few years ants made a home inside the stumps under the 'shells'.  Once the shells fell apart the ants moved.  So, no ants were harmed in the burning of the stumps.

After checking on the smoldering stumps I walked to the river.  Several ducks paddled upstream after I approached the riverbank.

It is a cold and wet day today.  This afternoon I lit a fire in my woodstove for the first time this season.  Before that it was 53 degrees inside the house.  Daisy, after a busy morning where she/he visited the doctor for an ear checkup and distemper and leukemia shots, decided to take her afternoon nap inside the house after the fire started.  Between the time she returned home and when I started the woodstove fire, Daisy was a little skittish, especially when I walked near the pet carrier.

Snow

Yesterday morning and this morning I woke up to some snow covering the grass.  Both days the snow had melted by mid morning.

Each day I had been putting out some of the loose hay to supplement the calves.

In addition this morning, due to the snow covering much of the grass, I tossed three and a half bales over the fence into the hayfield to supplement the cows until the snow melted.  Since I was tossing the small bales on the ground and not in a feeder, and I was curious if the cows would eat the old hay I got from Donna, I tossed that old hay.  Looks like they ate it all.

I had three piles of hay and all the other cows wouldn't let Sugar eat with them.  So I got some of the apples and fed her through the fence far enough away that the other cows didn't realize what we were doing.

The bull is doing good.  The previous owners had named him "Charlie".  Neither Donna nor Dan like that name for a bull.  I think of "Charlie the tuna" so I am not fond of the name for a bull.  This afternoon I was talking with Jan.  Her son has a black cat named "Tobey".   Since the new bull is shorter than Buddy, "Tobey" seems to fit as I imagine a person named "Tobey" as being short.  Or maybe I am thinking of Tobey Maguire who played Spider-Man in a few movies.  So I am leaning to calling the bull, "Tobey".

I also finally lit my wood stove last night.  It has been cold and damp outside the past few days.  Yesterday outside temperature was 43 degrees at the high.  Inside the house it was 49.9 degrees.  Even for me that was getting a little chilly.

Woodstove crack

My wood stove developed a crack last week.  I drilled a hole at the end of the crack to stop it from spreading.  Curtis brought his portable welder over and welded the crack together.  I had trouble getting the chimney collar off so he welded the stove up to the collar.

Later when the weld cooled it started to crack from the collar.  So this time I took the collar off and the next day Curtis welded the crack all the way.

When the weld cooled it cracked again.  We could hear, then see, the crack forming as the stove cooled.  So Curtis cut a small piece of scrap metal.  I drilled through the stove and bolted the metal over the crack.  That should fix the problem.

The crack and my drilled hole to stop it.

Crack spreading into the weld.

The second weld before I laid the plate over it.  I smoothed the weld.  The 'wet' part is the liquid woodstove glue used to attach insulation pieces to the woodstove.  I felt it couldn't hurt to try to do extra to seal the crack and not just rely on the metal piece.

The finished result.

Curtis had earlier tossed the metal piece in his woodstove to darken the shiny metal to match my woodstove's color. My camera's flash heightens the difference.  Without the flash the metal piece more closely matches my woodstove.

I have used my woodstove a few times and everything seems to work fine now.

Curtis wouldn't take any money for his help.  So today in gratitude, for this and other favors Curtis has done for me, I spent three hours helping Curtis tear out carpeting in a burnt house Curtis and his business partner bought for investment purposes.  We also removed a few appliances and other items not to be burnt.  They are getting a local fire department later this month to burn down the house to use for their fire training.  Curtis and I hauled to the landfill two full pickup loads of stuff.

Walnut tree and wood stove

Here are two photos of my English Walnut tree after the killing frost.  The leaves went from normal and green to this overnight.

Today I gave in and lit a fire in my wood stove.  I had been delaying using the wood stove because one of the things I want to get done before Winter is to re-do the room/hallway the stove sits in.  Re-do the ceiling, sand and re-paint the walls, rip up the carpet and put down new flooring, and put a sun tunnel in the ceiling for more light.

Up unto October and this wet and cold weather it looked like the room remodel was possible.  I'm still not ruling it out once I get my other outside projects done... but the clock is ticking.  I don't want to do the remodel during Winter.

I didn't want to use the wood stove as I thoroughly cleaned the stove and chimney this Summer and to do the remodel I have to temporarily move the stove.  But... this cold weather finally wore me down.  The inside house temperature today was 49 degrees and I decided not to put up with the cold anymore.  Especially as the weather outside today was in the low 40s, overcast and damp with a chill in the air.  Rain and these way below normal temperatures are predicted to continue into mid-next week.  I want my global warming back!!!!!

Now the temperature in the house is 66 degrees and it feels too warm to me.  I can't win.

Chimney stuff and Ireland

Recent a fine fellow from Ireland came across one of my old posts about my wood stove and my cleaning of the ash in the pipe and he left a comment.

http://tallpinesranch.blogspot.com/2011/12/cleaning-ash.html


He has an interesting blog about his personal and critical look at sustainable energy and I gave him permission to use my photos and words in one of his posts.

http://wood-pellet-ireland.blogspot.com/2012/03/stoves-flue-pipes-and-cleaning.html

I had a few more comments for him and decided since I once again got carried away with words, I would just write them in a post of my own.


Hi Tony,

Thanks for your concern.  I do keep an eye on the ash buildup.

Also every summer I thoroughly clean the pipe and chimney.  In addition to a wire chimney brush, I use scraping tools to remove any signs of creosote forming as that is bad stuff.  I tend to only see signs of hard creosote starting in the chimney itself.  I don't know why.  Perhaps it is because the air cools the further it gets from the stove slowing the movement of the ash.  Perhaps it is because I clean the chimney itself only once a year as there is much, much less ash buildup than in the horizontal flue.

During the earlier cleaning I didn't take photos of the vertical column of pipe from the wood stove.  There was very little ash buildup in that pipe.  Also, the chimney - which is further from the heat - also had little ash.

I've heard a way of reducing creosote buildup is to have your fire burn hot as there is less smoke and therefore less ash/creosote buildup.  It is bad to let your fire burn at a low level or to let the wood smolder.

A word of caution about a hot fire is to ensure you do not have a creosote buildup prior to burning a very hot fire. It may take a hotter fire to ignite creosote (a theory... as fortunately I have had no experience of this happening to me), but I imagine once creosote ignites it is difficult to extinguish.

I've heard another way of reducing creosote buildup is via the wood used.  I wonder if greener (not as dry) wood would contribute to more creosote as greener wood is more likely to smolder.

I sometimes use wood from Western Larch trees which are heavy with sap and oils.  I am not sure if you read my blog posts about burning tree stumps.  Larch stumps are harder to get burning, but once they 'take' I've had their stumps burn for days as the fire follows the roots underground to their very end.  Occasionally I undercover larch stumps in my pasture that have been buried for decades and they show little signs of decay due to their oils and pitch content.

Something that runs counter to what I just said about a hot fire... when I burn Western Larch in my wood stove I use much smaller pieces than normal as this Larch burns very hot.  Afterwards I notice lots of black soot on the glass window to my stove, something I do not usually see when burning other forms of wood.

You probably knew all this already, so I'll shut up now.

Thanks.

Cleaning ash

The weather was nice today so I decided to clean the ash from my wood stove's pipe.  It has been a couple of months since the wood stove burning season started. The section of pipe that is closer to horizontal collects ash more than the other sections or the chimney.

Here is how much ash collects in the horizontal section of the pipe.

The loose stuff shakes out.  I have to use a wire brush to get it all out. This job is one that is done before a person takes a shower that day.

Chimney cleaning

Monday I performed my annual chimney cleaning.  Nothing like waiting for a hot day to clean the chimney and the pipes that run from the wood stove to the chimney. Part of why I wait till mid summer is that I clean the wood stove pipes in a pasture and, now that the horses have eaten down the grass, I have shorter grass while I do the cleaning.

Cleaning the chimney is not so bad as I have a chimney brush to clean it.  I also use a scraper on what I can reach from the top and from the bottom in order to really clean things.  Cleaning the wood stove pipe is the harder thing to do.  I take the pipe apart and, using wire brushes and a scraper, scrub the sections of pipe clean.

Naturally I get filthy.  I went for a swim in the river to clean off.  Nice to do on a hot day.

Here is a view from the house roof of the willow tree I trimmed earlier this year.  I found a photo of the willow tree taken a  few years ago to get a before-and-after view.

View east from the house roof.

A stove is nice

The wind quit today.  The low temperature was only -12 degrees F and not the -18 that was predicted.  And our high temperature today was above zero.  Again, warmer than predicted.  Since we were only 2 degrees from setting a new record low temperature this must be another sign of global warming.

Still, I had my wood stove going steady.

I haven't spent much time outside the past few days.  It doesn't take long to get cold.  Wearing leather gloves was not the best as my hands got cold quick.

Dead bird in the stove

Winter is coming.  Don't you feel the chill in the air?

Lately our temperature has ranged from the teens overnight to the 50s during the day.   The water in the livestock's water troughs freezes over each night.  The garden hose I use to refill the troughs didn't thaw today until mid-afternoon.

The house is cooling down too.  The temperature inside this morning was 53 degrees.  So tonight I lit a fire in the wood stove for the first time this season.  As the fire started I checked the ash pan and found a dead bird.  Ah... so that is what happened!

A few years ago one summer a bird -a flicker - fell down the chimney and walked into the stove whereupon its tapping on the glass window alerted me to the bird.  I used a blanket to take the live bird from the stove to outside where it flew away.

A few weeks ago I heard sounds coming from the wood stove or the pipe leading from the stove to the chimney. Another bird?  I checked the stove and found nothing.  I even took the pipe apart and found nothing but a yellowjacket.  Oh!  The noise must have been made by the yellowjacket inside the pipe.   I hadn't checked the ash pan as the space between the stove's burn area and the pan is so small.

Good thing I found the bird before the stove got hot!

Ash, gophers, horses

Today I did my annual cleaning of the house's chimney and the pipe that goes from the wood stove to the chimney.  It was almost a half day project and quite a dirty one.  I filled over half of a two gallon bucket with ash.

I am trapping pocket gophers again.  I caught four of them yesterday.  There were a few dirt mounds in the fruit tree and garden area indicating a pocket gopher.  So far no activity at the trap.  Now that I let the horses in this area I wonder if the pocket gopher moved on.  From my experience they avoid areas where horses are.  I think it has something to do with the horse urine and manure.

The couple came and got one of their horses, the black one.  "Bluebell".  Either she is getting fat from all the grass, or more likely she is pregnant.  If a pregnancy, it was an unplanned one as the couple planned on taking a year off from raising babies.

The other morning the one filly was in the north pasture and not the NE pasture where she was placed with the mare with the sore feet. I could not find signs of where she got through or over the fence.  When she came into the corral where the other horses were I was able to get her back into the NE pasture.  It took some effort as the mare wanted into the corral when I opened the gate to herd the filly back.  I would move the mare back away from the gate but whenever I walked back to reopen the gate the mare followed me.

Another complicating factor was the other filly wanted to be with this filly and the partially blind mare wanted this filly gone and would try to chase her away.

A three ring circus.  But after some effort I finally got the filly back into the NE pasture.

That lasted all of a half day as after the couple got the dark horse they decided to let all the horses be together.  They had concerns about how it would go.  The mare with the sore feet is a dominant horse but since she has sore feet she would be unable to assert her dominance.  The couple hoped that the horses had sorted out their personality conflicts over the fence.

They all seemed to get along once we let them all be together.  However today I see they are not all one big happy family.  When the three use the loafing shed they don't let the other two use it also.  This afternoon when the three were eating in the north pasture the other two used the loafing shed.  Later I noticed the partially blind mare threw a whinny fit while running around the corral.  Then the other two horses came out to the north pasture to eat, though not near the three.  It seems like the one mare doesn't like the others to use the loafing shed at all.  Tonight the three were in the loafing shed and the other two horses had to stand just outside of it.

Warmth from my stove

With this recent cold weather my wood stove is nicer than ever.  After a hard day of shoveling snow I curl up in front of the stove like a cat seeking warmth.

Snow and burning logs

Monday I didn't get my usual one day break from shoveling snow. It was snowing when I got up and it snowed all day. Big white fluffy flakes floating down. At dusk I cleared half the driveway of snow even though it was still snowing lightly. Tuesday I finished the shoveling as the sky was clear and the snow had stopped. The forecast is for quite a few inches of snow on Wednesday and Thursday.

I also nailed a couple boards to two old thin posts near my mailbox. Last year I had put the posts in the ground and had the boards up to protect my mailbox from the snow. It seemed to have worked. After my mailbox got dented from the snowplow snow this past weekend I remembered the boards.

I awoke to the sound of the snowplow Tuesday morning. It sounded like it was driving faster than the 35 mph speed limit which meant the snow would be thrown harder and farther. When I got up the road was clear of snow and my mailbox was ok.

With the road 'somewhat' clear of snow I went for a 5 mile bicycle ride. I had to walk my bicycle on part of my driveway near the house as it is very icy.

Here is a photo of my wood stove in action. Looks warm and cozy doesn't it?

Burning log

Tonight as I was stirring the mostly burnt but still smoldering logs in my wood stove one log jumped out of the stove and onto the floor in front of the stove. YIKES!!!

Fortunately the log fell onto the metal floor covering that the stove sits on, though some embers fell onto the throw rug in front of the metal covering. I quickly brushed the embers back onto the metal.

The problem was the smoldering log was hot and now with more air started to flame again. Smoke rose. I quickly got a towel and grabbed the log and tossed it back into the stove. *whew!*

Still a fair amount of smoke got into the house. I have my air cleaner on high to clear it out and it is taking longer than I would like. I guess I should have earlier opened the doors to air the house out even though the temperature was in the 20s F.

This is a first for me but at least no fire started.

Fencing and wood stove

Another wet day Wednesday, though no snow fell. By the end of the day all the snow - except for the snow that slid off roofs - melted as the temperatures got into the lows 40s F. By evening the clouds lifted so I could see much of the mountains.

I stayed in all day and did stuff inside. I also made a cake and pumpkin bread and muffins. So I will be ready to be outside for work Thursday once the weather improves.

Monday I had been working on protecting my fruit trees and bushes in my garden area as I plan to let the cattle in there to eat the grass down. I am trying to get it so in the future I will only need 15 minutes or so of protection before letting the cattle in as I already have some sort of permanent fencing around the trees and many bushes to protect them from the deer. But while a flimsy fence will stop a deer, the cattle will push and break weak fencing. Time to upgrade.

Years ago when I first built fences around my young fruit trees I didn't have any fence posts so I used pine tree branches for posts. Four or five years later the 'posts' are not so strong anymore. Each year I replace the posts with metal posts when the cattle break the branch posts. This year I decided to replace three fences that are still all branch posts to get ahead of the cattle. And I replaced a few other posts in other fences as I didn't want to get into rebuilding all nine fences at this time. I keep meaning to fix all fruit tree fences for good during the summer when I have more time, but that never happens. I never seem to have time. In my defense, I have only gotten more chicken wire and other small fencing material at auctions this past year.

So I spent most of Monday working on my fruit tree and bush fencing. If it hadn't started to seriously rain Monday evening I would have finished all the protection work.

I have one more fence to completely rebuild. I wanted to complete this fence before letting the cattle in, but this morning I found the cattle have mowed the NE pasture down pretty good once the snow melted, and some of the cattle were working on reaching the small bushes and trees protected by a fence I built last year. I found they pushed on that field fence and worked their tongues through the larger openings and seemed to have eaten my small Caragana trees and were working on reaching the small arborvitae trees. *argh*

The cattle gathered around me and some bellowed at me: "I'm hungry. I want easier to eat food. I'm tired of nipping the grass shorter and I want longer grass." Okay, okay. So I quickly wrapped a last few trees and bushes and then let the cattle in my fruit tree and garden area hoping they will concentrate on the grass and leave the trees alone for now.

After I finish my breakfast I will rebuild the final fence.

I again had my wood stove going the past few days to heat my house. Here a few photos I took a few days ago when I had the stove going. The stove puts out lots of heat. Sometimes when I am tired I act like a cat and curl up in front of the stove to be warm.

Chimney and deer

This morning I decided to clean my wood stove's chimney pipe. Or I should say, the pipe that leads to the house's brick chimney.

From the photo you can see that my wood stove is away from any wall and the pipe is close to level for a section. This relatively level section gets the ash buildup. I checked today and this section of the pipe was half clogged with ash. I guess I have been burning plenty of firewood the past few months.

So I got dirty this morning taking the pipe apart, then outside to clean the ash out of the pipe.

The temperature was 14 F,and this being a metal pipe, the pipe quickly got cold. Ergo... I had very cold fingers by the time I was done cleaning the ash from the pipe, in addition to dirty fingers.

After the cleaning the fire was easier to get going and seemed to burn more intensely. Guess the extra room for the smoke to leave the wood stove helped.

Deer

There are plenty of deer around. The snow captures their tracks well as I see they have checked out my yard and garden. They even found the carrot tops under the snow in the garden from when I dug the carrots before it snow. Those deer must have a great sense of smell that they could find the tops under all that snow.

The snow is messing with their routine. I have seen deer in the middle of the day, and other times during daylight.

Partridges

The Hungarian partridges are still about. I am not sure if all 14 are still here as they fly off when they see me. The snow is too deep for them to run away quickly. I have seen their tracks in the paths I have shoveled in the corral and around the barn.

Pie

I baked another apple pie today. My third meal of the day is a piece of apple pie and a piece of pumpkin pie. Between the lack of exercise and all this pie I am sure I am gaining weight.