Wood Heat Thread ~ post pics

are you not making it into firewood ?

 

Yeah. Good question.

 

I did that a few times in my youth, but on trees that were much easier to climb like cottonwood.

 

Doubtful. We'll have a fair share of it milled; the lower parts are mostly junk, between deadwood/ants & steel (idiots always seem to think that roadside trees are bulletin boards ), but the upper parts are sound and straight as an arrow, and we know a timber framer who's always looking for long straight wood. And most of them are a solid 24" in diameter, even 20 feet up.

Our main reasons for dropping them were a combination of age, rot, and proximity to expensive things. For firewood I'd much rather have hardwood; pine burns well but it doesn't last long enough to be much use to me. Mostly the stuff that gets burned will be 'campfire' wood at the camp

 

I love doing a frame out of eastern white pine. It's so easy to work, sands quick and hardly any shrinkage.

 

Pine will creosote the bejeezus out of your chimney. Only use in small doses.

 

Yeah, but only if it's not seasoned first. And it makes great kindling, or a really nice bright pop/snap sort of campfire.

 

Grabbed a couple of photos before dark:
One of them had at least 15 feet of dead core that had been worked over by ants, and it split & shattered when it landed:





And another one still had so many ants in it that they apparently overwhelmed and killed a gray squirrel that was foolish enough to try to share their tree (that's his tail in that little hollow on the right; the rest was just stripped bones & hair)

 

We're burning hard today.

 

I’m still waiting for cold weather so I can use my new stove

 

Well it was 15 degrees here this morning.

 

24° yesterday AM, I did not look this morning.
Still warm, sort of.

 

Touched the door gasket with a piece of wood last night...gasket fell off the door. No fire, had to rely on the Mitsubishi heat pump. Low of -15C, house at 21C this morning. Good to know my "central heat source" (insurance requirement) will keep the house livable. New gasket every 2 years minimum from now on! I checked before first burn, but didn't give it enough of a wiggle I guess.

STill no word from Pacific Energy about the cracks, but seems to be burning ok. Neither getting larger or migrating outside of door gasket covered area on the front of the stove.

 

My gaskets last longer. What do you use for adhesive? Do you clean and wet when you apply?
Obviously, you could not place and hold the gasket just for the night???

 

Tried to tack in place with old Rutger cement, but that's when it fell out in my hands. Cleaned completely this time...wire brush, carbide cone shaped grinder to get to bare metal, then wet and cemented. I took the door off this time so the install went way better than trying to do it with the door hung. The cement tube says dry at least an hour, the teckie I bought it from said leave overnight if you can. Somewhere in between i think. Later this afternoon for a small fire to cure the cement, then usual overnight burn.

 

I lock the door with the cement/gasket to set.
When I burn, I do a light burn.

 

20F, First fire tonight in my wood burning furnace.

 

Just replaced the door and glass gaskets for the first time in 10 yesrs with my Pacific Energy Alderlea T5 this year

 

Similar here. I replaced what looked like the original the door gaskets on the cookstove I think 3 years ago, when I fixed the door latches, and on the Cellar monster when I installed it in 2013. Both still work like new

 

Going with an insert would probably be a more straightforward conversion; my understanding of the Heatilator setup is that they're basically just an insert with a different design anyway?