Tag Archives: smoke blowback

Friday 20th January 2012 – I CAN’T SEE …

… a thing right now in my room.

There’s a gusting wind blowing up outside and it’s in just the right direction to blow right down my chimney so every couple of minutes a load of smoke is blown back down the fire and out of the air vent into the room.

I’m being done up like a kipper just now.

But I was right about the weather – it’s rained for most of the day. And it is indeed nice to see the rail cascading off the new roof on the lean-to onto the ground, well away from the wall, and everything inside the lean-to being bone-dry for a change.

I can’t believe my luck with the weather for that 10-day spell when I decided to go for broke and do the lean-to roof. It’s not like me at all.

So I did some sawing of the wood this morning, but a downside of this now is that I’m cutting it faster than I’m burning it and I’m now running out of room to store it. I suppose that I shall have to make a larger woodpile, or a taller one or something.

I could, I suppose, even dig the trench that I need to dig at the side of the house by the “other” lean-to, drop the drainage pipe in there that needs to go in there and connect it into the drainage system, fill the trench with gravel, cover it over with a weed blanket and then build the real woodshed where it is supposed to go, but that’s not the work of half an hour.

After the woodcutting (which I managed to do without any interruption for a change) I did some more tidying up, starting in the lean-to.

First job was to rescue the remaining Hawker deep-discharge batteries and charge them up.

And here I’ve hit a problem, in that the battery box I made for the previous batteries is too small – the Hawkers are taller. But anyway once they were out of the way I tidied up in the lean-to, collected all of the stray solar panels and stacked them in a corner, and then hung up the smaller gardening tools so that I’m not tripping over them.

Having moved a couple of solar panels out of the barn I could then get in there and make some space to put the old Rutland wind turbine tidily out of the way.

This led to the discovery of a circular saw, not the 600-watt one that I can’t find anywhere at all, but the old 1050-watt one that was all rusted solid having been left in a container that filled with water through a leak in the barn roof when I was ill and which had subsequently been partly-dismantled for spares.

Of course, now that I have a 1200-watt inverter all things are possible, so I gave the saw a good spray with WD40 and reassembled it with some other bits and pieces. And much to my surprise it fired up!

Even more surprising was that the inverter didn’t even bat an eyelid.

The saw needs some “attention to detail” before I can use it to cut wood, but this is definitely progress.

This afternoon, with the weather deteriorating, I restarted work in the bedroom – the first time for God knows how long. I’ve fitted the false beam at the side wall – the beam that hides all of the electrical cable – and I’ve also packed out one of the plasterboard panels that didn’t quite mate with the others.

It was then that I lost the light and so I spent the last hour tidying up in the barn again.

And despite all of this time that I’ve spent tidying up, a I really can’t see any difference at all.

This evening by way of an experiment, I brought a kettle of water up here and put it on top of the woodstove. And after about 2.5 hours it was gloriously warm and I had a lovely hot wash and shave in front of the fire.

Definitely the highlight of the week, that, and I can’t think why I hadn’t done that before.

Next step is the coffee pot on the stove, and put the produce in a thermos ready for the following morning.

I ought to be much-better organised than I am.

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Wednesday 28th October 2009 – One thing that you need to understand …

… when you read my adventures is that I never ever make any mistakes. What I do is that I learn a lot, and sometimes learning can be expensive. In the olden days in the Wild West (yesterday in South Carolina, Rhys) greenhorns were continually being cheated at cards by people called “Doc”, and whenever anyone ever said anything, the response always was “you have to pay to learn“.

And so it is with house renovations.

And having got the preamble out of the way, let us now discuss the woodstove.

I lined the base with damp sand as required, and assembled a fire inside. “You need a 6x6x6″ fire, and be careful that it does not touch the sides“. How you do this when you have a fire that is 5.5×5.5×5.5” no-one actually said. But anyway I did my best and it toook ages to get going, but I slowly warmed it up. And when I was happy that it was burning I started on the grouting of the bricks I laid the other day (much more useful that laying eggs, I can tell you)

Halfway through the grouting the phone rang, so I opened the door to climb down the ladder to the phone, and “Blimmin’ ‘eck!” You couldn’t see your hand in front of your face with the smoke, and the fumes were overpowering. All through the house, even in my little room, was a pall of black smoke. I was appalled. as was the smoke.

Normally I would expect that the hot air would rise up the stovepipe and carry the soot and ash with it. When they burst out into the chimney the hot air would rise creating a current of air from the chimneys below, which would pull up the soot and ash. But not a bit of it. The soot and ash had descended in the chimney and come out at the bottom. So much for free circulation. And so much for the woodstove too.

I was toying with the idea of lining the chimney and putting the stovepipe all the way up to the outside, and I wish I had done it now. I can’t get the pipe in now that I’ve done the walls and so basically the woodstove will have to be put on hold while I think about this.

It’s not the end of the world though as I have the bottled gas heater, but I was hoping to get away from fossil fuels and go for a more natural source. What is going to be a major problem is that if the soot and ash can get from the attic to the living room it can also do the return journey when I light the fire down here. And that will be “an issue”.

what i saw downstairs when I lit the wood stove
Today’s image is entitled “What I saw when I opened the door”.

On the phone, as it happened, was a member of OUSA’s Executive Committee who wanted a chat. Of course I shan’t name names as talking to me is punishable by a “visit” from Pol Pot’s sibling, a whine from Caligula and her horse, and a thorough dressing-down from Turdi de Hatred (not to mention a thorough dressing up, in fairy boots if I remember correctly, by Lee “I’m a prostitute” Potty-mouth. But I digress – something that you ought to be used to by now)

I’ve now done all the grouting and the filling, and I started poncing (But not in fairy boots) this evening. Tomorrow will be finishing off the poncing, cleaning up the room and making a start on the wallpapering. D-Day is getting closer.

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