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The stove needs to be sealed.

Submitted entry: I swear they spent a full hour this morning on the local radio station talking about the lack of rain and the threat of fire here. There hasn’t been a decent rain here in four months and it shows. It shows not just in the dry creeks and springs but in the people. I’ve never lived anywhere where people were wanting it to rain so badly or where I’ve wanted it to rain so much (but snow would be better!).

Sunday night it got pretty cold again and hoping to warm the yurt well for the night we loaded the stove full and shut the damper and thermostats. Ten minutes later instead of a warm, slow burning fire we had a glowing stove. The entire bottom half of the stove was red hot and even a little of the chimney was starting to turn red (you bet I was scared!). The fire inside was going so well it was roaring loudly. Fortunately it was just a short time but in that time the temp. went up to 92 inside.

But that experience pointed one thing out to us. This stove needs to be sealed so it can be shut down. Okay, so I didn’t know that until today but…

I don’t know about you but I read the stories in Mother Earth News and the like that are along the same lines as what I’m writing now - back to the land sort of deals. And all of them intimidate the hell out of me. Everyone seems so competent and like they were born building homes from tin cans or building log cabins. Every book I read was the same too - raw confidence and complete competence in things I’ve never dreamed of. Well you don’t have to worry about that here. I’ve got hardly any of those things *grin*.

Since we hooked up the stove we’ve found it really easy to start and keep lit but it really burned hot, fast and had to be fed frequently. No shutting it down all night and maybe putting a stick in when you go out to pee. This stove was cold in 2 hours no matter how hot it was when filled. We asked Crow and Kitey about this and they knew immediately. That stove has lots of air leaks in it, and “remember when we said you should put that ropey gasket stuff in?” Well, we bought the gasketing material but didn’t use it so here’s what we were told had happened:

The chimney is really tall - like 15 feet high - and it has to be to clear the yurt roof. It’s all 6 inch pipe except right at the stove which is 5 inches. This is good in a way - it creates a huge draft. Air rushes in the stove and out the chimney. No worries about backpuffing here (where smoke belches back into the room). The down side is that the stove didn’t have any seals in it so when we started a fire the chimney sucked air through the stove creating something of a little blast furnace. Great if we wanted to make glass or something but not much to heat with.

So Kitey helped us out today installing the gasketing and giving us tips for keeping it running and hot. And sure enough it is doing great. It goes for hours with hardly any tending and stays nice and hot.

The funniest part of the whole thing is when taken in the context of this other story about Casey who asked us on Saturday if we could find a proxy server (internet sharing) program that would not require her to walk to our computer and have to manually dial the ISP. Sage and I both went - “It’s not dialing automatically - what’s wrong with it” and fixed it that day. The funny part is that’s what we thought about the stove. We both thought that it was going to burn so much wood for so little heat and that it would burn out really fast. However we got the same sort of answer - “it isn’t doing that already?” Go figure.

That’s about all the news that I have the energy to talk about now. It’s a little after 9:00 and I’m flagging. If this entry seems disconnected it’s because I’ve been asleep the past two paragraphs..

Sunny, still too warm and dry.

I have to do my best not to get my hopes up.