And today at Cold Comfort

Not much happened.

Mostly because I wasn't there until late in the afternoon. See, the recent cold snap, with overnight temps in the 20s, then a real 20, just flat did me in. In the addition, we can get some work done once the sun comes on, as it's an uninsulated shell, and the solar gain on it makes it tolerable. The main cabin crib, on the other hand, is like a meat locker. Just too cold. snappy cold. Frustratingly cold. And, it holds onto the cold with a tight grip. I couldn't take it anymore.

So, fetching around some yesterday, I caved. I hitched up the trailer and headed back down. Stayed the night at Tracey's (where there is heat), and this AM, rolled out back down to Va, went to the old cabin, and loaded the old wood stove on the trailer, and then towed it all the back through the mountains to Cold Comfort.



This ole wood stove and I have had an on-again, off-again relationship for, oh, say, I dunno, 40-ish years? Yeah, something like that. It's a nice stove, if somewhat fiddly. For a '70s' vintage stove, it's actually pretty leaky, which is actually not a bad thing. Less likely to explode. The way it draws air is, , odd. But once it gets hot, it works pretty well.

So, I vacuumed out the flue as best I could, there is an 8" stove pipe shoved up in there, and sadly, it's FULL of carbon. Seems the prior owner had a tight stove, and liked to keep it tamped down. Will need to get the flue swept sooner rather than later.



But tonight, Tracey is coming up, and we want to have a WARM cabin, just for the heck of it. So, I shoved a section of my 5" stove pipe into the 8" as best I could, then tilted the stove back a bit to get the elbow to match up, and got it going.

And for what it's worth, yes, the Prius moved the very heavy stove with some grace. But we certainly took our time. Just like I took a fair amount of time moving the stove.



Took FOREVER for the stove to come up to temp, and when it finally got up to a decent stack temp and i tamped it down, I guess the air was actually cooling the stack, because the stack temp shot up to over 600, which freaked me out. That's plenty hot enough to light all that carbon in the flue. Very scary. But eventually, it finally started to calm down, and I was able to tamp it down to a safe and sane 350 or so.

Then I came out to write this blog entry.




Ahhhh.