Woodstove Chore

Woodstoves are great, but they need a certain amount of maintenance. My wood cookstove has a lot of nooks and crannies that collect soot. Unlike a regular woodstove, cookstoves have circuitous smoke channels around the oven. That’s great for extracting more heat from every bit of firewood. The downside is that as the smoke cools it deposits soot in those channels. 

Once in a while everything has to be taken apart and cleaned out. Yesterday was one of those days. It’s a messy job. To make matters worse I also take apart the stove pipe and clean that out too. At least the stovepipe can be cleaned outside. 

On the bright side very little soot makes it to the chimney. Cleaning the chimney is even more of a chore. Not having to do that so often is a huge plus. 

-Sixbears

Less than a week

It’s less than a week before we close the house down until sometime in the spring. We’ve been concentrating on the nuts and bolts stuff, like getting the boat and our camping gear ready. My lovely wife is almost done sewing new covers for the boat cushions. I’ve a transponder to mount, but that’s about the last of it.

There’s still a fair sized list of the business stuff that needs doing. I just made a list so as not to forgot anything. Monday it was my New Hampshire DMV day. My state allows residents to renew driver’s licenses up to six months ahead of time. Since mine was going to expire before we plan on getting home, it had to be done. Overall, it went fairly well. The lady who did the eye test seemed surprised when I passed. She asked in an angry voice if I had contacts on. Guess I look too old to see without glasses.

My Internet company allows me to suspend service while I’m gone, so that’ll save a few dollars. No sense spending money when I don’t have to. My mobile hotspot needs to be sorted out. The company says it’s activated, but there’s some sort of password issue that may require customer support. I hate talking to those people, but the clock is running.

By the way, after my little woodstove creosote incident, I ended up taking the woodstove all apart and removing all the soot. Since it’s a cookstove there are channels for the hot smoke to circulate around the oven. Those tend to soot up and need cleaning now and then. It’s in great shape now.

You never really get everything done before a big trip. The main thing is to make sure the essential items are ticked off the list.

-Sixbears

Summer Kitchen

There's a rural tradition. People had summer kitchens. They were located away from the main house, in a shed or under a partial shelter. That was one way to help keep the main house cool in the days before air conditioning. When I was a kid, even though my grandparents lived in town, they had a summer kitchen in a big shed. They also had a big table in the shed that sat a lot of people. It seems there were always extra mouths to feed.

I was tempted to buy a propane grill, but decided to repurpose my old kitchen stove instead. It's an old wood/propane stove. For now, I'm going to just hook up the propane burners and oven.


The deck under the stoves has been reinforced. Soon I'll stretch a fabric roof over the stove to keep the weather off. This is going to be a lot of fun and I'm not buying anything new.

By the way, there's no air conditioning in my house either, so this will help it stay cool.

-Sixbears

Woostove and chimney, cleaning and inspection

I've been using my new wood fired cookstove pretty heavily since I purchased it. Now only do we do all our cooking on it, we rely on it to heat the house. It's running 24/7. I figured it was time to see how dirty or clean it's been running.

The first thing I did was to buy two 5 gallons jugs of off road diesel. Huh? Since I was going to let the woodstove go out, I needed something to heat the house with. My oil furnace works, but I don't want to invest in a tank of heating oil. The minimum purchase is 125 gallons, which is a fair piece of change. Off road diesel is a pretty good substitute for heating oil and I didn't have to buy a whole lot of it.

Then I checked the weather. Might as well do the job on a mild day when it's not snowy and the roof all slipery. Cleaning a chimney is bad enough without having to worry about slipping off the roof.

Once the stove was cool all the ash was cleaned out and disposed of outside in a metal bucket. The top of my Hearthstove cookstove is removable, so that came off. A small amount of ash had built up on top of the oven and was cleaned out. Some creosote had been deposited in the stove pipe. Tapping it a few times with a poker knocked it loose where it could then be cleaned up. Once the stove was reassembled I gave the outside a good cleaning.

Here's the dangerous part. I borrowed my wife's good makeup mirror while she wasn't looking. I opened the chimney clean out. Using my wife's precious mirror I looked up the chimney to see how clean it was. Much to my delight, it was very clean. There was no need to climb up on the roof with my chimney brushes.

Now that the stove has had a good inspection, I've got some idea how often it will need a complete shut down and cleaning. Looks like it won't be all that often. That being said, every month or so, my wife's mirror will disappear for a bit so the chimney can be inspected.

-Sixbears

New woodstove installed!

I’d like to thank John, Adam, Tracy and Leane for the help moving and installing the new woodstove. The dealer would have moved it for me, but their moving crew is booked until the middle of next month.

The stove lists for $4000, but it was on sale for $3700. After looking at many stoves both on-line and in stores, I went with a local dealer. He’s been in business for years so he’ll probably not disappear tomorrow. Another advantage of dealing local is that NH has no sales tax. On this pricey an item, it makes a difference.

Still, $3700 is a lot of money, at least for me. Then again, it’s doing the work of both a furnace and a kitchen stove. Like much of New England, my old furnace runs on heating oil. The price has taken a big jump. Even with the money I’m spending on wood, the woodstove will pay for itself in less than 3 years.

I’ll do a full performance review on the woodstove after the winter. So far it’s running the way it’s supposed to. The house was toasty warm this morning. Outside it was windy and 33 degrees. The firebox still had plenty of hot coals left from the evening’s wood. I’ve cooked a couple meals on it and perked coffee. The oven easily gets plenty hot enough for baking.

The best thing about a woodstove is that I live in the woods. There’s no long supply line from Venezuela or the Middle East. My heating fuel grows on trees.

-Sixbears

Quest for fire

Over 100 miles of driving, hours of on-line research, and my lovely wife and I still haven’t found a replacement for our wood cookstove. The old one still, works. I replaced the firebricks and patched it up, but it won’t last forever.

It’s an old one, back in the days before air tight woodstoves extended burn times. At best, a load of wood lasts 3 - 4 hours. While it’s enough to keep the house warm during milder weather, it doesn’t keep up when true winter blows in. For those bitterly cold winter nights, there’s a massive woodstove in the basement or the oil furnace kicks in. A good kitchen stove of modern design should be able to handle almost all of our heating needs. Rarely would we need the other heating methods.

If heating was all we were looking for, our search would be simple, but we want to be able to cook. The old stove is a pretty decent cookstove. In fact, it handles most of our cooking needs. The problem has been to find a good stove for heating and cooking. Everything is a compromise, but some are better than others.

The local stove dealer had a Deva cookstove by Hearthstone on the display floor. At just under $4000 it’s at the absolute upper end of what I’m willing to pay for. The stove looks well built and has a good sized firebox. The only major downside, (besides price) is that the cook top is glass. The manual warns against using rough pans that could scratch it. Sure, the cook top could be replaced with a piece of steel, but that’s an added expense.

Another stove that caught my fancy is The Vermont Bun Baker. The plain metal one without soapstones sides is more in my budget. Unfortunately, there is nobody nearby who has any on display. It does appear to cook well. There is a water jacket option for heating up household hot water, so that’s a plus. On the downside, the firebox is on the small side.

Those are just two of the dozens of stoves we’ve looked at, both in stores and on-line. Decisions, decisions. It is tempting to ignore the problem one more year. My fear is that the old stove will be like the Wonderful One Horse Shay and completely fall apart one day. That’s not something to take lightly with something full of burning logs.

-Sixbears

That’s it for propane

At one time I had four propane appliances: tankless water heater, refrigerator, stove, and clothes dryer. Propane used to be cheap. It’s not that way anymore. Now I’m down to just my stove and dryer. The stove is an old cast iron woodstove with two propane burners on the side.

Just a few days after we got back from our trip, the propane ran out. Most people would just call the company and get it refilled. Three things stopped me from doing that. The company I used to have propane service from when out of business. A new company would want money up front and a 2 year contract. We really don’t use that much propane anymore.

We almost never use the dryer. We have a clothes line outside and a drying back by the woodstove. During the cool months, the woodstove is going so we cook using wood. It works for me.

However, now it’s warming up, so the woodstove doesn’t run all the time. For a couple days, we used a portable two burner electric hot plate. That worked, but was a pretty big strain on the solar electric system.

Rummaging around my stuff, I found a 20 lb propane tank -the type used on a propane grill. It still had propane in it, so I hooked it up to the house system. It works just fine. I wouldn’t want to run the dryer too often on it, but it will fuel two small stove burners a long time.

This is the sort of Redneck fix you can expect to see more of as people make do with what they've got.

-Sixbears

Cold mornings

The idea of woodstoves is terribly romantic. Picture a kettle merrily steaming away on a wood cookstove. There you are sipping warm hot coco as that radiant heat soaks into your bones. There’s no electric or gas company involved. All you have to do is light up some of that sustainable harvested local wood.

My kitchen woodstove is all that, and more. It also includes waking up to a cold house. My classic old cookstove doesn’t sustain a fire very long. It has a small firebox and isn’t an airtight stove. In the morning, don’t expect to find more than the occasional stray hot ember left. A few hours after I go to bed, the stove has died down and the the house starts to cool. By morning, it’s darn right chilly.

I get up while my wife is still sleeping. If I was smart, there’s split and dry wood ready. Sometimes I have to out where it’s truly cold and haul in some firewood. Might even have to split it with snow blowing all around me. Believe me, that’s a chore best down ahead of time when the sun is shinning.

Then I light the fire. In no time at all, it’s warm -about 2 feet from the stove. The rest of the house takes a few hours to really get comfy. I put a huge kettle of water on the stove. That takes a while to heat up, but there’s enough water to fill the peculator, make oatmeal, and to act as a humidifier.

By the time my lovely wife gets up, the coffee is made, the kitchen is warm, and the stove is good and hot for cooking breakfast. For her, most mornings, the woodstove isn’t an inconvenience at all. That’s fine by me. If the wife ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy.

Now when I fire up my big basement woodstove, there’s a chance the house will be warm in the morning. That stove will still have a deep bed of hot coals. If the wood is seasoned hardwood, it can hold a fire for 12 - 14 hours. It also uses a lot more wood than the old kitchen stove, so it doesn’t get lit until it’s really needed. When the temperature drops below zero Fahrenheit, it takes both stoves to really warm the place up.

I’d like to replace the basement stove with a rocket mass heater. All that thermal mass would still be radiating heat in the morning. My wife isn’t convinced yet. She remembers the fiasco with the waste veggie oil heater, so hesitates when I mention experimental stoves.

The experimental veggie heater worked fine when set up in the yard. However, when installed in the basement, the veggie fuel tank got warmer and warmer. The oil flowed better and better and fed the stove faster than it could be burned, flooding the combustion chamber. Then the pool of oil in the bottom of the chamber ignited. Let’s just say it set off every smoke detector in the house. A plume of black smoke blew of the chimney that could be seen from across the lake. I shut off the fuel and the heater eventually burned itself out. The experiment was over. She wasn’t going to let me try to build a better fuel regulator.

When heating oil was a buck a gallon, I’d just set the oil heat to kick in once the house started to cool. Now that heating oil is around $3.70/gallon, I really think hard about turning the furnace on or not. These days it only runs when we are going to be away for a few days. Buying fuel is cheaper than replacing plumbing.

Of course, after the holidays, I’m heading south for the bulk of the heating season. I’ll let others have the romance of the woodstoves.

-Sixbears

Lake Champlain, Day 2

It was a quiet morning at the anchorage. The one early riser who raised anchor left completely under wind power. That was considerate of him for the late sleepers. My little sailboat has no galley so I was out in the cockpit brewing the morning coffee. It was a real pleasure to sip a coffee while watching a competent skipper put his boat through its paces.

Cooking on the boat is something I’ve been mulling over for some time. There are pros and cons for many different fuels and stoves. To a large degree, my choice has been driven by working with what I already own. Last winter, I used my old propane stove, but it broke. In the end, I decided to adapt my Whisper Lite International backpacking stove. While I’m not a big fan of gasoline, I’m already dealing with it for the boat motor. The International model can run on regular gasoline, so I don’t have bring a second fuel. I cut out a piece of plywood the same size as my bottom cabin board. Might as well be able to use it as an emergency backup. On that board I mounded holders to keep the stove tank and burner in place. It keeps everything from sliding around while I cook. When not in use the stove stores in the same locker as sailboat’s fuel tank.

Cooking at dock or anchor isn’t all that hard. I just have to keep an eye out of for the odd wake or wave that would send my pot or pan flying. Being out in the cockpit those are easy enough to spot ahead of time. We realized that cooking under sail was just not going to happen. For that, we have “hand food.” Stuff you can eat uncooked with one hand: granola, fruit and energy bar, sandwiches, apples, carrots, stuff like that. In the morning, I brew a big pot of coffee that fills our big travel mugs and a large thermos. That thermos keeps us going all day.

After breakfast, we lifted our anchors and caught a light breeze that slowly moved us out into the middle of the lake -where the wind died completely. We poked around a bit, never getting much over one knot in speed. As much as I hate to use the motor, we did want to get to Snake Den Harbor for lunch. We motored over and beached the boat right up on shore. It’s public land so there’s no ugly no-trespassing signs. The dog was very happy by then to run around a bit.

After lunch, the wind had picked up enough to sail. We crossed the lake again to the VT side and explored Otter Creek. It’s a six mile motor up the creek into the tiny city of Vergennes, where there is some free docking. It’s a nice little city. We had lunch there on our way to the boat launch on day one.

One mile up the creek there’s a pretty decent boat ramp -wide and paved with cement. It was much better than where we launched. I decided to move my truck to that landing. We found a cell phone signal and called my cousin who lives nearby. She was more than happy to give me a ride to my truck.

Lake Champlain had terrible flooding of historic proportions in the spring. A really nice floating boat dock had washed up halfway on shore near the boat ramp. By lifting the swing keel and rudder, we were able to tie up to it. The dock had some damage but was very serviceable for our needs.

During our winter trip down to the Florida Keys, we gave a small bit of assistance to Roy and Dawn when their Flicka, “Laughing Dolphin,” was blown off anchor and into the Bahia Honda Bridge. They said if we were ever in their home town area in VT, to call them up. We were fairly near them and called them up. The took us out to dinner and we had a marvelous time.

We made it back to the boat just as it was getting dark. The creek was a good protected place spend the night. So ended a very busy day 2.

-Sixbears

Propane leak

There's a propane leak somewhere in my basement. I haven't bothered with it in over a week as it's a low priority.

My friend is putting in a tankless propane water heater. At one time I heated my water with propane but now I don't. To save my buddy a few bucks, I removed the old shut off valve and gave it to him. With all the jostling around with the pipes, there's a small propane leak, probably at one of the pipe joints. As soon as the leak was discovered, I shut the propane off at the tank.

That's where the situation currently stands. Finding the leak shouldn't be too hard. Spraying soapy water around the joints usually works. Bubbles form at the leak. Do not check for leaks with a cigarette lighter. Believe it or not, there's a local guy who did just that. Yeah, he found the leak, and blew the house off its foundation. The idiot is lucky to be alive.

Right now the only things that run on propane are a clothes dryer and a couple burners on the stove. The stove is an old wood/propane stove. There were a number of multi-fuel stoves built back when people were moving away from cooking with wood. Besides the two propane burners, the oven could run on propane or wood. Of course, right now its just a woodstove.

We used the dryer very little. In the summer, there's a nice clothesline. In the winter, we've an indoor clothesline near the woodstove and a wooden drying rack. As for cooking, the woodstove works just fine. The only inconvenience is that it takes a little while to get it up to temperature first thing in the morning. That does delay the morning coffee a bit. I could get a cheap electric coffee maker, but that would be one more thing taking up space on the counter.

The nice thing about the kitchen stove is that we always have a big kettle of water heating on it. The second pot of coffee later in the day takes very little time as the water is already hot. There's hot water for tea, coco, or making pasta. It also works as low tech humidifier.

I'll get around to fixing the leak. Might as well use up the rest of the propane in the tank. The plan has been to eventually phase out propane completely. By the lack of inconvenience caused by this unplanned shutdown, we seem to be well on our way.

-Sixbears

Beans

I think the ability to cook good food from basic ingredients is a valuable survival skill. If nothing else, it'll save money and you'll most likely eat better.

I was just given a case of pinto beans. For me this a real treasure. However, it's come to my attention that most people don't know what to do with dried beans. The local food pantry recently had a bean recipe contest. Too many people had no idea what to to with dried beans.

It's a shame really, as beans provide cheap, filling, healthy food. Combined with rice, it make a complete protein. Beans and rice, being cheap and easy to store, provide the basis of many emergency food storage plans. That's fine, as long as you know how to cook them.

My original cooking method was the trusty crock pot. Soak the beans overnight, drain, put beans in electric crock pot, add water to cover beans, and let them cook for the day. That's the basic idea.

Another method is to use a pressure cooker instead of a crock pot. Soak them like before. Drain, put in the pressure cooker, cover the beans with water, then pressure cook them for 30 minutes of so. The exact time will vary with equipment and the type of beans, but 30 minutes should bring you in the ball park. Adjust as needed. Pressure cookers save a lot of time and cooking fuel.

I've got a couple of cast iron Dutch ovens. They can be used instead of a crock pot in primitive conditions. They work great for cooking outside using the coals from a campfire.

Beans can be cooked in a regular pot on a very slow simmer all day. You do have to keep an eye on it and add water as needed. It's easy to boil away the water and uncover the beans. I've had good luck cooking beans on the cooler section of my wood stove.

To save energy, use a hot box. Picture an insulated box that you can put hot cook pot in. Heat the beans on the stove, then but the pot in the box to keep warm. Reheat as needed. Boxes can be made with wood and insulation. They've even been fashioned from baskets filled with straw. Even wrapping the whole thing in a blanket might work. There are plans for hot box construction available.

What do you do with your cooked beans?

Well, you could cook plain beans, then use them the same way you'd use can beans. Mix them with cooked rice, veggies or anything else that catches your fancy. They can be a main course, side dish, or used in a sandwich wrap. I like to take cooked beans, and cook them with olive oil and onions, making a refried bean paste. Pretty yummy. Traditionally, refried beans are cooked in pig fat. Tastes great, but my arteries thank me for using olive oil.

Another thing you can do is cook a whole complete dish along with the beans. That works well for things like chilies and baked beans. For a basic vegetarian chili, I'll add onion, peppers, chilies, and salt. Then I'll see what else I've got left over in the fridge and might toss that in too -meat, carrots, zucchini, and even a bit of bakers' chocolate.

I make a vegetarian bean dish using molasses, sugar, onion dry mustard and salt. Traditionally a big hunk of salt pork is added. To eash his own.

I'm not giving exact recipes as there are plenty of them available. The main idea is that the ingredients are cheap and readily available.

Recipes will tell you what type of beans to use, but don't feel bound by that. I've made baked beans using navy beans, soldier beans, cattle beans, and kidney beans. Different varieties of red beans are usually used in chilies, but don't feel bad about mixing in some black beans, pinto, or anything else you've got. Beans can add a heartiness to many soups.

Cooked beans freeze well, so don't worry about making big batches. Right now in my freezer there are some baked beans and a spicy white bean soup.

Many cultural dishes use beans to good effect. When I was a kid growing up near the Quebec border, every Saturday night was baked bean night. On Sunday morning we'd all go to church and sit in "pews." Figured there was a connection.

But seriously, if you slowly add beans to your diet, the gaseous effects aren't too bad. Over time, the body adjusts. It's worth it to take advantage of a good source of excellent nutrition.

-Sixbears

Nice Morning

It's a pleasant -2 F up here in the woods this morning. It's pleasant because the wind isn't blowing. Much more bearable than temperatures in the 20's with high winds. Today I was comfortable going out in hat, gloves and a light sweatshirt.

Now I wouldn't want to spend all day outside dressed like that, but for my morning outside chores, it's fine. The woodstove in the basement needed more fuel brought in. Also split up some smaller wood for the cookstove.

Splitting wood at these temperatures is kinda fun. It seems the ax just touches the wood and it explodes apart.

I didn't work up a sweat doing the chores, and blackflies are down to a bare minimum.

-Sixbears