Facing the prospect of a winter that lies on the rising slope of the frozen-fingers scale, I worked ahead of time to completely fill my woodshed and am now striving to get the hell over my woodstove-related phobia.
A neighbor who’s taking a welding class made me a capable if rather small grate for the stove and I’m working on getting new stacking techniques right. This morning I stoked the thing like I meant it and was stripping off layers within an hour. Nice even burn, good coal bed, relatively long-lasting…um…
Yeah. Note to self, objects too close to the firebox may become more liquid than they’re supposed to be.
Also I should probably find something other than a plastic mud bucket to hold kindling.
No, I’m not particularly a Ludlum fan. Why do you ask?
Yep… I melted my first kindling container too. A plastic pseudo “milk crate” that had seemed quite sturdy. Now sports only three corners. Cardboard is much worse, of course. Learned that with the alarming smell of too hot paper one morning. I now have an old stainless steel soup pot that had seen much better days. 25 cents at a yard sale… but it will never melt or burn. Now if it just had a lid. Laddie likes to steal things out of it to chew on. I won’t give him the things that splinter and make a mess all over everywhere. Humans are just so unreasonable.
I found some old log grates and popcorn tins to hold my ready wood supply and tinder bundles. Those little stoves will heat up quick.
Get a galv.. pail or two. Cheaper than a new cabin.
I can guarantee that the kincling left near the stove or the dead cold ash you will eventually put into the plastic pail will burn the place down.
FYI
Distance from wood stoves or single wall stove pipe to combustibles – 18″ min
Distance from double wall stove pipe to combustibles – 6″
Distance from triple wall stove pipe to combustibles – 2″
Anything that isn’t metal, ceramic or concrete,,etc. is a combustible. Any thin (1/2″”) noncombustible not separated by at least 1″ air gap from a combustible isn’t enough to prevent a fire.
I’ve been involved directly or indirectly with 4 installations. The first 2 didn’t follow these rules exactly and resulted in charred structural wood and sleepless nights. The next 2 did follow the rules and I sleep just fine.