May at last! My favorite month. Took a nice cool walky the long way around for morning chicken chores. Came back by way of Ian’s powershed where I store some big sheets of cardboard…
…which I thought I would need to slide the woodstove into place. But I’d already put on my back brace for a later trip to D&L’s, and it turned out I could carry it the short distance.
Big Brother sent some oversize furniture coasters, and I held off on that plywood pedestal till I saw whether they would solve my floor-gouging problem. Looks like they will, so I dispensed with the plywood.
That probably simplified the problem of shortening the stovepipe to fit a little. Or maybe it complicated it, I’m not sure: Turns out I cut off too much, and now sometime before next autumn I need to get a new coupler. Pretty sure the screw holes aren’t supposed to show. Oops – but I guess it could be worse.
Not long after I finished screwing up the pipe I got a text from D&L saying they were on their way back from the feed store with a pallet of horse feed. So I went over and opened up their gate wide to accommodate the trailer, then hung out in the barn for the short time till they arrived…
L is still recovering from some surgery, so D and I did the honors. Emptied the pallet into the barn, which scored me a pallet I can cut up for firewood.
Then it was battery day! It’s been warm enough lately to leave my battery jug in the powershed so I did my own first and then traveled to the rest…
And while at Ian’s I stopped to fix something that’s been bugging me…
I’m not sure his toilet tank has been rebuilt since he put the stool in maybe nine years ago. It was flushing okay but took almost half an hour to refill. We’ve got the hardest water I’ve ever seen, and sooner or later the calcium ‘fixes’ any little holes, like fill valves. So I always keep a toilet repair kit on hand.
Because it had been so long, I had some serious scraping/shoveling to do before I could put the new valve into place. And after all that, it turned out the tank valve wasn’t at fault at all – I didn’t actually fix the problem till I took the feed hose off and flushed out some sort of obstruction. Bother.
Still feeling pretty good, and it’s the warmest day so far at just barely 80o so while I was out I decided to haul some driftwood…
…and it didn’t take much of that before I ran out of steam. Went back to Landlady’s for afternoon chicken chores, picked up the woodstove pieces I’d left in her barn,…
…and now even though it’s barely 2:30 I am done for the day. Bath. Drinky. Book. Bed.
Thatsa how much of a celebrity Ian has become….his toilet is getting the clicks!
Put some spare flooring slabs under your coasters and it will not only add a layer of protection for your floor, it will raise the stove possibly enough to fix your short pipe.
I had a friend with a wood stove not too dissimilar to yours. When I asked him why he had bricks or pavers underneath the stove he said something about his having had scorch problems. I said but why? Heat rises so no big deal. He said yeah but heat also radiates.. I don’t know at what point your new flooring hits it’s smoke point, but pavers underneath is relatively cheap insurance and raises the stove high enough to not need a new piece of pipe. On the other hand I have no experience with the subject, so I’m talking out of MY exhaust pipe.
It’s good to see that you managed to get the stove in without destroying the floor. The idea of using pavers or bricks under the stove is a good one. If that doesn’t work, there is always the option of using a heat-resistant bbq mat to protect the floor.
They make insulated stove boards that just guessing are about 3/8” thick. I have one under my back room heating stove. They can extend far enough in front of the stove to catch sparks or coals rolling out. I know you only build token fires compared to me at -40 but it might still be a good idea!