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Oct. 9th, 2004 10:09 pmThe boiler has now been running for over a week. There were a few starting pains but no major issues, except that I have to go out every so often and put wood and/or coal in it. Compared to a wood stove, it's very efficient -- rather than heating the house with direct radiant heat from the stove, all the heat (and I do mean ALL; it's so well-insulated that you can hardly even feel it from the outside when it's burning) goes into heating the water which circulates through the radiators. In this warmer weather, the water stays hot for hours and hours. Unfortunately this means it's awfully tempting to try to conserve wood, just putting in the bare minimum to warm up the water tank and then letting it go out between feedings. Which means I'm spending far too much of my time starting fires and babying them along until they get going, only to let them go out 12 hours later.
It's good practice for when it gets really cold, though. I'm learning how to handle the stove, how long it takes to burn a box of wood, how much wood it takes to get the tank hot, etc.
My dwindling supply of wood worries me somewhat. It's not like I'm gonna run out tomorrow, but I have no particularly good way to replace it, since the Suburban died so I have nothing to haul with. If I only had a truck ... the News-Miner gives away free pallets, so I could just load up a truck with pallets every so often. They burn good. But they don't fit through the doors of the Suzuki.
Well, I have at least a month's supply of wood, plus 3 tons of coal if I can just figure out how to get it to burn right, so I'm sure I'll be okay when it turns cold. I just don't have a huge safety buffer.
Chopping wood and loading a boiler is a good way to add to my bruise collection. I swear I look like someone beats me with a stick. No, I just beat myself with a stick. At least my hand is healing.
It's good practice for when it gets really cold, though. I'm learning how to handle the stove, how long it takes to burn a box of wood, how much wood it takes to get the tank hot, etc.
My dwindling supply of wood worries me somewhat. It's not like I'm gonna run out tomorrow, but I have no particularly good way to replace it, since the Suburban died so I have nothing to haul with. If I only had a truck ... the News-Miner gives away free pallets, so I could just load up a truck with pallets every so often. They burn good. But they don't fit through the doors of the Suzuki.
Well, I have at least a month's supply of wood, plus 3 tons of coal if I can just figure out how to get it to burn right, so I'm sure I'll be okay when it turns cold. I just don't have a huge safety buffer.
Chopping wood and loading a boiler is a good way to add to my bruise collection. I swear I look like someone beats me with a stick. No, I just beat myself with a stick. At least my hand is healing.