The Great Stove Adventure

By now most of you know that I live with my daughter. She has been heating her home with a wood stove for a number of years since the possums pretty much ate out the insulation from under the house and the cost of operating the furnace went through the roof.

At best this is an inefficient way of staying warm. Given the size of her wood stove and the fact it is more an antique than a working appliance (/sarcasm) it didn't do a very good job. On top of that we had to find seasoned wood, arrange to have it delivered, stack it, etc. Then we had to haul wood into the house, start the fires, then remember to keep them going. It was an expensive proposition. It was dirty and messy and inconvenient. On top of everything else it was inefficient in terms of actually heating anything more than the room in which it sits and the room next to it.

I have had days where my hands hurt so bad from the cold that I could barely move them. The dog slept under an afghan on the couch to keep warm. I would routinely wear long underwear, sweats, two shirts and a sweater, plus gloves in the house just to stay reasonably comfortable in the coldest weather. It was, to put it mildly, miserable.

I started talking about replacing the old stove last summer. Susan is a great gal but she's really short on follow-through. It is December now, and she had not yet obtained sufficient wood to get us through the heating season. So earlier this month I just took the bull by the horns and offered to put the entire cost of the replacement on my credit card and she could pay me back half.

I shopped around, did research on the web, talked to people, etc. I researched fuels and different types of stoves. Finally I settled on a pellet stove for several reasons. First off, it's less expensive to fuel than wood, and the pellets are easy to find. It's less messy. It takes minutes every couple of weeks to clean the entire stove. I don't have to hoard cardboard and paper or buy starter logs in order to get a fire going. I don't have to remember to bring in wood or to put it on the fire to keep everything going. There are lots of reasons to get a pellet stove.

So a week ago Saturday we went stove shopping. We found one that we really liked and that was designed for the space we have to heat. It's really pretty. Ok. Pretty shouldn't figure into it, but it's nice that it's pretty. We ordered the stove and Thursday they came and installed it. Within two hours, however, the stove was making weird noises so I called the place where we bought it. After three calls I managed to get someone out. The problems were small, and included the need to tighten some bolts that were loosened in shipping, and the fact that we had gotten a bag of bad pellets. So we shoveled out the pellets, burned down the rest, and yesterday afternoon I vacuumed out the unit and cleaned the burn pan. It's been working well since, though they do have to come out one last time to move the stove very slightly so that one small but annoying buzz stops.

The nice part about the pellet stove, aside from the fact that it works and I am warm even in my room, is that you put a bag of pellets in it and several days later you add another. Depends on how you use the stove really. I don't like sleeping in a warm room, so I turn the stove down to 55 when I go to bed. It turns itself off unless the temperature in the house drops below 55, in which case it starts back up until it's at the right place again. Same during the day. We keep it set at between 68 and 72, but more toward the lower end. Not because we're nuts but because the stove is so efficient that we are comfortably warm at that temperature. So far we're more than happy with the new stove. I am more than happy with hands that work and not having to wear my entire wardrobe just to keep warm.

Tomorrow will be yet another adventure. The stove sits on a brick pad. Over the years the mortar has begun to crumble and the bricks have to be reset before the inspector comes out next week. My daughter's boyfriend was going to do it on Friday. He in fact got started, but then he got sick and didn't get it done. Yesterday, when he was feeling better, he had other things to do. Same with today. I am a person who asks once and expects a reasonable adult to keep their word. He didn't get the work done and I know that tomorrow he'll be gone most of the day with some business he absolutely has to attend to, so the work is not going to get done again.

Then again, that's not an accurate statement. It is, in fact going to get done because I am going to do it. I got out my daughter's home repair book tonight and checked the information in it. There isn't a lot to doing this. I am working with a single layer of brick. The only things I didn't know was how thick to put the mortar and where, and whether or not it went on the bottom of the brick where it meets the wood pedestal or not. I know these things now, so by the time he gets home tomorrow I will have replaced the remaining bricks. They probably won't look as good as if he had done them, but then again they will be done which is fairly important.

One of the most valuable lessons I learned in my life is that when push comes to shove, there is only one person you can every depend on totally and that's yourself. So I do my best to include other people in my life, but I never depend on them to do anything for me. If they do what they say they will do (rare) I am thrilled. If they don't then I do it myself or pay to have it done. It's the same with this. I would lay dollars to donuts that he won't get up early and finish the job before he leaves to do his business. I wish he would, but I absolutely don't believe he will.

So right now we have a great new stove that needs a bit of attention (probably will take 10-15 minutes tops to set it right), and we will soon have the few bricks that came loose around the front edge of the pedestal fixed. I'm later on to figure out a way to put tiles, a mosaic, or something on the bricks to make the whole thing look more like a nice hearth.