Coffee anyone ?

[Mini Horses]

Decent day. Breezy & coolish. Chores were done early. Then settled in for morning coffee. Decided to can some of the over abundance of sweet potatoes I have. Peeled and peeled. More than needed for the 7qt for canner, soooo -- I'll cook those left into puree and make a pie! Yummy with morning coffee

 

[Alaskan]

@Alaskan i have a couple of these collapsible TAC lights. Power goes off here often.


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Coffee is ready, it rained last night and stormed. Supposed to be raining the next 5 days.

Those look nice! Thanks for the recommendation.

 

[Alaskan]

Pouring rain here. Should stop by noon. The great wood stove debate has resumed. I can’t find the helpful comments supplied here. Had to change accounts a couple of times when site or my iPhone malfunctioned, passwords etc. I’m thinking Drolet, catalytic?, while the Homer Simpson voice says “Ummm Vermont Casting, enameled”. Probably a multi step project. Best stove anyone?

i hate catalytic stoves. If you burn trash the catalytic thing gets gummed up. Then you have to replace it clean it... stuff!

horrid.

I like a non-catalytic, a non-catalytic can be EPA approved if the smoke is forced to reburn. You want an efficient stove that re-burns the smoke. A metal box in which you make a fire goes through WAY MORE wood than an efficient stove.

However, you want a switch so you can bypass the re-burn loop when you are starting up the fire. Just a straight easy path for the smoke when you are starting up a cold woodstove greatly reduces smoke in the house. Also, a blow torch, very handy to heat up a cold wood stove.

The new EPA non-caralytic... starting maybe in 2020???? No longer let you fully bank the fire. Banking the fire (maybe my terms are off... dunno), what I mean by that is you only barely let the fire get air, so that it burns very slowly all night long. But, it turns out that doing that means the fire is a lower temp which causes more particulates, so no longer EPA approved. To "fix" this annoying eco-friendly feature you have to plug up the holes that they drill into the bottom of the fire box. We haven't plugged the holes .... eh...

Other than that.... you want your smoke stack as close to straight as possible.

Woodstove in the middle of the house is most efficient... but often impossible. A heat sink is great... so, tile or stone under and around the wood stove to hold the heat that the stove makes.

Those masonry wood stoves with the built in benches are fantastic. But they usually have a small firebox, you need hard wood that is well seasoned (so, oak would be great), and it needs to be split into little kindling. Then you burn a really hot small fire, and all that heat goes into the masonry, and is radiated out over many hours. But, they cost a small fortune.