Tuesday, November 11, 2014

Heating With Wood - and other stuff



I'm feeding my fire and thinking that I want to get that stick pile by the windows used up (or moved) so I can get those windows sealed/covered and move this little work table in there. This room (the 'dining room') is always cold; even in the hottest part of summer it's barely sixty in here so you'd think the insulating would be awesome - but it won't really warm up ever, no matter what. So ... I'll move my work station into the kitchen which DOES warm up!

I've got a big quilt I'll hang over the attic hall door and the door to the butler's pantry from the dining room side; then I can open the kitchen door into the attic hall/bathroom/back bedroom and see how that works. 

If the back bedroom heats up better than the dining room, that would be a good thing. My big desk is in that room.

But we shall see what we shall see I reckon.

I've got a bunch of cutting to do downstairs, getting the sticks and logs into lengths I can use. Since I have to take the window sticks down there to cut them anyway I may as well just throw them down there now and get that window area opened up, huh? 

And, while I'm thinking about it, I'll need to see if the thrift shop has any quilts or bedspread or such that I can hang over the windows in the dining room. I like having the light come in, but don't particularly like the cold coming in nor do I really enjoy looking out the windows and watching the snow come down (like it is now) out of a bleak and cold sky. If I move my work station to the kitchen or back bedroom, the only use I'll have for this room is if I can't keep the back bedroom warm enough to use and have to come in here to sleep in the platform bed with its heated mattress pad and electric blanket.

It will be as it will be and I'll learn as I go here. 

I give the fire its final feeding before I head for bed, and the temp drops about fifteen degrees in the eight hours I'm down for the count. When I get up and start feeding it again, it doesn't take long, maybe 20 minutes, for the kitchen itself to make up that fifteen degrees but the bleed into the dining room seems to take forEVER. And of course it isn't really all that long, an hour or so all told once the kitchen's hot and the butler's pantry door gets opened ... it just feels like a long time.

#
Got that stick pile down below the level of the window at least. Grabbed one of the little chain saws and started cutting away on the long sticks I'd stacked in front of the window.

Those are my cooking sticks and my hotting the place up fast sticks. I go through quite a few of them so it's a good thing I have lots of that size. They're kind of a pain in the behind to gather but I need them. They not only get a good hot fire going really fast, they're the ones that lay down that bed of hot embers for the bigger pieces to go onto. So yeah, I like my sticks that are a finger or two wide. Yep. Just big enough around so I can't break them by hand or foot and have to cut them.

Personally, for my particular stove, I'd love to have a whole supply of pieces that are that size, plus of course the kindling twigs for the initial starting, plus a LOT that are as big around as my arm, and a bunch that are as big around as my legs - which you have to remember I have chicken legs and can almost reach around my upper thighs with my hands. That way I wouldn't have to split any.

The fire box of my stove is only about 8 by 8 by 20; there are times I wish it was way bigger, but it serves well enough for the most part. Coincidentally, the space alongside of it between the wall and the back door frame is the perfect size for me to stack wood of just the right length on. The old radiator is there so I just pile the wood on top of it and it's all good.

There's a little rod above the cooktop's six burners, connected in front of and just below the warming boxes that comes in handy. That's where I hang my wash cloth, dry cloth, and most generally a pair of wool socks. The wash and dry cloths are right there when I wash my hands and face in the wash kettle of hot water I keep on the stove, and the wool socks are almighty toasty when I put them on.

[Why in the world there's a rod on the front of the stove I have no idea. Whatever you hang on there is just going to be in the way if you have to open the oven door or get the ash box out to dump it.] 

Right now I also have a big kettle of dye on the top of my stove. It's got elm bark in it, and vinegar (since whoever said that elm bark has enough tannin in it to make things dyed with it colorfast either has different kinds of elm trees or lied) and a cotton dish towel that I want to become brown.

I doubt the dish towel will take any color as I already used that batch of dye for a long length of cotton fabric. But you never know. It's just a dish towel that I'm going to use for a dish towel so if it comes out looking like a dirty brown that's okay. One of these days I'll re-dye it and see what happens.

Made a nice brown skirt out of that long length of cotton, I did. Cooked it a good long time over the hot part of the stove top and let it cool down some before taking it out. Twisted the water out of it and left it twisted tight while it dried in my little roaster in the oven (which wasn't very hot right then as I was letting the fire go out for the night). Dried right nice I have to say, and I've got myself one of those crinkle skirts to wear with my yellow Sidhelagh outfit, the one with the plaid wool pants and yellow tunic with long sleeves. Since I'll have the brown crinkle skirt on I'll just leave the tunic long instead of hiking up one side like I usually do. It goes down about to my knees; the skirt's just about full length on me. Throw a belt around the whole works to hold the pants and the skirt on and cinch me in and I'm good to go. On the belt will likely go the felted wool bag with belt slits in the back of it - just because I like it, and because it's a great place to carry stuff like my phone, card case, pens ... whatever. I can even fit a book in there if need be. And I can wear a pair of the felted wool boots if I want warm feet, or ballet flats, or heeled boots. 

Back to topic, b.

Oh yeah.

If you go back up to that photo up there, you'll see some of my pans just this side of the stove. They're sitting on top of the little parlor stove I had hooked up before I got the big one. I like things handy so I had put a small wooden cupboard there to set things on top of and put stuff into (non-perishables and spices and such) but switched that out of there in a fast hurry when I realized that there's a vent out from the fire box along that side; the wooden cupboard was NOT okay where it was. But the cast iron parlor stove is great there. I can put hot pans onto it and keep the ones I'm not using at the moment on it too. 

That's one of my cast iron skillets, with a cast iron griddle setting on top of it and a copper bottomed sauce pan on top of that. The grey enamel-ware coffee pot is sitting on top of an enamel-ware double boiler insert on the other 'burner' of the little parlor stove. 

When I start griping about having to cut wood to fit into the fire box of my cook stove, I remind myself that the little parlor stove's wood has to be twice as short and quit griping.

The point is that you do NOT put anything that can burn anywhere near that fire box on the wood stove, only inside of it.

Stacking the firewood next to the other side (the oven side) is fine, though. Just don't put it right up against the stove. The two burners on that side are the 'cool' ones, with the two in the middle being 'medium' and the ones directly over the fire box the 'hot' ones.

Also, the wall behind the stove is lath and plaster; there's 'always' been a big wood stove right there in that kitchen but I still painted that wall with fire-proofing paint and put some tin panels behind the stove.  Just because.

You'd think that the stuff up on top of the warmers would get really hot but it doesn't. If I put those empty enamel-ware things (big coffee pot and roaster) down on the cooktop they'd be in sad shape in short order and I'd be mad as hell at myself. But they're fine up where they are. I keep a long-handled flipper up there, and a dipper too.

The dipper is for when I want really hot really fast and use cedar. It burns furiously and sometimes I can see flames jumping up the bit of chimney between the cooktop and the warmers - there's a vent in it that I keep open so I can watch for those little flames. When they show up I take off the back burner and drizzle a little water onto the flames at the back part of the fire box (only directly onto the burning wood mind you) to slow them down. Works every time. Having a nice fire going is good, but not if it flares up like that. So I watch.

And you can't use just any old pans on just any old part of the stove. That sauce pan, for example, has a plastic handle so I can only use it on a part of the stove where the handle can stick out over the side and not be over a hot part of the cooktop.

The only other thing I can think of is that when you're done cooking whatever you're cooking you have to take the pan off the cooktop. It's not like you can just turn that burner off you know. Learned that one the hard way I did, when I left a skillet on there and sat down to eat my bacon and eggs and the bloody leftover bacon fat ended up smoking me out. Hence the parlor stove right there. You could just move the pan to a cooler part of the stove I suppose, but better safe than sorry sez I. Take the pans off the cooktop.

And never ever ever set anything burnable on it.

Also, and this is something my grandmother taught me many long years ago, never wash your cast iron stuff like you do regular pans and most certainly don't put them into a dishwasher unless you plan to re-season them before you use them again. Re-seasoning them isn't hard but if you forget you're gonna be almighty sorry because you'll have stuff sticking to them like crazy. 

To season cast iron all you do is coat the inside with cooking oil and set it in the oven. Well yes, when you're using your wood stove. Or if you have a regular range, cook the pan for while but not on high heat. You'll want to do this once in a great while no matter what, but you won't have to worry much about it usually.

Cleaning them is a matter of just rinsing and then wiping them clean and calling it good. If you're persnickety about having to boil everything and using soap on even your cast iron things, just don't forget to make seasoning them a regular part of your clean-up routine or you'll end up hating them with a passion.

Just sayin'.

Anyway, the wood stove is wonderful for more than you'd think.

Here's Duke curled up on his bed in the kitchen, in front of the old trunk I use for pieces of lath from demolishing old lath and plaster walls. Rather than haul them out to the dump to be burned (wastefully, in my opinion) out there, I've kept them to burn my own self - they're easy to break to size and are just as great as the sticks for my cooking and hotting fires. You'll see a few pieces of scrap lumber that are going to go into the fire, too. Yep. And my sock dryer. Works like a charm that does.

One last thing: I looked at that photo up there again and noticed something fairly significant. See the handle sticking out of the burner top nearest us? That's the HOT burner and if you leave that handle on it and forget to pick up a potholder before grabbing it you're gonna get burned. Do NOT leave the handle there! Move it to one of the cooler burner circles where it's handy but not liable to burn your hand. If your stove has been going for a good while even the middle circles are going to hot up so move it on over to the end.

There. That should do it. If I think of anything else of vital importance I'll add it.


No comments:

Post a Comment