Well, we are still working at getting the hang of our
fireplace. I found out that the
instructions are not always as clear as I think they are. The instructions tell us to close the
airflow control completely for overnight, to keep the fire burning low overnight. Well, I thought that meant to close it
all the time, once the fire was going.
WRONG! OOOOPS! I’ve been the one killing the
fires. Rats. Well, live and learn.
OK, I have that part figured out, and the fires are
burning much hotter now, and the house is staying warm. Right now the temp in the dining room
is 73 degrees. Quite toasty! The upstairs temp is reading at 68
degrees. This is also a nice temp
for the daytime.
We still don’t quite have it down how to keep the fire
going for more than 4 hours without interference from us, however. This is not good for overnight. Right now, we go to bed around
midnight, and, hopefully wake up in the middle of the night to add wood. If we don’t wake up, we have a pretty
chilly upstairs come morning.
The other thing is, I’m discovering that the fires haven’t
been as hot as I thought. I got a
thermometer at the fireplace store and put it on the doors. It has an indicator on the face that
tells you the zone you want your fires to be burning in. So far, we haven’t quite gotten it in
that zone. We are dancing about 10
degrees too cool, most of the time.
I don’t know how big a deal 10 degrees is, but I want to get there! We are using the wood that was here on
the property when we got here. It’s
just dead, fallen trees around the place.
The trees have been down for over two years, but they’ve also been in
the weather. Larry and the
children work hard at splitting and stacking wood each weekend. By next fall, we should have nice
stacks of wood for the winter.
Sometimes our learning is frustrating, but we are sticking
with it! We are determined to do
all we can to benefit from all the great things we have in this house to make
it economical to live in. We still
have many things that are working out beautifully, and some we want to improve
on. I’ll share more of those with
you next time.
Comments