heat, we need heat

here is a picture of our wood burning stove. notice there is no pipe coming from it for the smoke? the stove pipe hasn't come yet. stove pipe is the pipe between the wood burning stove and the chimney that i re-lined. given the tight confines of our house & placement of the chimney port we are forced to use double wall chimney pipe. it reduces the clearance to combustibles greatly but it isn't available at our local hardware store.

we ordered it online the day we got our stove. i needed everything in place in order to measure out the lengths we'll need. you can't cut this stuff and the adjustable pieces are ridiculously expensive. tabitha called friday and they still haven't sent it yet. i guess it is queued to be sent tuesday from kansas. that should be just a day or so to here. hopefully we'll have it by next weekend. in the mean time we are dressing very warm and trying to keep the kids clothed. both kids would sooner be naked and freezing than keep any kind of clothing on. it is a constant battle.

we bought one of those drier vent adapters that allow drier heat into the house as a interim solution. boy-oh-boy that heat is moist. i changed the laundry and started the drier a while ago and now all the windows are steamed up.

yesterday i cut and split a few loads of wood. ben (my boss) gave me a couple of missouri-mauls (splitting wedge with a handle) to try and choose one from. i didn't really like either of them. the handle while very light and made of fiberglass is perfectly round and doesn't feel right. a normal maul has an oval shaped handle which is surprisingly useful since it by nature of the "feel" informs you if the wedge is aligned perfectly to split the log. mike coined the term "the maul of the glancing blow" and is a perfect description of the design. i might try to get some friction tape and ovalize the handle to see if that solves the problem. modifying either maul would mean that i'd have to choose between the three-inch or the inch-and-a-half model. i might just give both of them back and choose the little kindling splitter instead. although i must admit that on those occasions that i hit the log squarely they usually fell apart like butter.

mike has a hydraulic splitter that we'll use when we go cut wood together but splitting my own wood has such an attractive tactile sense of satisfaction that i plan to split most of the wood around here myself. plus that kind of work is good for the physique.