First fire of the season.

Well now, here it is, the last part of September and the NW weather has turned wet and much cooler.

Wed evening was quite cool, and the house was only 65F when we got home, ahhhhhh yessssss, FIRE TIME.

I had done some major work on our little Whitfield back in late April, so it was ready to go.

I checked the hopper and it was still full of shells from the end of the spring season.

A handful of pellets in the pot, get the propane torch going and soon a warm little fire was burning.

This morning is cool and wet, so I tossed a fire in the little Whit again.

I still need to do maintenance on our large Whitfield, as summer came and went without getting anything much done.

The season is here, time to gitterdone.

Good to be back in the saddle again.

Snowy

Thanks troops

Health is so so.

As many here know, I had a kidney out due to cancer back in April of this year, and a year ago August I had a stroke, so all told I'm not doing bad I guess.

The nut shell thing is still ongoing, and we bought a dumpster last fall to haul the shells home in.

Instead of my job, it's now a family thing, and I just supervise from the sidelines.

I am still senior stove adviser and official overseer ya know.

We are closing our long time family gun store and retiring as of Oct 31 we will be officially retired.

It's just way beyond anything I can deal with any more to be active all day.

I am good for a couple hours in the morning then the rest of the day is sketchy.

The doc says it's a stroke thing to battle fatigue, so I just do as good as I can.

The kidney thing went fine, but as with any cancer, Ya keep a warry eye over your shoulder.

Well, this morning is wet and cool, the little stove is handling the chores fine in this reasonably mild weather, but soon it's gonna need its big brother to do the bulk of the work.

My daughter and Son inlaw are coming today, maybe I can get some help and we can tear into the big Whit and get it ready to go.

It's time to really swamp out the exhaust fan and housing, as well as blow out the room air blower squirrel cage fan.

The blades in those fans get really skunked up with dirt.

Well, off to get more coffee.

Snowy

Well, no more dump truck, but still doing shells.

The little brown shells have become a way of life around here, so much so that even the grand kids want to help shake them through the screen bottom bucket.

This season we started having a round the clock fire over a week ago, and have burned 24/7 since that time.

This weekend we got what was left over from Typhoon Pabuk, and it soaked us good.

About 5 inches of rain since Saturday.

Western Oregon is noted for being wet, but this much so quick is a bit much, even for us.

Normally we don't see this much rain this early, with the heavy winter storms plowing in late in October and into November and beyond.

Astoria, over on the North coast got over 10 inches of rain with this series of storms, and it set some records.

We wont start getting shells in until November, as the plant will not start processing until then.

We still have a fair amount of shells left in the STASH so were good.

We are only running the little Whit so far, and it does not use a lot of fuel.

A 6 gallon bucket full will run 24 hours. (This is about 22 pounds)

The big whit will burn more in a 24 hour session.

We never run the stoves beyond the #1 setting (has 1-5)

The shells burn a lot hotter than pellets.

Think of the small fragmented shells sort of like burning kindling in a wood stove, the stuff burns off fairly quick, and a high setting will result in a HUGE fire.

I have the feed rate trimming adjustments tweeked to give enough fuel drop to keep the fire from going out between drops.

The fire stays at a nice level that gives good warmth without overheating the stove.

This is one reason that we have multiple stoves instead of one large one.

Our Quadrafire 1000 will heat the entire house by itself, but there are two downsides, one being the cost of pellets vs the shells, and also the rise and fall of the temp in the house.

Running the multiple stoves with a small fire and then adding another fire as the weather requires allows us to maintain an even temp in the house instead of the constant up and down while running a stove on a stat.

Our house is 2300 ft, spread out over a large footprint that can see some rooms cool off more than others.

Snowy