New house and new stove

So we moved into a new old house and have started to renovate it. We moved all the wood over too. This old house is very cold in winter and the insulation is lacking. Typically the way houses were built in South Africa 100 years ago. We will eventually change that.

It only has an open fireplace which I have no intention in using. I feel I am wasting my wood in there.

My wife phoned me yesterday afternoon from the local store to inform me that she managed to haggle a good price on a display unit stove. It is the identical one I left behind at the old house and I still have a brand new spare baffle plate. So we put a nice dent in the credit card and brought the new stove home.

Now for the installation!

Our houses were/are built with almost zero insulation. It does not snow where I am, but maybe we are just not geared correctly to deal with chilly days. Besides, a wood stove is not only about survival. It makes the house more pleasant and I like making fires.

Wood stoves are not essential in Africa but a luxury.

I'm pretty sure you guys will be walking around in a T-shirt during our winters here along the coast. We are on the southern tip of Africa along the coast. Our 'cold winter' as in right now basically means around 57F during the day with heavy rain. I goes down to around 41F at night.

60miles inland they get snow around this time of the year, but only for a few days at a time.

Like I've said, our building were not built with insulation in mind. Built with bricks and concrete because it is cheaper, faster and you can rely on semi-skilled labour to do it. No double glazing or central heating. I had insulation installed in the old house in the attic and that made an improvement. Even this is the exception.

I will eventually get to installing some better insulation and replacing the steel frame windows and doors with something better. This is a long term project which will cost plenty of momey.

PS: Around here, airconditioning is something you have in your car or at the office, very seldom at home.

I have prepared the stove pad and I am getting ready to install the stove. I started checking the flue pipes last night. Here the 1st prolblem started. I cannot get the pipes to fit into each other. The crimped ends are almost the same diameter as the female section. I am going to borrow a crimping tool from a friend who runs a aluminium gutter company. Hopefully this will help.

I informed the distributor of the stove and they will log a warranty claim but need the original invoice. I will email this to them when I get home from work. I am not sure how long this will take to sort out. Maybe I am lucky and get it fixed myself tonight.

So I finally received the flue pipes last week. This is the 3rd set from the supplier as the others were poor quality and would not fit into each other. Many hours later on the weekend and the flue pipe were installed. Again, 2 of the flue sections did not fit 100% but I managed to work around it. Lit the 1st fire on Saturday night. Now, with my luck our colder weather seems to have passed and spring is upon us.

I will light that stove regardless. I have waited long enough to get it going. Here are some pics. I tried to go for a more rustic look. The old roof sheeting have spacers behind it so that it can protect the wall and create some convection. That is the idea anyway.

My wood is well seasoned but got soaked with rain last week. I don't have a shed yet, so I will dry them in the sun for a few days.