Need thermometer, any other basic gear? moisture meter?

Check Home Depot for an ash can and shovel. You want the can to have a tight lid.

I am not sure a moisture meter is basic? You can usually figure out how dry wood is by its weight (wet wood is heavy), checking (dry wood had checking at the ends), and sound (wet wood makes a thudding sound when hit together). Besides, you can only burn the wood you have. However, I have a $30 moisture meter and it is fine--the trick is pushing the pins into the wood far enough.

Ask you dealer where the best place is to put your thermometer--I use my on the cooktop as my stove pipe has a double wall. BTW, ask your dealer for one--I was given one by my dealer. Can't hurt.

I use a large canvas tote bag to haul firewood--about $20 from an L. L. Bean outlet. Get fireproof gloves.

Maybe an ash rake. I use this one and it was very reasonable:

http://www.downeastchimney.com/erake.html

Hakusan said:

You want the can to have a tight lid.

Click to expand...

No doubt!
I cleaned out a couple days ago and today I found the lid 20' away from the can and half the ashes blew away. Luckily nothing was hot anymore though!

Moisture Meter . . . No idea -- I don't use one

Firewood Canvas Carrier: $10-$20 (Northline Express.com) or local Big Box hardware stores (I bought mine at Lowe's for $10 or so)

Ash Can: $10-$20 (True Value Hardware or similar hardware store sells covered metal pails)

Thermometer: $20-$25 depending on the type (I bought one Condar thermometer from the local True Value and the probe-style for double wall pipe from Northline)

Fan: Skip the fancy-schmancy door hanging fans . . . just use the floor fan or box fan you no doubt have already unless you need to buy a fan ($18-$40) from Walmart, Kmart, etc.

Fire Starter: I'm cheap and use dimensional lumber, split up cedar or split softwood slabs to get the fire going ($0). . . but if I was a little less cheap I would go to Walmart's camping section and buy some of their fire starting logs and cut them up . . . or splurge for the Super Cedars since a lot of folks really like these

Wouldn't it be just as easy, when taking ashes out of the wood stove, to go to the basement sink or some available water source, and make that gray soup outa the ashes, and just dump em?! Then you don't need a cover, and you don't need to worry about leaving them out and having a fire where you don't intend to have one.
-Soupy1957

I've been heating with a wood stove in our living room for 19 years now, and never used or even thought about getting a moisture meter. Just get you wood, split and stack it, and let it dry two full summers, no problems. I do stack my oak separately and let that dry 3 summers. And my ash can is an open steel pail. I only put fully burned ashes in it, and if a time comes when any hot coals go in, the can goes outside immediately.

No hand log carrier either. I have a two wheel cart narrow enough to push down the hallway, bicycle-type wheels, and I take loads of wood to the wood box in the living room. Extremely little mess, often no more than having to pickup a few pieces that fall to the carpet. The wood box holds 3-5 days of wood, depending on weather, and just two loads with the cart.

The thermometer I find essential. Mine is magnetic and is on the black stove pipe about 18" above the top of the stove, and we burn consistently at 300-400F. I have no good idea that the reading is actually accurate, only that the stove burns very well at these temps, and we have no fear of over-heating.

Burning dry wood and burning hot insures no creosote in the chimney. That I brush once each summer before the start of the next heating sytem. We burn 24/7, primary heat source, with electric baseboard backup to supply heat when we are gone for more than a day.

Now, all that said, have fun, and if this or that makes it fun, do it. Wood heat is environmentally responsible, is efficient, is safe, is clean, is warm, and is fun, so enjoy it.

Keep in mind that the "burn ranges" you see on 99% of those magnetic thermometers are for the surface temp ranges of a single wall stove pipe about 18" up from the top of the stove.

Your Lopi should have an overfire temp of around 800F, for example. So when you see "danger" at 600F on the magnetic thermo, don't panic.

Moisture meter is a fun tool for kicks n giggles, but as others have said you can tell a lot more after you've gotten a year or two ahead on your wood supply. It will be lighter, a different color, checked on the ends, and will ring like ball bats/bowling pins when hit together.

GET A BASIC PAIR OF WELDING GLOVES for loading the stove. Some of the best money I ever spent at TSC.

tickbitty said:

Excellent advice from all, thanks! I remembered one other thing I probably oughta get too though, a chimney brush no?
Will be shopping some of these things in "real" stores tomorrow as apparently the mail order place I was gonna do takes 2 plus weeks to get stuff to me.

Click to expand...

Chimney brush, yes, but no panic - if you are burning right you shouldn't need to clean the chimney more than once or twice a season... Best price I found for brushes when I was shopping a while back was ACE hardware, using their website and "ship to store" option - make sure to get the right size and type for your flue.

Some people have made good reports about the "soot eater" which appears to be an electric drill powered gizmo that acts like a weed eater - more expensive, but supposedly a lot easier than a standard brush...

Don't waste money on the fancy "chimney rods" - do a search for how to build a rod out of grey PVC plastic electrical conduit for a fraction of the cost for the "official" rods.

Gooserider

Thanks for the tip on the PVC rods.

For an ash can I've been putting the ashes in my small Webber grill. Works great.

pyper said:

Thanks for the tip on the PVC rods.

For an ash can I've been putting the ashes in my small Webber grill. Works great.

Click to expand...

That will do, but for longer term, what I do is get two 20-gallon galvanized garbage cans w/ lids and use them in rotation - when one fills I start on the second, as the second starts getting full, I will find someplace to dump the first, and so on... Note, be sure to keep the lids on the cans, as if water gets in it will make lye, which will quickly rot out the bottom of the can...

Gooserider

Plus one on the welding gloves . . . next to my thermometers I would consider this one of my most useful and essential "tools" that gets used every single day.

Hakusan said:

Check Home Depot for an ash can and shovel. You want the can to have a tight lid.

I am not sure a moisture meter is basic? You can usually figure out how dry wood is by its weight (wet wood is heavy), checking (dry wood had checking at the ends), and sound (wet wood makes a thudding sound when hit together). Besides, you can only burn the wood you have. However, I have a $30 moisture meter and it is fine--the trick is pushing the pins into the wood far enough.

Ask you dealer where the best place is to put your thermometer--I use my on the cooktop as my stove pipe has a double wall. BTW, ask your dealer for one--I was given one by my dealer. Can't hurt.

I use a large canvas tote bag to haul firewood--about $20 from an L. L. Bean outlet. Get fireproof gloves.

Maybe an ash rake. I use this one and it was very reasonable:

http://www.downeastchimney.com/erake.html

Click to expand...

The ember rake looks like something I'd like. But the website you mention seems to have NO way to actually order the rake! How did you get it?