So I have an almost-three-year old and another baby on the way (due in August! very excited!) and I'm contemplating how I'm going to babyproof my stove. We live in a small trailer, so it's going in the living room, which is where we spend pretty much all of our time. It's going along the back wall. The stove itself, the Englander TV-17 is pretty small, and has a 4x3 hearthpad.
My older daughter I'm not too worried about, especially since this season I'm not going to burn 24/7 and will only do it when I have the opportunity to stay here in the room with her and the stove- there's no other place in the house to be besides my bedroom which is all of fifteen feet away, and I'm a stay at home mother. She knows enough about heat and fire and "hot don't touch" from helping me cook and not touching burners and candles and things. We have a pretty sturdy fireplace screen that I think should do fine for the casual leaning or touching it.
It's high and wide enough that I can open the doors to load the stove, so that's nice. I'd like something reasonably attractive, since after I finish remodeling this mudpit it's BY GOD gonna look pretty! =P
For the new baby, I'm HOPING he or she won't be too terribly mobile by the 2011 heating season... certainly not for the early parts, but maybe the tail end. I was doing some Googling and some people use wrought-iron fencing to construct an all-around fence. But I worry about the metal itself getting hot if it's too close. How far away would the metal have to be to not be burning-temperature? Warm enough to the touch might be a good thing, to teach them that hot = bad. I'm also low on space, so I was also thinking about using some of my leftover plywood/Micore/Hardibacker and tile to make a little wall on the sides with the screen in front of it? What would be a good way to make the scren less likely to tip? It has nice wide trapezoid legs on the middle section but not the sides- I can just see a new walker crashing into it and knocking it over towards the stove which would be BAD.
I figure there must be a way to do it, since everyone used to have wood stoves and babies... How do you all protect your little ones?
Thanks!
~Rose
My older daughter I'm not too worried about, especially since this season I'm not going to burn 24/7 and will only do it when I have the opportunity to stay here in the room with her and the stove- there's no other place in the house to be besides my bedroom which is all of fifteen feet away, and I'm a stay at home mother. She knows enough about heat and fire and "hot don't touch" from helping me cook and not touching burners and candles and things. We have a pretty sturdy fireplace screen that I think should do fine for the casual leaning or touching it.
For the new baby, I'm HOPING he or she won't be too terribly mobile by the 2011 heating season... certainly not for the early parts, but maybe the tail end. I was doing some Googling and some people use wrought-iron fencing to construct an all-around fence. But I worry about the metal itself getting hot if it's too close. How far away would the metal have to be to not be burning-temperature? Warm enough to the touch might be a good thing, to teach them that hot = bad. I'm also low on space, so I was also thinking about using some of my leftover plywood/Micore/Hardibacker and tile to make a little wall on the sides with the screen in front of it? What would be a good way to make the scren less likely to tip? It has nice wide trapezoid legs on the middle section but not the sides- I can just see a new walker crashing into it and knocking it over towards the stove which would be BAD.
I figure there must be a way to do it, since everyone used to have wood stoves and babies... How do you all protect your little ones?
Thanks!
~Rose
