Late Summer Check In

[Corey]

Hey everybody – Just thought I’d take a second to drop in and say HI. Been thinking about the next season of burning now that the weather has cooled off a little. I almost thought about lighting a fire over the weekend. We had a couple of cloudy days followed by some night time lows in the 40’s (almost unheard of for early September around here!)- I awoke to another gloomy day and set around in the chilly house for a while. I decided to see how cool it was outside (with all the clouds and drizzling rain, it looked like it should be about 40 out there) To my surprise a warm front had gone through during the night and it was about 75. Good thing I didn’t light a fire. All we had to do was open the doors and windows to let the cool air out of the house! Then, of course, two days later it was back up in the 90's and I was getting an itchy finger to turn the AC back on!

I see some people on the forum are already burning and looking to keep going ‘till next spring. WOW – I like a nice fire, but our 4 month burning season is plenty for me! It looks like our temps should be back in the mid 90’s for the next couple of weeks. So I may not have to kick into full burning mode for a while yet.

Anyway – good to see plenty of old friends from last year and some new names too. I’ll check back in more as time allows.

Corey

 

[Corie]

About time you swung back into town! What's going on Corey?

 

[bruce56bb]

welcome back corey
i hope you had a great summer.
bruce

 

[Corey]

Hey guys -

Not too much going on here - got another room remodeled in the house over the summer, a cord or so of firewood cut before it got blazing hot, and sketched out some plans for a better secondary combustor for my stove. I guess the highlight of the summer was finally tearing into my 1970's AC unit ripping out the cap tubes and putting in a new TXV. What a difference that made! Usually any outside temp above the mid 90's and the AC would just run solid to try and keep the house cool. With the TXV, we hit 107F one day during the summer. I about had a heart attack when I heard the unit shut down. Went in and looked at the thermostat and it had just shut down because it reached the set temperature. I was a little disappointed to see that my electric bill showed we used only about 3% less electricity for the month compared to last year. But then I looked up the historic weather and found out we had 25% more cooling degree days for the same time period this year.

Anyway, it's getting close to time to tear into the stove room for remodeling, so I will have to see how that goes and if it gets done before winter sets in.

How about you guys? Any great projects or good wood hauls over the summer?

Corey

 

[Corie]

Well, I'm going to be putting in my new stove starting tonight I think. I'm working for Englander so obviously I'm putting in one of our NC30 wood stoves. Otherwise, no great projects yet- Well, except those here at work.

 

[bruce56bb]

cory, my 3 kids eliminate any possibility of projects done around the house.
highlights of my summer:
child-less trip to vegas with the wife(lost my a$$)
mens night at the golf course.
a little early summer camping before the heat set in.
my daily dose the wwf style hearth.com matches:cast vs craig vs elk

 

[elkimmeg]

Corey Lot of new members here care to share a picture of your home made splitter you made

Welcome back always projects going on here My wood supply is 3 years ahead so that frees up time to paint the house trim this fall and replace pieces to far gone for painting
After this weekend I should have some time but there are a couple donor installs on the back burners to get done

 

[Corey]

Corie - congrats on the job. May have to pick your brain later on different stove design features - at least to the extent you can divulge any of your information!

Elk, I don't have any new pics of the splitter, but the link to the old thread is:

https://www.hearth.com/econtent/index.php/forums/viewthread/813/

I've put 2-3 more cords worth of use on it and so far it's working pretty good. I have no complaints about the strength or overall design. A few things I might change if I were building it from scratch and buying all the materials outright:

If the backbone/tank was 6" square pipe instead of 6" SCH 40 round, it would probably be easier to work with, provide even more strength and a slightly larger fluid capacity - even though the 6" round provides plenty of these - I had the 6" in the scrap pile, but if I had to buy one or the other, I would go with square.

Directly welding the wedge to the hydraulic ram is working surprisingly well, if I had to do it over, though, I might consider making a sleeve that the ram would thread into.

I left the wedge free so it could spin 360 degrees on the ram - split in any direction. But I split one piece of wood with the wedge parallel to the backbone as opposed to 90 degrees the way it is shown in the photo. The grain of the wood happened to angle off so that the split wanted to get thicker at the bottom. I think it put a small bend in the ram so I may have to see about getting that straightened - although it still functions OK.

A horizontal shaft engine might allow for locating the engine and pump down lower on the rig. But the vertical shaft was only $80 bucks brand new.

If there is much interest, I may take some additional pics and put together a quick web page to detail some of the design features.