Weekend spent at friend’s cabin-wet wood & open fireplace.

[Iembalm4aLiving]

Spent the weekend at a friend's cabin with a few other couples. The only heat source for most of the place is a large open fireplace. We've been there before, but this time around the wood was split late last summer. Which means it was wet-really wet.

I could tell when we got there - the smoke billowing out of the chimney was the first clue. Once inside the sizzle was obvious.

We got there Friday and the inside temps were in the 40s.....by Saturday night we were finally in the low 60's but the amount of wood burned to achieve this temp was staggering. It required about 5 loads of wood overnight to keep things going. Such a waste....of time and wood. I swear nearly a cord of wood was burned in one weekend.....just amazing.

I kept imagining a stove installed in this mammoth fireplace and how much warmer we all would have been that weekend...but then again, the wet wood we had to burn would have ruined any benefit a stove would have had....


Anyway, I figured you guys could sympathize with what I endured that weekend. It wasn't pretty.

 

[dougand3]

Sounds emotionally rough! I'd be looking at that foaming, sizzling fire....feeling sick. Probably shivering, too. LOL.
Maybe you could gently educate your friend on dry wood and the benefits of stoves/inserts. Maybe send him some CL finds on good buys in your/his area.

 

[Flatbedford]

That must have been painful. Like a chef being served a TV dinner at a friend's house.

 

[firebroad]

That must have been painful. Like a chef being served a TV dinner at a friend's house.

Perfect allegory!

 

[firefighterjake]

That must have been painful. Like a chef being served a TV dinner at a friend's house.

Perfect allegory!

Wouldn't this be analogy . . .

 

[firebroad]

That must have been painful. Like a chef being served a TV dinner at a friend's house.

Perfect allegory!

Wouldn't this be analogy . . .

Oops, stand corrected. Chemo-brain.

 

[firefighterjake]

That must have been painful. Like a chef being served a TV dinner at a friend's house.

Perfect allegory!

Wouldn't this be analogy . . .

Oops, stand corrected. Chemo-brain.

It's easy to confuse the two . . . and I was just busting on you.

Honestly . . . are you recovering from cancer? I have a friend that experienced chemo brain. He's doing much better cognitively now, but for a while you can tell that the chemo had definitely affected his mind.

 

[firebroad]

After 4 years, I am getting better! The drugs they used were pretty harsh. I could barely speak articulately for two years, and my cognitive skills were affected. It has only been the last year and a half that my vocabulary has come back to me. It was frustrating, and doctors not only do not tell you about it, some will deny that it happens at all. Yes, it IS all in our heads Enough of that soap box.
Lost a bunch of weight, which for me was good, but it came back. Blast it.

 

[Flatbedford]

My boss had chemo about 15 years ago and has had chemo brain for all the 12 years that I have known him. Maybe he was always stupid? Glad to hear you are getting better.

 

[firebroad]

My boss had chemo about 15 years ago and has had chemo brain for all the 12 years that I have known him. Maybe he was always stupid? Glad to hear you are getting better.

Ha ha, better not let him hear you say that. Seriously, it takes a LONG TIME, sometimes it improves, but never goes away. Depends.

At least I am not burning wet wood in an open fireplace anymore :red: , god knows how many carcinogens I sucked into my lungs.

 

[firefighterjake]

Firebroad . . . it's always good to hear survivor's stories.

 

[Iembalm4aLiving]

.....and as usual, my original post has gone way WAY off topic.......

 

[firefighterjake]

Wet wood is bad . . . there . . . post is now back on topic.

GD . . . don't feel bad . . . it's the hearth.com way . . . we all have short attention spans and varying degree of ADHD. . . . Now prepare for the thread to take a turn about ADHD.

 

[firebroad]

I do have to say that the reason I got an insert was mostly to get more heat out of my fireplace, but also because I had a "bad" fireplace, i.e., smoke. Sometimes I had to fan the smoke detectors silent and then open the windows, and when I went to bed(all on the same floor) all I could smell was acrid fireplace stink. This was before I knew about anything such as truly dry wood and such.
I honestly only thought that my insert would supplement my heat, and I figured that would be enough. I had no clue as to the full potential until I started using it, and got on this site.
I think this is why so many of us don't stockpile firewood ahead of time. I never dreamed I would be buying 4 cords of wood this spring!