Warming Up On A Cold Night
They’re predicting a minor ice storm for Pocahontas tonight, so it warmed me up a bit when I discovered that they installed the wood heating stove in the living room of The Julia Dean apartment today in the Lesmeister Guesthouse.
The wood stoves in the apartments are for ambiance, not heat, so I got really small ones. The idea is to have a fire to watch, not get the place so hot guests start running the air conditioning to cool it back down!
They look great, though there’s one thing I’m not happy about with them. If you look at the third photo below you’ll see that, while photos can make plumb walls look slanted when they’re not, the stovepipe clearly leans forward, toward the front of the stove, to meet the hole in the roof where the pipe runs through the roof. I’m hoping they can add a longer piece in the angled part of the pipe near the top to make the thing look more plumb!
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That is a “long” stovepipe. I guess they all were in those days with the high ceilings. But, it is really striking to a generation that had little experience with them and if you did a lot were short and vented out walls.
The Lesmeister Building has several brick chimneys built into the outside walls. Originally there were stoves whose pipes went up about 10 feet from the stoves, then turned 90 degrees to enter holes in the walls at the base of the chimneys, then on up to the outside. This was to avoid having to penetrate the roof and risk leaks, and I guess fires from stove pipes passing through wooden roof decks.
In the hundred years since then, they’ve perfected flashing and double-wall stove pipes so it’s not a problem to have the stove pipes penetrate the roof. The old chimneys are still there, but not in great shape, so safer to use all new stuff.
Stoke it!
Stokin’. The little stoves have soapstone sides. It’s supposed to be good for absorbing the heat then slowly releasing it all night long. I’m looking forward to trying the stoves out next month in the “trial runs” I put the apartments through, staying a few nights in each to see what I need and realize I’ve forgotten!