Saturday, December 18, 2010

Yeay! We finally installed our wood burning stove! So one of my city friends was so amused that we put in a wood burning stove. She called us pioneers! But on the flip side of that, I had a fellow Anza friend come over the other day and the first thing she said was, "ooo, what a beautiful stove!" HA. So out here, every house runs on propane for their heat. The big propane trucks come out and fill up our propane tanks when they are low. We don't have the gas company like in the city. So, in case you didn't know, propane is expensive! Nobody turns on their thermostat heater out here, because it will literally cost $450 / month just to heat the house moderately. And most of the houses that we looked at already had wood burning stoves in them. That's just what you do out here! So here is the process from start to finish:

You can't just put the stove on the carpet. It gets so hot, it will burn right through the floor. So you have to either buy a hearth (pronounced HARTH) pad, or make your own. Well, we did buy one, it is a non combustible pad thing, but it was corny looking. So we went through the process of making our own. So you beat together powder and water to make mortar.

Here is Nathan starting the hearth (and by the way, I did just as much of this work as he did. Except for when I stopped to take pics) we start with a cement board, then brick and mortar on top of that.

The next morning, you fill in the spaces with more mortar grout stuff. Seriously, its like Martha Stewart for men. Look at that oversized cake decorating bag!

This is the finished Hearth! Pretty hard core.

So, you have to wait for a nice sunny day to work on the actual installation. There is piping that goes from the top of the stove, through the ceiling and out the roof. So, literally, you cut a hole in the ceiling up through the roof. Har har har...such a dude.

Yeay! The hole in the roof! This picture is taken from the inside of the house, where the stove is. Nathan always smiles about things. That's one of the kabillion things that I love about him. He looks at everything as an adventure. Ha. I have a really bad habit of laughing at him when he actually does get in a bad mood. I'll just laugh because its just not him.

This is a bad picture and its sideways, but it shows how grimy and dirty my daddio was getting. Look at his hands.

And the final product!! Ahhh, so nice and cozy! By the way, these few pics do NOT give the whole project justice. It was hours on end of being up on the roof. And back down, going to the hardware store, calling people who actually know what they're doing, taking parts back that don't fit, buying and ordering the right parts....anyway, it was a great learning process. And NO there isn't an Anza handyman that just does stoves. Trust me, I checked, and everybody says its just kind of a Do It Yourself project!

So the wood doesn't just show up at our doorstep by the way. That's actually a service project that the guys do out here. Nathan traded his city truck in when we moved here, for a beefy 4 wheel drive. They 4X4 it up the mountain, spend a couple hours chainsawing wood, then bring it back down. You have to stack it neatly by the side of the house and make sure to put a tarp over it so it doesn't get rained on. Ha. SO PIONEER!