My wife wanted fire up the stove Sunday, that was a hard NO. It was 88* Saturday & dropped to 62* Sunday. I will be replacing all the firebricks, the baffle & door gasket before firing it up.
I have our stove all torn apart right now cleaning everything up, replacing some bent air tubes, welded a couple cracks and angle iron to hold the firebrick in place. I'll cut a couple extra firebrick for the weird sized ones and touched up the paint. I put a little stack on it outside and fired it up to cure the paint so it won't stink up the house when we need to fire it up. I put in a new door gasket also. This stove has been heating the house for 14 6-7 cord seasons and it was due for a little maintenance. Cleaned the chimney and got the usual 2 cups of ash out of it. This stove burns hot and complete and I'm careful not to have any moisture in the wood that comes in for the stove. I'm still waiting on a couple parts that should get here any day. It will feel good having it in good shape and ready for the season.
It is also known as USS TR0007. They still sell them at Menards, at least here locally. Quite a bit higher price now that back when I got it. I have replaced a few tubes over the years and a few brick as well, but this year it's getting a good going over. Overall it's been a good stove for us. I run it hard because it's located in the basement and it provides probably 85-90% of the heat for our home using the furnace fan to distribute the heat throughout the house. The smoke dragon airtight stove I had before heated the house well, but used 15 cord a year, over twice what this stove uses to do the same job. My saws, splitter, and my back like this stove MUCH better than the old one...
Jan here is usually cold cold cold and ice, snow varies, but yes, always the snow in Jan. Just the way it is and always has been. Some worse. I do notice that the storms, especially those ocean storms, are much worse and much more destructive. Gully washers are more common. Road washouts and culvert losses are more common. We had erosion along our road. First time since the road was made in '75.
I just turned off the air conditioning Saturday and opened the windows. Cold is better than mud. Snow I can do without but it’s usually part of the bargain.
