Adventures in a BIG old country mansion

Hi folks,
As some of you know, I was sidelined with strokes 2 1/2 years ago, and wasn’t working or operating wood stoves. I kept busy designing and building several versions of masonry rocket heaters (Recent masonry rocket heater build and 55 gallon rocket heater) and just recently took a “job” in Massachusetts helping restore a big old country manor that was donated to a great religious order here. It’s not really a job per se; I actually joined this religious order as a layperson (like a lay Brother) for a year, to help with this restoration. The manor was purchased for them to be used as a retreat center for lay Catholics from around the country to come to one central place for fellowship with this religious community.

The manor was built by a Boston banker in 1904. It sits in 180 acres, with a top notch trout stream running right through the property. It has about 14 bedrooms, 11 fireplaces (including one on the front porch) and the original coal fired kitchen cook stove, which I’m restoring.

The original manor was built in 1904, but unfortunately it was not updated or cared for, and needs a lot of work, including new roof (they applied nylon “Slate” roofing shingles) and new cedar shake siding, which we’ve been indidually hand rolling with Australian Timber Oil.

 

I mentioned earlier I’m restoring an antique coal burning kitchen cook stove; it is built right into the brick wall behind it.It’s not a freestanding cook stove but what they call a “brick-set” stove, and would have originally been built by a mason.

The grates in it are designed for burning coal, which requires a lot more air traveling up through it from underneath to keep burning. These were the original bottom and front (vertical) grates:

You can see how warped the bottom grate was, and the top of the vertical grate was literally burned away.

This was because the prior owners burned firewood in it instead of coal. As you folks know, firewood only needs a fraction of the air input as coal, and if you burn firewood using the coal grates, it lets in so much air it overfires the stove, gets too hot and warps or burns away the cast iron.

So I built a new firebox floor with smaller air slots for burning firewood. The vertical firebox portion doesn’t need any air slots to burn firewood. It gets enough through the bottom.

I found an old heavy piece of beam in the farmyard of the small farm the this religious order owns, and cut out a new floor for the firebox, and added slots for air:
And cut out a piece from a heavy metal box I found in the barn to create the vertical section of the firebox:

Around the back of the firebox the stove originally had a cast iron water jacket, which would heat water that a big tall copper tank held right next to the stove. Unfortunately it was used for years without water while burning firewood, so as you can see above, it was burned though or burned out completely in places too.

So I cut out the inner of the two walls of cast iron that made up the water jacket in areas that were burned out, and left the outer wall as a liner for the firebox:

 

Next I need to repair a bad crack in the cooking surface:
But I’m still not sure how to repair it. The best method would be to disassemble the cooking surface and take it somewhere they can weld cast iron, but unfortunately I couldn’t get the 110 year old flat head bolts that hold it to budge. I tried propping it up as you can see above with a brick, but one of the antique stove repair shops said that was not the proper/safe way to do it, and I’m waiting for a call back from them with further input.

 

The original wrap around porch was falling in, and a neighbor donated massive pieces rough hewn hemlock from trees on his property to replace the original hemlock porch beams (which lasted 114 years, so why change now)

 

The interior architecture and woodwork is simply amazing:

 

Almost makes me want to become a Catholic!

 

That’s beautiful! What a labor of love it must be to participate in a restoration like that. Good on you BrianK

 

Amazing!! On 180 acres what a retreat!

 

The whole place is beautiful.

 

I love old, big houses. So much character and artwork in the designs and finish. They literally do not make em like this anymore. So much cooler than a McMansion.

 

Not too bad of a shack!

 

Cool project!
A map torch will loosen the bolts. If not drill them.
"Furnace" welding would probably be the best method. It's a lil small to do a stitch weld underneath.
Good luck!

 

Great, thanks for these tips!

There’s a “professional” antique stove repair shop about 2 hours east, near Boston, that was willing to work on this type of brick-set stove, but he wanted $375 up front just to come look at it, then $92/hour for repair work, plus parts and further travel!

I haven’t spent a dime, by reusing barnyard scraps of metal so far.

 

The view down the valley from the front porch. The trout stream runs a couple hundred yards to the right at the bottom of the hill, and the property is surrounded by several thousand acres of state conservancy land.
And an aerial view:


The property was a Franciscan monastery from the 1940s to the 1980s, then a Japanese macrobiotic cooking school where people came to live for a couple weeks at a time, till about two years ago. The country manor is at the far left in the aerial view, and there is a small dormitory and a couple other buildings on the property. During its early history the property also served as a hunting lodge, and there’s an old shooting range beside the garage at the far right in the aerial photo.

 

The community where I’m living has a historic inn built in 1794 as their headquarters. They installed a Woodstock Progress Hybrid in one of the fireplaces on the main floor last February, and one of my tasks is to keep it burning. Most of the community members here are in their young twenties and have never operated a wood stove, and being on the historic registry and for insurance purposes, they have very sensitive smoke detectors hard wired to an alarm company, who automatically alert the fire company if a smoke alarm sounds.

In two months of burning this stove last winter, they had five false alarms due to smoke back! And technically they can be fined $500 per false alarm! (Though they haven’t enforced it yet thankfully.)
So I’m drawing up instructions so the community can properly operate the stove without setting off these sensitive alarms.

I’ve been running the stove all week and so far no false alarms.

That also means that now I’ve operated my old Woodstock Fireview, the Beta Ideal Steel, an Ideal Steel I purchased after they went into production, and now a Progress Hybrid.

I can honestly say that, although the aesthetics of the Progress wins hands down, the Ideal Steel was far easier to load and control, made more heat and made it faster, and burned longer and held coals longer for restart.

As a heater, the Ideal Steel wins hands down IMHO. For looks, nothing compares to the Progress.

And I just made up a batch of fire starters from Dixie cups, shredded paper from our office shredder, and melted candles I’ve bought cheap from second hand stores over the years. I like them better than Supercedars.

 

Re: the IS v. PH- Do you think it is the tertiary air or the exhaust path? Or both? Something else?

 

Very interested in the observations of the differences between stoves. BrianK..

 

Just absolutely beautiful from the property to the architecture on 180 acres wow, just amazing!! Thank you for sharing those pictures, truly looks like a small piece of heaven!