Well, today was a good day. Drove across the bridge 20 miles to pick up 2 loads of spruce and sugar maple rounds. Nice clean trunk rounds with minimal knots. Also picked up some ikea bed slats that I may use for the garden. I also went back to my first FBMP contact. It was great because the guy was telling me he's having trouble getting his fire lit.....and thought the reason was due to lack of make up air and that his new windows being installed cause the house to be super air tight. Well, I said "Dude, you have a BIG house. For the fireplace to eat up all that air and choke itself out is possible but highly unlikely. I bet it's because your wood is either too wet or it's because you don't have good kindling to get the fire going. So I went there, split his oak he had purchased last year, and the big pieces were 23% MC. The smaller splits were under 20%...but I told him to get a moisture meter and showed him how to measure the splits properly by splitting them again...... He has some contraption with a blower and u-shaped pipes....I didn't like the setup at all.....and he had that thing on top of some bricks....so it made making an upside down fire not so great as the kindling would eventually fall through the pipes...... But I made a fire for him and I could hear his jaw thud on the ground as he saw the thing come to life. I also showed him how to make kindling out of the splits he has....and since he has soooo much wood in rounds atm I told him to cut some of the taller rounds in half to 8"-10" so that it's easier to process into kindling. He gave me more beech and two rounds of white oak. I also gave him a handful of fatwood and a 5-gallon bucket full of mixed kindling.....and also gave him some spruce and black locust splits. Hopefully he starts splitting the rounds and gets into it. Oh and I also picked up an amazing old vise that was just sitting there on a bench.......I'll bring that thing back to life and use it for sure! A few rounds were too big to lift myself so I split them with a wedge and a sledge on site. First load with the slats This was behind the storefront. The 2nd FBMP guy runs a construction business. 2nd load 1st FBMP guy's fireplace contraption thing. His 2" hose is busted but the port is on the left in the front and connects to a blower. 3 loads chainsawed up. \ Beech stacked up and ready for hand splitting tomorrow.
My late father had that tubular thing in his fireplace back in the late 1970's. Worked okay from what i remember until one tube got a hole then it blew smoke. G4U for helping him out hands on and nice score. Love that beech!
I had/tried one of those tube hearth grates. You could sorta almost feel warm-ish air coming out of the top of the tubes. Went back to the cast iron grate after a couple of weeks. I've also used no grate in a fireplace. Never saw a damaged floor and never saw a split or log roll out of the fireplace onto the living room floor. Course, a couple inches of ashes never bothered me either.
Thanks! Hahahahaha Thanks! Just trying to share the love. I think he's going to get into it. He's got a nice headstart in terms of rounds on the properly already bucked up by the tree guys (and a few bucked up by me). Getting started is the hard part....the learning and trial and error and mistakes is the fun part.....
I really can't recommend the grate wall of fire enough.....That thing just really makes starting and running a fire so easy. Gravity fed, simple design, sturdy, and actually throws heat into the room....
The grate in my fireplace was made out of hollow pipes. Supposed to heat the air and direct the warm air into the room. That didn't last long. I bought a fireplace insert and never looked back.
Just trying to share the love! I'm trying to get him going. I think he lacks a little self confidence and thinks there's too much wood for him to do it himself. I'll try to convince him to take it one swing of the axe at a time. I forgot I took a video of the fire I built for him. Click to download the video. Dropbox - 2020-11-24 13.21.44.mp4 - Simplify your life
There is a free version where you get 1 gb of storage. I have the paid version $199 for 2 Tb. I also have unlimited history so I can undelete things. I really like it and the best part is you can sync all your devices. One of my favorite features is the camera upload - any pics I take automatically get sent to the cloud and then I can access them on my oc very quickly.
