I’m sure it’s been brought up before but what’s some of you guys funny stories about burning wood. It might not have been funny at the time but looking back it turned out for the better. Mine was a guy I used to work with told me to be sure and not burn dryer lint. He told me that years ago he would get home from school and have to stoke the wood stove up. He said they always used to burn paper and trash in there. Well he said his mom had put some lint in there he chucked the bag in and shut the door. Well before he got out of the room it blew the door off the stove.
My father has a old carmor woodstove down draft top load kind one time I threw 3 drink trays the card board kind from McDonald’s and the top of the lid blew about a foot and a half off the stove and landed on the floor upside down and melted its way threw the linoleum flooring into the sub floor filled the whole house full of smoke every smoke alarm in the house was going off i was about 14 years old and my father was at work at the time scariest thing in the world lol but now that I look back on it it’s funny and my father laughs about it now and again Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
One that always stays with me is from my youth. (Yes guys, I was once young!). As with so many youths, I wanted to help. After all, I also had 2 older brothers and a sister. We had 2 heating stoves and a wood cook stove. Lots of need for wood. Of course one of the first tasks was to help bring in wood (we stacked it on the back porch) and also to make sure Mother had enough good wood for the cook stove. I really wanted to make sure she did not run out because of all the good stuff we got to eat! Then came my first real job that was to be mine. Cleaning ashes from the 3 stoves. I was so proud and attacked the task with vigor. However, after doing only one stove and then carrying those ashes out to the ash pile, I came in to find a dustmop and some rags handed to me. Why would one need such things? Then I was shown how in my hurry to get the job done, I also made a big mess because there was ash dust all over the place. I spent many hours dusting and cleaning that ash. Nasty. And I was probably 5 years old at the time. On the good side of this though, I very quickly learned the proper was of emptying ash from a wood stove! I can still do it (if I have to) and not raise all the dust. lol Some times one learns very quickly.
I got to get on this one too! I had a Fisher stove with the two doors and had to cut way back the draft knobs because the doors had no gaskets. So I decide to install some and was having a hard time controlling the fire when my overnight guest showed up. The stove was huffing and puffing with the dampers wide opened so what's the matter now. So I opened the door to peek inside to see whats going on and whammo the door blows open and smoke everywhere and the sister-in-law runs downstairs to grab her pack-sack among other things and gave me a look that would kill you in a instant. Those door gaskets were ripped off in no time at all..... Merry Christmas
If you had to pick an animal to train to clean out ashes the best choice might be a sloth. Just don't let it join in the fun on game night.
My dad had this nice box to hold all his long matches he used for starting fires...he mounted it on the side of the mantle and mounted the striker just above it. He filled it with matches all excited, took the first one and struck it on the striker to light it...well the striker was right above the thick stack of matches so when he struck the first one it lit off the entire stack right in the holder! I about died laughing and haven't let him forget it since. Such a funny oversight haha.
I built this house about 5 years ago and in Wyoming the wind always blows in winter. So my first fire that winter I get the kindling started and decide it is not drafting enough so I crack open the sliding door at the back of the house and it sucked that fire out and filled the house with smoke quicker than a New York minute. My wife looks at me, like do you know what your doing. So I learned my lesson only crack open the window or door from the front of the house and never from the back.
My Dad had an old Ford my brother and I would drive to the wood pile and load every so often. I was probably 10 and he 14 years old. We backed the truck up to the pile, climbed on top, and commenced throwing splits into the back of the truck. Well, sure enough, my brother threw a split into the back glass and busted it out. Then, he started to run down the pile to get a closer look(not sure why getting closer quickly would help. Maybe he thought if he got there soon enough he could turn back time). Well, this pile of splits was probably 5 or 6 feet tall, but when you're a child it might as well be Mt McKinley. My brother catches a toe and started rolling down the pile. It was the funniest thing I have seen, him limping to the truck. Battered, bruised, and worried about Dad. the back glass of my trucks has always been in my mind since that day when loading wood.
When I was a kid one of my jobs was lighting the fire after school. Well one day I came in and lit it and went out to play..... but it didn't catch..... Mom was really pizzed at me.... not because it didn't catch but because she found my report card that I used to get it going.
My first year in my house I knew I would be installing a wood stove, so I set to work cutting my wood. I worked out back by the edge of the woods and set up my nice stacks out there. Very proud of those stacks I was. Well, winter came and we got several feet of snow and the wood pile was now 200 feet away. I didn't have a snowblower to open a trail. So I post holed it all winter, a 15 minute round trip for an arm load of wood. The next year the stacks were right out in the dooryard where they have remained ever since.
Mine happens to be this season. Sorry its a bit long. Both my wife and I work so some days I pickup the kids from school. So one night it was my turn to get the kids and it was real blustery and cold. Nobody was home all day so the house was cold, real cold. We have an L.P. furnace but we had, had a power outage the night before and the thermostat was reading "low batt". I hadn't gotten a chance to look at it yet but wasn't worried because hey I got a woodstove. I don't need no stinkin' furnace. So right when we get home my 2 year old loses her ever lovin' mind and starts a tantrum the likes seen only in bible stories. Like fire and brimstone, end of times, Old Testiment type stuff. So I elicit help from my 15 year old while I get a fire goin' but nothin' doin'. It actually got worse (I swear I saw her head spin 360). So out of desperation I plopped her on the couch and figure I'm just gonna have to bear down and get this fire going. So with her screaming (I didn't know humans could make such sounds) I attempt to light a fire. So the fire starts but the stove starts billowing smoke, like bad. This is weird because we just had a fire the night before. So the house fills up with smoke and the fire alarms start going off. So here I am with a 2 year old in the middle of an excorsism, a house filled with smoke, fire alarms going off and a pitbull so freaked out (fire alarms) that he's hiding in the bedroom. All this and I'm no closer to warming the house up. So I close the stove door and damper to let the fire choke out, open all the windows and doors to get the smoke out and figure I got to get the furnace goin'. So I start doin' the highly technical process of switch flipping to see if I can bump start my furnace. So after a few minutes of switch flipping the fire alarms stop; win! Mind you the 2 year old is still screaming but at least the house stopped yelling at me. So I go on the hunt for a AA battery. I don't see why I need one because the fan works but the furnace won't kick on. So after about 10 minutes of searching I call no joy and figure I need to hit the store for batteries before my kids freeze to death. So I tell my 15 year old to watch the 2 year old and I go hightailing it out of there like Luke Duke drivin' the General Lee . I stop at the little country store that's up the road from me because I know they have batteries. I go inside and I'm surprised at the selection. They have every manner of battery known to man; except the one I need. So an f'word later and I'm back in my truck doing my best Dale Jr. impression. I get into town and get my batteries and get back home. I swap the batteries on the thermostat aaaannnd bubkiss. Into the attic I go. Now I'm handy around the house but I'm no HVAC tech. But I figure what the hell, how hard can it be? You ever seen the look on someone's face when they're thinking to themselves, "I have no idea what I'm looking at"? 2 guesses on who that was. So after about an hour of contorting by body into a pretzel and unscrewing screws and moving panels, I come to the realization that this blasted machine whipped me. So swearing like the dad in The Christmas Story I come down from the attic a broken man. Just when I thought all was lost, bam! Space heaters! So I pull out our old space heaters and save the day! The next day my wife sends me a picture of a working thermostat reading 70 degrees. Now she thinks she's Bob Villa.
Ahhh... two year olds. Just today Pop was telling me that when my grandson, his great grandson, would let out a war whoop on Christmas eve it sort of got on his nerves a little. LOL. Once you get 'em out of the house you sort of forget how the little ones are.
He is mine. Growing up we lived in a nice limestone a frame, with a huge hearth with fireplace in the living room, and an add o wood/coal furnace in the basement. My father worked a lot of hours in the coal mine as an electrician, so he wasn’t home a lot. But he never failed to leave a list of chores for my brother and I. Well one Saterday morning I woke up late, I was maybe 13 at the time, and there wasn’t a list of chores! Score! I thought to myself and off I went for a day of dirt bikes and fun with my country cousins.(friends) Got home at curfew (when the security light starts buzzing) to find my dad waiting on me, furious with veins bulging on his forehead, and the sure sign of a soon coming belt whipping, he screamed my first and middle name! At which time the sound of his leather belt coming though his seven belt loops also rang in my ears. Still to this day thatsound makes me shutter. Anyway after the beating ceased, he proceeded to ask why there was no wood in the basement, to this I replied, “you didn’t leave a list”, weelllllll..... After a 30 minute lecture on meteorology,weather forecast and the farmers almanac, I was thoroughly convinced that wintermagedon was coming n Monday! And come to find out my brother had thrown the list away that morning and left. So the next day I was awake at sunrise, and fired up the of 1960 ford pickup and proceeded to put every twig stick log or fragment into that basement. Btw we had probably 4 years worth of wood on the 6 acres. There was a path from the stairs o the wood stove. Every where I could stack stash or cram had wood in it. And I only got stuck in the yard 3 times! Well I had only been out of the shower maybe 10 minutes when my dad got home and asked the question “ is there wood in the house?” To which I replied, “yes sir!” Well he just had to go check for himself. Well.. after a string of explicitly choreographed curse words that days whoop in’ was worse that the previous days. Which was delivered with his opinion that if the%^**#%* house caught fire there would be no way possible to put it out... But on the positive side, I didn’t have to put any wood in the house for a couple years. Hope you enjoyed my story of childhood tramma! Lol Wood always heats you twice, unless you rehandle like I do then it’s four or five times!
My brand new Wife had never in her life started a campfire or fireplace let alone a wood stove. I had just built us a modest house and we put in a Schrader wood stove. I had a lot of Doug Fir from clearing our land in a great pile awaiting the first burn. I had even split up close to a half cord of thin kindling to maybe 2"x 2" splits for starting fires. I rushed home Friday afternoon to start our first ever fire and found the house all toasty and a roaring fire in the stove. The Wif said she wanted to surprise me with a warm house. "I can start a fire real easy" she said, "but I cant seem to get it to burn for long. I had to just keep bringing in wood all day long". I rushed to the wood shed and sure enough, almost all my kindling was gone!
When i was married, my ex wife would leave early for work and i had to walk her son to the top of the cul de sac to get the bus. He was maybe 6-7 at the time. Im in the kitchen fixing a coffee to take with me. I suddenly smell plastic burning. I look over at the insert and little Joe is sitting Indian style in front of it watching tv. I bolt into the family room to check. Turns out he leaned back and the nylon on his winter coat had melted when he hit the glass without him realizing it. Didnt catch fire luckily. PITA cleaning the plastic off the glass later.
If I had a funny story, it would either be the fact that I collect wood and those who see me come home with it for the first few times in that regard will laugh to the funny farm. It doesn’t last too long when they see the benefits. I often build big fires, basically out of habit. You’d think I’d have learned this by now but not so. Tying my story with my name here, we have a massive fireplace down at our family camping lot on the West Coast, Ocean Shores WA. Meet Fatboy. Fatboy was likely a water tank for one of the ships at the Naval Yard as they dismantled some into scrap. Anyways cut in half and then put into the ground made a great heater, almost...too good. We often don’t split our wood smaller than we need to, so it gets to be a good sized fire inside pretty quickly. Metal on this is probably close to a 1/4 inch to a half inch in some places. This one shows the best in context. The area has three railroad ties that line the “pit” which often fills up with rain at the corners. I’ve started fires that will dry out the rain and get it hot enough that it seems to stop raining. These railroad ties are about some 2-3 feet from this thing. Remember this bit continued below. Several times, we’ll have had some stupid cold spitting rain that gets everyone under that gazebo and hollering at me to stoke up the damm thing. Logs. Cue that Ren and Stimpy song amount of logs! Well in about 30 mins we’re all standing farther than Pluto from this thing, fire shooting out of that smoke stack, and spots so hot they will be a cherry red, hot enough to make the creosote bubble from these ties. The smell is bad enough and gets doused when we figure out where. I don’t know if this is funny but I still make fires so hot, it’ll drive people out away from this thing and you can feel heat from some 10-15 feet away in the strong winds.
That is a heck of a story, FatBoy! Glad to see you posting. My most recent funny story was year before last, our last year using the owb.. I had a wheelbarrow full of wood, headed to the boiler, which is on a high spot in the back yard. Navigating the small hill up to the owb, I lost my footing and went down under the wheelbarrow full of wood, being that it was winter and the path was thoroughly iced over.. So there I lay, under a whole mess of oak splits, temps struggling to be above 0, wondering... If something was broken, how long would it take for Mrs Papi to realize I hadn't come in yet, and something was wrong? I promptly went through a self-check, got up and loaded the boiler, and then didn't talk about it for a few days. After that, I made it a point to tell the Mrs when I was going out..
