if we just had a living room full of salmon, we’d have a nice supply of smoked lox right now.

when the fireplace flue drops shut… while there’s a few logs (ok, 2×4 and 2×6 cedar trims) roaring in it… makes for a mean smokehouse. the 90+ year old cast iron flue is held open (in the up position) by a cam action lever. that lever, when not locked in just right, noted by today’s experience, lets go… dropping the lid, so to speak.

i was down in the basement, pulling apart the growing headache of an oil furnace to clean the nozzle and adjust the igniters, when i realized that my flashlight was in the living room. going upstairs, i was thinking “hmm, the fireplace sure makes a nice, ‘campy’ kinda smell.” further up the stairs, it got stronger. and stronger. walking around the corner to the living room, there’s a nice cloud hovering up around the 9 foot ceiling… yeah, that wasn’t there earlier.

my first thought was “the fire isn’t hot enough… needs heat to pull the smoke up the chimney.” no, no what it needs is a clear path up the chimney, not blocked by something like a shut flue. that part didn’t occur to me immediately. no, i wanted to put more on the fire… more heat. luckily, the flame was bright enough to take notice of the flue. the flue that’s supposed to be open.

after shoving a poker into the flue, mildly singeing my fingers on the cam lever (which is right above the fire… brilliant location, really), got the thing locked open. the fire, being able to breathe got toasty warm right quick. you know, while my arm was opening the flue.

ahh, the quirks of old homes. it still kinda smells like smoke…

i’ve got lotsa experience with open flames; working with wood, coal and gas forges, torches and molten metal makes you aware of what exactly you’re doing. makes the hair on your arms sizzle, too…

~

i think the nozzle is somewhat clogged, on the oil heater. the biodiesel, being a solvent, dissolves the gummed up heating oil deposits… sometimes clogging things like the nozzle, with it’s rather small holes. the flame doesn’t look as hot as it did a few days ago- there’s a dark orange spot on one side. gotta be the nozzle… which means i’m working on the furnace again, tomorrow. having the house warm is worth it, i suppose… and admittedly it’s pretty fun to work with… but i’ve got lots of other projects that are adding up.

tomorrow:

• rebuild the alternator in the rav4, which failed and left us needing a jump start at the airport, followed by limping it home before the battery dropped to a low enough voltage that would make the car stop. made it, though.
• plug the flat tire on my car, because some asshat (me) apparently left a nail in the driveway.
• clean the nozzle on the furnace
• fill up the 5gal biodiesel tank, because it’ll be empty by mid morning
• finish sanding the deck, so it can be treated before it rains again
• then there’s the bed that needs to be built…

the biodiesel is great. the furnace is great. the fan control? not great. a mind of it’s own, it seems to have.

see, when the house cools down, the thermostat tells the furnace “hey, it’s getting cold, do something!” the furnace then fires up. when it’s come up to temperature, the fan control starts the blower… forcing nice warm air through the house. the house warms up, the thermostat then tells the furnace “ok, that’s good.” the furnace then shuts down. when the air in the furnace cools down, the fan control stops the blower. well, in a perfect world.

in our world, when the thermostat queues the furnace to fire up, it does. it comes up to temperature in about 15 seconds. sometimes (and that’s the key word) the fan control does nothing. the furnace keeps burning and burning… because the thermostat hasn’t noticed any change in temperature… because the blower isn’t blowing… because the fan control doesn’t work. the furnace will just keep going and going…. burning fuel at the rate of about .89 gallons an hour. makes it VERY toasty in the basement… but at $3.54/gallon, i couldn’t care less about the basement being warm when it’s chilly upstairs.

that’s what happened this morning. the first cycle of the heater worked fine, bringing the house up to a reasonable temperature. the next cycle didn’t see the blower come on… so that cycle was long. think we ate up about 3/4 of a gallon before realizing it. yay.

this… this thing…

this is the fan control. tomorrow i’ll take it out again, strip it completely apart and rebuild the whole thing.

ok, on to happier thoughts. this is the fuel pump and burner control, that i replaced all the rubber seals in, with synthetic seals.

i have a bunch of o-rings from an alcohol burning motorcycle i used to have (used to really be into drag bikes)… which are synthetic (silicone). happened to be just right for this project. biodiesel is a pretty strong solvent… and eats natural rubber up. gotta get rid of the rubber parts before going bio.

the temporary biodiesel tank. wee little 5 gallon, but it’s all the hardware store had on hand. made a quick pickup/return setup on the tank (red thing in the cap).

where this all sits, in the basement:

while it may appear to be less than safe, you may note that there is a row of cardboard boxes between the desk and the furnace. now, anyone who’s built forts as a kid knows that cardboard boxes are near indestructible to the forces of raiding armies, arrows, dirt clods, what have you… so they are obviously more than adequate protection in this instance.

~
on to the yard cleanup, and the broken backs…

we filled this:

the second one we’ve had since getting the house. 20 cubic yard dumpster. i feel kinda bad about sending so much stuff to the landfill (if that’s where it goes), but there’s nothing else we can do with it. nothing is even remotely salvageable, can’t give any of it away, can’t recycle any of it. a great deal of it is lumber that’s in such poor condition it’s unsuitable for even firewood, and unable to be used for compost for many reasons.

there used to be a pile of old lumber here that took up a great deal of otherwise usable yard. after removing it, we’ve discovered that the yard is still greatly unusable due to it being a mud bog… but at least there’s no debris sitting around.

there was a pile here so large, you couldn’t see the carriage house from the street. getting to it, while carrying anything of significant weight was a feat of athleticism. not puncturing your flesh on rusty nails or breaking an ankle was pure luck.

the carriage house used to have a barn style door, and concrete runners down to the street. sometime in the 40s or maybe 50s, there was a driveway poured up to the house… concrete runners still going back to the carriage house. whenever the underground oil tank had been put it, it looks like part of the runner on the right had been broken up and moved. then, sometime after, some jackass put wood chips over the entire area. it may have looked “nice” for a month or two… but then i’m sure they started turning gray and dirty. that “dirty” look was likely soil from the yard… because the wood kept the drainage from working well, letting the water stand long enough to loosen the ground soil.
now, there’s about 3″ of hard packed dirt, compacted and reasonably decomposed wood chips, stones, roots, grass and all sorts of mess over the entire area… all preventing proper drainage from the back yard, letting water stand against the house’s foundation. whoever the genius was that put the wood chips down in the first place didn’t seem to know or care about what 30 or 40 years of poor drainage would do.

removing that layer is a pain in the ass. that’s been the most back breaking part of this cleanup session. but it’s great now that it’s done, right? i don’t know. it’s not done, yet. tomorrow if i don’t feel like complete crap (think i’m coming down with something), i’ll start shoveling and scraping it away in the morning, until they come to pick up the dumpster.

~

we did a little bit of work to the house, as well…

ok, it wasn’t much… but it’s a good improvement. we (ok, mostly rebecca with her kickboxing demolition techniques) removed the ugly lattice that covered the now open area between the pillar and the wall, on each side of the house. we also took some odd plywood away that was covering the railing and it’s 4×4 ballisters.

~

last bit, for the day…

got this great old long clamp for $10, the other day. up to 5′ clamping distance, wrought iron ends, hardwood body. best estimate on it’s age is sometime around WWI. makes it rather appropriate for the age of this house…
plus it’s a fine clamp. used it a few times on a project, already.

there’s also a great old k.r. wilton drop forged c-clamp in use, in the photo… bought for $3, along with the long clamp… the style and shape make it likely to be sometime around WWII era… either the decade before, or within a couple years after. cleaned up nicely, and it’s back to being used, after sitting in a box for ages.
(remember, old tools are always the perfect gift… )

again, 9 minutes for a 12 degree rise in temperature. not bad, seeing as the house is virtually un-insulated, the furnace’s fan control is temperamental at best, the duct dampers are not adjusted with any proper method (just “this looks ’bout right”), and the incredibly old honeywell mercury thermostat looks like it belongs in the trash.

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… with biodiesel as the energy source. after many moons in this house, half of which our bodies layered in sweaters and wool socks, we have actual warmth forced throughout the home.

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