Gulf Island Building.

biggidybankston · 11-23-2010, 06:11 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by cocobolo

Did they survive the canoe trip?

I see, not so close after all. Yes, they made it down the 2,500 or so miles of the river to the Bering Sea after a bit over 3 months I think it was. I think the canoe trip was less adventurous than the car trip to Whitehorse to begin the silly thing. The canoe proved to be more reliable transportation!

cocobolo · 11-23-2010, 08:24 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by biggidybankston

I see, not so close after all. Yes, they made it down the 2,500 or so miles of the river to the Bering Sea after a bit over 3 months I think it was. I think the canoe trip was less adventurous than the car trip to Whitehorse to begin the silly thing. The canoe proved to be more reliable transportation!

I have to say that the Alaska Highway, which starts at Dawson Creek in B.C and goes all the way up to Fairbanks is notoriously hard on vehicles.

Decades ago, a witty poet wrote the following about this highway...

Winding in and winding out
Fills my mind with serious doubt
As to whether the (blank) who built this road
Was going to hell or coming out.

You get to fill in your own word for the blank.

jlhaslip · 11-23-2010, 08:29 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by jiju1943

Burning pine, how do you handle the creosote build up? I had one creosote fire and it was unbelievable the sounds it made and the fire balls that rolled off our roof.

Like Cocobolo reported, the fire needs to really flame up once a day. I have some smaller sized stuff that I fill the firebox with in the morning to get a flash fire going and then throttle it back for the rest of the day. I buy a mixed lot of wood from a firewood guy that gives me a balanced load of about 50/50 pine/fir and I glean other stuff from the neighbourhood, like poplar/ash/birch to blend in. I use the pine when I am at home, like tonight, and the fir when I am not home, during work for example. Usually throw one of the odd-ball pieces into the stove with the bulk of the load being pine/fir.

Earlier in the season, I fire up that small stuff once in the morning and once again in the evening with no wood added in between, so the house stays warm with only those two instances of heat per day.

Of course, today it took a few 'fills' to keep the house up to temperature, and a darned good sweater to boot.

One more day of these -20 temperatures and then by next week it will be milder, meaning right around freezing for the high of the day.

And I sweep the chimney once a month to avoid those chimney fires which can be devastating.

cocobolo · 11-23-2010, 08:54 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by jlhaslip

Like Cocobolo reported, the fire needs to really flame up once a day. I have some smaller sized stuff that I fill the firebox with in the morning to get a flash fire going and then throttle it back for the rest of the day. I buy a mixed lot of wood from a firewood guy that gives me a balanced load of about 50/50 pine/fir and I glean other stuff from the neighbourhood, like poplar/ash/birch to blend in. I use the pine when I am at home, like tonight, and the fir when I am not home, during work for example. Usually throw one of the odd-ball pieces into the stove with the bulk of the load being pine/fir.

Earlier in the season, I fire up that small stuff once in the morning and once again in the evening with no wood added in between, so the house stays warm with only those two instances of heat per day.

Of course, today it took a few 'fills' to keep the house up to temperature, and a darned good sweater to boot.

One more day of these -20 temperatures and then by next week it will be milder, meaning right around freezing for the high of the day.

And I sweep the chimney once a month to avoid those chimney fires which can be devastating.

Those crazy meteorological prognosticators are threatening us with some warmer temps as well, but it's still going to be Thursday before we see 0º again. It did make it to -3ºC this afternoon.

**BigJim** · 11-23-2010, 11:46 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by cocobolo

We don't have pine on this island, so I cannot give you any personal experience about burning it.

But up in the interior of B.C. a neighbour two lots away from us has had a family cabin for many years. I understand that they had a huge stand of pine on their acreage, but it got infested with the pine beetle.

It was cut down and much of it was burned for firewood. So, I can only assume it is OK for that, I just don't think it makes a lot of heat - which is true of most of the softer softwoods.

Douglas fir is a harder softwood and makes pretty good heat. Hemlock doesn't seem to make nearly as much heat, even though the wood itself seems to be reasonably hard.

We get through around 3 cords or so each winter. It might be a bit more when we are in the new house, as there are two wood stoves in there.

Buddy, I was expecting you to say 5 or 6 cords at least, when I was heating with wood we used 4 or so each winter and we had one of the heaters that we could load up at night and it would still be burning the next morning. Man I hated to clean the ashes out and have to go outside on a morning it had rained and the wood would be froze together. I miss the wood heat but I sure don't miss fooling with the wood and ashes.

**BigJim** · 11-23-2010, 11:56 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by jlhaslip

Like Cocobolo reported, the fire needs to really flame up once a day. I have some smaller sized stuff that I fill the firebox with in the morning to get a flash fire going and then throttle it back for the rest of the day. I buy a mixed lot of wood from a firewood guy that gives me a balanced load of about 50/50 pine/fir and I glean other stuff from the neighbourhood, like poplar/ash/birch to blend in. I use the pine when I am at home, like tonight, and the fir when I am not home, during work for example. Usually throw one of the odd-ball pieces into the stove with the bulk of the load being pine/fir.

Earlier in the season, I fire up that small stuff once in the morning and once again in the evening with no wood added in between, so the house stays warm with only those two instances of heat per day.

Of course, today it took a few 'fills' to keep the house up to temperature, and a darned good sweater to boot.

One more day of these -20 temperatures and then by next week it will be milder, meaning right around freezing for the high of the day.

And I sweep the chimney once a month to avoid those chimney fires which can be devastating.

My stars jl, I don't see how you handle the cold like that, I would never go outside. Ya'll must have some really good heaters up your way. I do keep forgetting that ya'll wood is a lot different than our wood down here. I bet your pine and ash and trees are much harder wood than hours down here because of the growing season is shorter than ours is. Sometimes in the winter the sap runs out of the maples out front as it gets that warm now days.

Back when I was a kid my mom cooked with ash cut about 1 1/4X 1 1/4X 8 or 10 inches long the best I remember. It burned fast and hot and not a lot of ash. Back then all we had was a fireplace and it was coooold in them days and you could see the chickens under the house through the floor, that was cold for sure.

frenchelectrican · 11-24-2010, 12:04 AM

One of my old house I used have in couple spots and I have wood stove and normally I burn super hard wood like oak , elm few other hard spices they last pretty long time and I go thru about 6 to 8 cord worth of wood in a season with my wood stove and I rigged up a auger to remove ashes so I don't really have to wait for serious cool down I do that once a month to take a quick peek and clean out the chamber.

For the smokestack I have stainless steel liner the way I clean it out by injecting diesel fuel in the burner chamber { a modifed oil burner gun } and run that for a while to clean out all the gunk } once a day sometime other days depending on how hard I fire up the wood stove.

Of course I have tempture gauge on the stack to see how well I fire up woodstove and they seems happy when I keep the stack in 400°F range the only time it will be out of the scale when I fire up the diesel gun the tempture gauge will spike to near 850°F and leave it there for few minutes that useally burn up any resduies in stack.

{ it will be the same way if you ran the gaz motor in dark and see the spark come out of the exhaust pipe

}

Merci.
Marc

**BigJim** · 11-24-2010, 12:13 AM

biggidybankston, back in the mid 60's I lived out in Chamblee. You are just down the road from us now. It is good to have you with us.

**BigJim** · 11-24-2010, 12:26 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by frenchelectrican

One of my old house I used have in couple spots and I have wood stove and normally I burn super hard wood like oak , elm few other hard spices they last pretty long time and I go thru about 6 to 8 cord worth of wood in a season with my wood stove and I rigged up a auger to remove ashes so I don't really have to wait for serious cool down I do that once a month to take a quick peek and clean out the chamber.

For the smokestack I have stainless steel liner the way I clean it out by injecting diesel fuel in the burner chamber { a modifed oil burner gun } and run that for a while to clean out all the gunk } once a day sometime other days depending on how hard I fire up the wood stove.

Of course I have tempture gauge on the stack to see how well I fire up woodstove and they seems happy when I keep the stack in 400°F range the only time it will be out of the scale when I fire up the diesel gun the tempture gauge will spike to near 850°F and leave it there for few minutes that useally burn up any resduies in stack.

{ it will be the same way if you ran the gaz motor in dark and see the spark come out of the exhaust pipe

}

Merci.
Marc

Talking about your chimney reminds me of when I built our chimney back in the 80s. I was never good at laying brick because I hated repetition and I would want to hurry up. I was through the roof and up about 2 or 3 feet and the chimney started to get out of plumb a little. I thought, no one can see the chimney here so I just stepped the chimney over about an inch and plumbed it back up and finished the chimney the rest of the way. It drew good but when I drove up and looked up there at the chimney the first thing I saw was the offset in the chimney, man what a mess but I just left it like that, it is still there and working.

cocobolo · 11-24-2010, 01:10 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by jiju1943

Buddy, I was expecting you to say 5 or 6 cords at least, when I was heating with wood we used 4 or so each winter and we had one of the heaters that we could load up at night and it would still be burning the next morning. Man I hated to clean the ashes out and have to go outside on a morning it had rained and the wood would be froze together. I miss the wood heat but I sure don't miss fooling with the wood and ashes.

The reason we don't burn much is because the cabin is only 432 square feet downstairs and 352 up, for a total of 784. Not much area to heat and it warms up very quickly. The house is way bigger than that, but it is far better insulated and seems to hold the heat better once it is warm.

It will be interesting to see just how much it takes next winter...if we are still here that is.

biggidybankston · 11-24-2010, 10:07 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by jiju1943

biggidybankston, back in the mid 60's I lived out in Chamblee. You are just down the road from us now. It is good to have you with us.

Wow...small world, I actually work in Chamblee. One of the dealerships on Peachtree Industrial. Incidentally, both my dad and grandfather retired from GM at the assembly plant (now closed) in Doraville. So I guess we've always been nearby, but I don't live close. I'm west of Dallas (thats Dallas, GA not TX) which is still kinda out in the stix.

I'm jealous of you though. Tennessee is my favorite place to be within driving distance. Probably not nearly as beautiful as Coco's island there, but in my opinion "Greenest state in the land of the free..." We like to trek up to Gatlinburg 3 or 4 times a year (or 5 or 6....) Some day, probably in the very distant future, I hope to build a cabin somewhere in Sevier County.

Anyway, back to Coco's place...is the snow still lingering?

cocobolo · 11-24-2010, 12:30 PM

Still snowing here this morning. It doesn't look as though this snow (now turned to very solid ice) will be going until we get a good rainfall. Maybe on Friday or Saturday.

gma2rjc · 11-24-2010, 12:45 PM

Yuck. Sorry to hear that. Ice is far worse than snow. This is the 6th day of this storm, isn't it?

cocobolo · 11-24-2010, 01:03 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by gma2rjc

Yuck. Sorry to hear that. Ice is far worse than snow. This is the 6th day of this storm, isn't it?

Not sure...I don't think I can count that high...

househugger · 11-25-2010, 02:17 AM

I opened up this thread and with one of the first pictures I saw I thought, 'that looks like Herring Bay.' And sure enough it was.

I've breezed through some pictures and am flabberghasted with your work. It's truly incredible especially when you consider the lack of resources on your tiny little island. I love your sence of style -all those curves! What a challenge.

Next time we get out on the water we'll have to sail on by your house, maybe drop anchor at Herring Bay. We once considered building on Gabriola Island but instead bought land on Vancouver island. I am certainly not as resourceful as you, nor as ambitious.

P.S. I'm looking out the window waiting for the snow to fall. It's far too cold.