Monday, April 25, 2011

Wood/Coal Stove

We caught grief for lack of attention to the blog, honestly it grieves us as well that we have not had time to keep you all informed. All our attention has been focused on Hold Fast herself, not the blog! Following is one update, clearly not all the way to current, but headed that direction nonetheless.

Wood/Coal Stove – January 2011

In the first month of our relocation to Jacksonville back in 2008, we learned that Jacksonville reaches frigid temperatures that simply should not be allowed for any zip code within Florida. We tried to take it in stride as preparation for southern Chilean latitudes.

We are so glad we kept the wood/coal burning stove on board. To add to our delight, Rich and Paulette on Morningstar brought 160 pounds of anthracite coal from New York state. Not exactly fluffy bedding Lucky dog wanted for the long drive home. We were thrilled, but it must be noted that it took some experimentation to get the coal to burn for any length of time in our little stove. Coal likes to burn very hot. No point in firing it up if it was 55 degrees or more outside, it would cook us out.

For the most part, Myron’s most successful formula was to use lump charcoal, also known as cowboy charcoal, and add the anthracite peanut coal in several layers on top. The top layer of coal tends to be cooler, so at least 2 or 3 layers are necessary to keep the coal hot. This configuration would provide us with serious heat for up to about three hours, at which point the coal would smother itself in its own ashes due to our small ash tray. Solution: Clean out ashes and repeat. We consider the coal a great solution as long as it is accompanied with lump charcoal. I attempted to capture the rich blue flame from the coals in a picture. A big thanks to Rich and Paulette!
From Wood/Coal Stove
More updates soon enough. In the meantime, you can see updated pictures at our Picasa site. There is a link on the right of the blog site, or here is a link: http://picasaweb.google.com/SV.HoldFast/

1 comment:

Ariel said...

Hi, this is Tiane of Barry & "T" (Tiane) on Cay Player. Nice blog! I'll have to start with Picasa one of these days too. Anyway, out blog can be accessed via www.cayplayer.com and the easy way to email us is cayplayer@yahoo.com

Enjoyed talking with you at the party last night!

Tiane (posting as "Ariel" for my blogger pseudonym)