wood stove install

Yesterday we had to make a mad dash to get the last boxes of stone to finish off the backing for the wood stove. 

The stone company called us on Wednesday Dec 31st at about 10:45 in the morning to inform us that the stone we ordered had come in. Then they told us they would be closing at noon. It's a 2 hour drive for us to get there so we wouldn't make it that day. They also said they'd be closed the rest of the week and the next time they would be open was January 5th. Then we got a call from the Wood stove installer. He scheduled to come out on January the 6th. Our wall looked like this as the stone company had miscalculated the amount of stone we would need.

But we were able to get our stone yesterday and get it all set up so now this morning it looked like this:

  

The wood stove crew arrived later in the morning and this evening, the space looks like :

And now we have the first fire in our new stove in the new house!!

I'm so glad we finally got a replacement wood stove. Now I'm going to be busy cutting wood for the fire.

Uses for all that horse poop

Friday the local news had an article about a Poop powered vehicle that the Denver Zoo is currently "parading" around the country.  The vehicle is called Tuk-Tuk and here are several articles about it.

Poop powered tuk tuk visits to demo green solutions

Recycling victory day poo powered tuk-tuk

Poo powered tuk tuk denver zoo

Motorized rickshaw shows off power-zoo poo?

That same day I got my most recent Mother Earth News Magazine and there is a big article about a guy who is running several of his farm trucks on "Wood Gas". 

Wood Gas Wizard 

 

It is quite interesting that these two different articles popped up about the same time when Rising gas prices are making people feel the "pain at the pump".  Well I started doing some research and wondered if I could find a way to use my horses manure in a system like this.  So I did more research and found this article about a guy who was making horse manure bricks and using them in his wood stove. After burning them, he then used the poop ashes in his garden as a fertilizer.

Your Manure Pile

So it appears that you can make poop bricks and burn them. It does seem like a labor intensive project, but since I have a wood burning stove, anything short of buying already cut and split wood is also labor intensive. I have 5 equine that I'm shoveling in grass hay in one end and they are processing and dumping out pounds of it at the other end. If I'm going to have to pay those ever increasing costs to feed these horses, I might as well try and get something back out if them. I looked at several options. The first was making pellets like the Denver zoo does, but a pellet machine costs a lot of money and I don't have a pellet burning stove.

This poop brick idea is a much better solution for my wood burning stove, but the problem is that the article had directions for a single brick mold.  So I went on the hunt again for a plan or pre-made mold that would make more than one brick at a time.  I finally found this Four log paper brick maker. 


The interesting thing is you can use either paper or poop to make the bricks. and If you have access to both then you can mix them. So I'm considering attempting to make some horse poop bricks this year and see how it all turns out. Once I see how well it does in the home fireplace, I just might consider converting my really old, bad gas mileage truck into a poop burner similar to the Denver Zoo's poop powered vehicle.  That would be an interesting experiment.

Wood hauling

Well our wood hauling for the winter is now over. We've accumulated approximately 4 cords of wood. We will still have to cut down and split quite a bit, but we already have a good supply split and up in the barn.

Based on the way this winter is going, this 'stockpile' should last us a two full years.  We had to get a new chain saw this year because my old Sthil died.

I got a Husky. I'm still getting used to some of the Mechanical differences between the Sthil and the Husky, and we are still breaking in the Husky but it's not a bad saw.  When we go to gather wood, I operate the saw and cut down all the trees and Keith loads the truck. I usually help with the little logs after I'm done cutting things up.

 Here is our cutting and splitting area. This photo was taken before we hauled in another full chord yesterday so there's even more in there now.

 

This pile is a tree that was greener then the rest and so we split it down so that It can dry faster. We keep it separate so we can put it out in a different area to dry. It will be perfect for use next winter. 

And here is the split and stacked in the barn pile. 

Bye Bye Tree

Hello firewood! 

I was busy today taking out this tree and a couple more dead or nearly dead ones around the property.

Not only did we take this tree out for the firewood it will provide, we also took it out so that we could fit in a new portable shed in that area. So here's the first stages of cleanup. 

After we finish cleaning up that firewood, we will level the area and lay in a course of gravel and set some bricks for the runners of the shed and then soon we should have a nice new shed sitting there.