Tuesday, February 17, 2009

getting all the BTUs out of the wood

An omen of things to come. One thing I plan to plant at the farm is sunflowers. Maybe dozens, maybe acres of them, we'll see. And of course, much bigger than this one. It is a cash crop in the Dakotas, who knows, it might grow fine on our ridge top field. This weekend we met with the farmer who leased the field last year, and discussed future plans. He didn't sound too interested in going organic.


This is the Russian wood stove in our Wisconsin place. It has over 1200 bricks in it. The exhaust flow path serpentines up throught the furnace, heating the mass of bricks. It is supposed to radiate heat for hours after it is up to temp and closed in. We will bring wood up next trip, and give it a trial run.





2 comments:

  1. I tried reading about russian stoves, and they seem really neat- but I'm not sure I understand their cleaning.

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  2. Yeah, cleaning, too me would be an important aspect. I'm admittedly ignorant of the russion stove, but I've witnessed myself that as smoke cools and meanders slowly, it leaves not only the soot, but creosote deposits that ought to be cleaned out periodically.

    -Tom

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