Episode #12 Our Masonry Heater & ITB More Construction

  A masonry heater is quite different from your standard fireplace or wood burning stove. A Fireplace or wood burning stove has a fire box with the chimney directly above it. The heat generated by the burning wood heats the immediate area around it and the smoke and some heat go up the chimney. In free standing, air tight and semi air tight, wood burning stoves, there are controls to regulate the amount of air entering the device and thus the intensity of the fire. This is done to prevent overheating and to prolong the burn. These types of wood burners do not retain much heat, so if wood is not burning there is no heat. Who wants to get up in the middle of the night to stoke the fire. Unfortunately, slowing the burn lowers the temperature of the burning wood resulting in more pollution and residue. I know this for a fact because our contractor built a fire in our masonry heater once and closed the fresh air intake to the point where he was used to running other fireplaces he had used. The same day he reported black goo leaking out of a couple of the cleaning hatches built into the heater. The glass, in the fireplace doors, were also black with soot. A masonry heater is quite a bit different. Fresh air comes in the bottom of the fire box and allows the wood to burn at a much higher temperature, minimizing pollution. The heat and what little gases remain then circulate around the oven, if you have the oven option, then down both sides of the heater, before they reconnect at the bottom and go up the chimney. By this time most of the heat has been transferred to the masonry. Once the wood has been burnt and all that remains is ash, the fresh air intake and chimney flu are closed to ensure the heat in the fire box and oven area is retained to be transmitted to the masonry as well. All this is achieved using precast refractory components to channel the air flow. These components made up most of the kit that I purchased. The kit also included the doors, hatches, grate, and a lot of specialized high temp linings and cords etc. We also got the oven option, so there was the oven door and other pieces that seal the oven cavity from the air flow as well. To tell you the truth I didn’t look at it much as it stayed covered, sort of, on the pallet for just under two months, until the masons started to put it together. It was the first thing my partner would check on our visits, to see if the cover had blown off, or not. A word about masons. This is another reason to have a project coordinator. I had no idea where to find one and technically speaking this was not the responsibility of the project coordinator but they have the connections a couple were found. These guys knew what they were doing. There was a bit of friction between the site super and one of the masons but we managed to get through it. Prior to them starting, we had a meeting where we were tasked with selecting the bricks we wanted to encase the heater. Most of the heavy things that make up the heater were not part of the kit. The fire brick and finishing brick were to be locally sourced, as to keep shipping costs down, etc. So, off to the local brick supplier we go. Yup I didn’t know we had one either. We opened an account for our mason to use as requested. If you think picking wall colour is hard try picking brick. So after a painful amount of time, and taking sample “brick boards, yes they have them, up to the cottage to see what it would look like “in place”, we settled on one. Back at the brick place we find out that it is no longer in production. I suggested they take the brick sample out of their selection. I can’t remember what happened next (suppressed memory I guess) but, we selected another, and were told this one could be two or four weeks for delivery. We said ok and that our mason would contact them with an order. At some point it came up that a fair amount of water was required to build the heater, I guess for mixing mortar etc. The well was there but there was no way of getting water out of it at that time. Our site supervisor said no problem, and asked how much water would be needed, and a large water tank showed up on the front deck, somehow. Kind of ironic, as this was all happening shortly after the flood and the ground was still very wet. Water water everywhere but not a drop for mortar…. Also the south of the cottage was all mud with the excavator redoing the weeping tile. At about this time we received the masons quote for the project. It was about five times the cost of the masonry kit. I was floored. I immediately called the supplier of the kit, to see if this was inline with what he had seen. Lets face it, he was the only other person I knew that had “brickage” experience. I was about to be floored again. He said he thought it was very reasonable, sighting that a plain version, on his website, was ten times kit cost and you could easily double that. I had to take a moment. Lesson to be learned, always ask what a typical finished cost would be for your project, especially in a field you have no knowledge of. OK, back at our country cottage we arrive to find the masons positioning the base plate of the heater. My partner asked if it was four inches from the wall (we had been discussing these sort of things). Our mason said it was two inches, the standard distance for fire places. I tried to call our supplier to confirm, as I couldn’t find the drawings, but there was no answer. We made an executive decision to move it out to four. It turned out that would be correct. Because this was a masonry heater it required the extra room. If we hadn’t arrived at that time, and my partner hadn’t noticed it, the heater would have been too close to the wall. The wall would have to have been moved along with narrowing the stairs. But a timely intervention and sliding the base plate two inches, before the adhesive set, was a lot easier. Close call. So with that taken care of, we were asked if we had selected the bricks and when were they going to show up. After going through the story and telling him they were two to four weeks out, he informed us that if he didn’t have bricks by the next week, we would have to look for a new mason. I seem to remember going into panic mode. I might have called our brick supplier to see what they had in stock, I might have talked to the site super, which was there at the time, but out of the haze, our mason said he found us some recycled bricks in a brick recycle yard in town, but they close soon and we need to look at them. We immediately left, got back to town and fought rush hour traffic to get there in time. They knew we were coming and took us to a stack of bricks that had been salvaged from a building demolition. They looked great! These were old bricks, the type that didn’t even have the holes in them. All the new bricks, that we looked at, had holes in them, something I didn’t want but had resigned myself to. A solid brick has more mass and heat storing capability. This worked out perfectly. So, that all happened on a Thursday, the next Tuesday we went up to our country cottage and the bricks were there. In fact the heater was about half done. Side story, a contractor went to pick up the bricks from the city and when he got there the guy in the brickyard told him the trailer he had wasn’t capable of carrying the bricks we had ordered. He had to get a bigger trailer. That Thursday, the masons were finished with the brick work. I wrote out a check and shook hands with the man. Caution, prepare for a very firm grip when you shake hands with a brick layer. It was like putting my hand in a vise. I was told to let the brick work dry for a good long time, a month or more, before the first fire. No problem, it was four months till the chimney was connected from the heater to the roof, and about another three months, till I noticed the outside part of the chimney was done, before that there was a piece of plywood covering the chimney. It was another two weeks till I got my act together and had the first small fire in the masonry heater. Other stuff had been keeping my attention. Building a fire in the masonry heater is a little bit different, as well. You put a layer of logs length wise on the bottom, yup right flat on the bottom of the fire box so that it slopes to the left (Ie bigger logs to the right) The next layer goes cross wise, slope to the front (IE bigger logs to the back. Then ball up about four to five sheets of newspaper (more if it’s a local paper, they are smaller) and tuck in on the left, putting kindling on top of the paper. Then another layer of logs length wise, keeping the slope to the left and maybe another crosswise layer keeping the slope to the front. A layer of logs can consist of three to five, depending on the size. Starting the fire is very easy. I use a BBQ lighter and light the newspaper in a couple of spots, close the doors, open the fresh air intake and off it goes. The first time it failed to start, was when I was bragging to my daughter that it hadn’t failed yet, typical. Since then, maybe failed five times max. Once, was when the power failed and all the wood, kindling, paper etc was very cold. I was also very cold and probably didn’t pay much attention to the build. The fresh air grate is toward the back of the fire box, so as the wood burns down I will arrange what is left to over the grate. I close the fresh air inlet before I open the doors, and use a long poker, with work gloves, to perform the task. It can be very hot. There have been times when I have noticed steam coming from the gloves afterward. With the wood re-positioned, I close the doors and open the fresh air vent. It can look like a blast furnace, when I do that. Typically a burn lasts for one and one half to two hours. From experience, heat will be felt on the upper side of the heater about twelve hours later and will continue to be heated for another twelve to twenty four hours, some times longer. Oven temperatures will be retained over one hundred degrees F for that time period as well. One burn can get the oven up to two hundred Fplus while two burns in a twenty four hour period will see 250F to 300 degreesF, plus. I keep an oven thermometer in the oven at all times. One little pleasure I take from the heat radiating from the doors, while a fire is in full blaze, is standing in front of them after a shower drying myself. I only tend to do that when I am by myself. When the bathroom is only 10C, it feels quit nippy when you get out the shower and the heat is very welcome. Have to be careful not to scorch the towel, or anything else, for that matter. Well enough of our masonry heater, for now. There are still tails to tell of the fuel that it uses etc. OK the wood. Will leave that for another time . And now, ITB “In the Beginning” This is the section where I try to remember how we got Our Country Cottage to this stage. In the last installment of ITB, we finished up year one. A year of frustration, delays, disasters and sorrow, to have a cottage looking almost done from the outside. Hey, maybe there’s a movie to be made here! “In a Land, before cottage!” OK Month #13  (August #2) Some time very early in the month the cottage was spray foamed. When we arrived one day, we found a cement pump truck just packing up. I can only assume we just missed seeing the cement being pumped in through the bedroom window on the upper level. The master bedroom had the floor poured and the crawl space was poured. The crawl space floor wasn’t on the list or things to have a cement floor but several people had convinced me to do so for lots of really good reasons. I am glad I did, even though it resulted in less head room. The main floor hadn’t been poured yet and all the in-floor radiant heat pipes and mesh were exposed. Interesting. I had been given drawings of the pipe layout to approve, or go over, but it was neat to see the actual thing. It was this month that I started taking pictures of our white board in the city. The white board was used to keep lists of stuff for out site supervisor to look at (in purple) and a list of stuff we had to do (in orange). At this point it was purple 9 items, orange 11. Purple had spray foam and drainage issues etc and orange had tile selection, door selection etc,etc. Over the course of the whiteboard years some items never made it off. It wasn’t long before the main floor was poured, stamped, and stained. The master bedroom was also stamped, and stained at some point. Towards the end of the month, the cottage was dry-walled. That made a huge difference. For the first time, we got an idea what rooms would look like. We also found out that it took about twenty minutes for emergency to make it to our country cottage, from the nearest hospital, when a worker fell off his ladder, while working on the master bedroom ceiling, and knocked himself out, when he hit the concrete floor. We were not there at the time, but were told he was ok. The month ended with us noticing the utility room and the crawl space were spray foamed. And, as you might expect, these caused some issues, that are another story, waiting to be told. I think I will wrap up ITB at this point. Stay tuned for month #14. Will we get water, power, septic. Spoiler, probably not. Next Our Country Cottage an Update or Still waiting to be fixed In the past couple of weeks I have been up to our Country Cottage a couple of times. The first time was mainly to check on the batteries, how charged they were and if they needed to be topped up with water. When we arrived, late morning, the control panel reported them to be at 100% state of charge. Very good, and the sun was starting to contribute. My daughter did a vac of the place sucking up the collection of dead flies I had been ignoring over the past few months. Yes we get flies through the winter, too, mostly dead ones. Not sure how that works. One of my other concerns was the melting snow etc, and where the run off was going. For some reason the flood was fresh in my mind, funny that. I noticed that the trough in front of the garage was full, but not over flowing, and frozen. I flipped on the breakers for the heat trace that was in the trough and made a mental note to turn it off before leaving. The batteries did need some water, so we topped them off. Battery care might be an upcoming story some time. After looking at the trail cam by the cottage and the expanse of snow I would have to trudge through to get to it I decided to leave it. Before we left, I turned off the heat trace and noticed the ice had melted around it and a little stream of water was wending its way to freedom. Back at home I was still thinking about that trail cam. I did a few quick calculations and found out it might last about another five days before the SD card is full. Hmm As it happened we were in the area about a week later so we dropped in for a quick SD card switch. By this time the snow had receded quit a bit, and the ground was soft and soggy. The SD card was swapped and then we noticed the water flowing through the garage trough. Good stuff. It could have done it by itself but turning on the heat trace, the week prior, helped. I now have a new sign of spring! My emergency alert system hasn’t reported a temperature below +5C for two weeks now. If you remember I have two separate systems that report the temperature, via email, alternately, twice a day. I now, actually, look forward to these, little, Our Country Cottage, insights. Next podcast we will carry on “In The Beginning” with month #14 and maybe, something else. For pictures and more info, you can visit our website at “ourcountrycottageanarrative.com” If you have any comments, questions or if you would like to be added to the “Friends of OCCaN” Our Country Cottage A Narrative, mailing list, you can email me at [e-mail]. Members on the mailing list will get website and podcast updates as soon as I do :). The Our Country Cottage a Narrative podcast is on iTunes , Stitcher and  Google Play so you can subscribe there and get the podcast downloaded automatically when they get released. Till next time have a good one.