ecosophia | An Utterly Serious Warning

There's an old Wall Street legend that came to mind today...

"In 1929, at the height of an economic boom in America, Joseph Kennedy Sr. (father of JFK) was working as a stockbroker on Wall Street. As the story goes, Joseph was walking around when he decided to sit down for a shoeshine. While polishing his shoes, the young worker gave Joseph some of his favorite stock picks. When Joseph heard the shoeshine boy giving out stock tips, he figured the party was about to end, and it was time to get out of the market. Joseph proceeded to exit his positions in the market and bought short positions that bet on the market going down. Shortly after that, the stock market entered a free fall." (Source)

The reason this came to mind is that I get therapeutic massage regularly these days, and my massage therapist mentioned today that she is getting into real estate investing. She's an extremely capable massage therapist -- but then I'm sure the shoeshine boy who did old Joe Kennedy's shoes was good at his trade, too. The rule remains the same: when people who have no previous background in investing start piling into some investment vehicle, a speculative bubble is in full swing, and will collapse catastrophically in the not too distant future.

I watched this same thing happen in real estate about a year before the 2008 real estate bust hit. When that arrived, everyone I knew who'd gone piling into real estate ended up in the bankruptcy courts. I also watched it in the stock market about a year and a half before the 2000-2001 internet bust hit, and a lot of people who'd put everything they had into interrnet stocks lost it all.

So, dear readers, if you find you're suddenly thinking about putting a lot of money into real estate investment, may I offer a piece of advice? You'd be better off shredding it all and flushing it down the toilet. Don't let yourself get suckered, because the market will sucker punch you.

Oh, and while you're at it, get ready for a whopping economic crisis, possibly as soon as this fall. The Dow Jones just hit an all time record, btw, and speculative investments are soaring while the productive economy lurches further and further into dysfunction. We're probably going to be in for a world of hurt within a year or so. Brace yourselves...

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

We have one; it was installed by the previous owner, over 30 years ago.

I'm a big fan. There is nothing like wood heat in the winter.

The main downside is that it's rather like a giant pet that must be fed and lightly tended for four hours every single day. Our stove is "woken up" in November with a series of gradually larger fires over a few days, and once it's up to full temp, we must build a fire once a day till we shut it down in the spring. This is no big deal if you're a homebody, but complicates spontaneous trips and such.

Hmm, where are you? Colder than here I suspect.
Ours doesn't need that kind of attention. But then winters are relatively mild here in the PNW and ours has a by-pass damper that makes getting that first fire going pretty easy. We can sit and watch the fire if we want but all we have to do is remember close off the air flow damper at the end.
That's the other difference between masonry heaters and RMH. With a masonry heater all the wood is put into a sealed firebox and the fire is lit. With a RMH fuel is fed into the hopper constantly while the fire is burning.

We're in New England, usually fairly cold winters (0 degrees F. is a typical low, but we've had minus twenty a time or two as well.

We're following directions from the previous owner. Part of the issue is having two dampers to open and close when starting or shutting down a fire. If we forget at bedtime, much of the heat just goes up the chimney and cools down the thermal mass. I think as well, it is better for the thermal mass not to be subject to large swings of temperature-- cracks are more likely to develop. So we have to start the fire 4 hours before desired bedtime to make sure we can close up the dampers.

Milkyway, we load our stove with over two large armfuls of hardwood at each burn. It burns very hot, but still takes 4 hours before no coals are glowing.

Ok, so your winters are colder than ours. :-)

I can‘t help you with the dampers (although if you could link to a photo or two in the upcoming open post, maybe somebody there can help you with them?).

We only let our fire burn down until there are no open flames anymore - the coals are still glowing nicely at this point, and then we close the door. That‘s how we were told to do it by our builder (an experienced old guy who also told us to clean the window/door with ashes instead of the standard „oven cleaning“ stuff his son recommended, but I admit we‘ve yet to try… ;-) ).

I.e. it takes way less time, and you lose a lot less heat.

Also, we usually fire it up well before bedtime. If we do it too late, the main peak of heat goes into the house while we‘re all asleep, which is a bit pointless - but of course this depends on your personal schedule, and also on the weather and the conditions in your house.

With your winter temperatures, you‘ll probably need to heat it up twice, don‘t you?

Either way, you could play around with when you heat it up, and especially with closing all the doors and dampers earlier - maybe that helps to make things more manageable!

Milkyway

The main damper is a thick steel sheet with a handle attached to one end. It slides in and out of the exhaust flue, opening or closing it off. Carbon monoxide would leak back into the house if we closed it with any coals still glowing. (And we've set off the CO alarm a few times when we tried to cheat.)

Yes, two burns a day is much more enjoyable, but it doesn't usually work well with our schedules to burn in the morning.

So, evenings, we enjoy the heat with a book in front of the fire, and dress warmly pretty much all winter.

Even with these small tradeoffs, it still seems like a fine way to collapse early and avoid the rush. We only use our oil furnace when desperate, and we can even cut a substantial amount of our own wood from downed trees.

Usually a by pass damper in the exhaust flue is only opened to ease a cold start then closed to drive the hot gases through the channels in the thermal mass, then rejoin the flue beyond the bypass. If yours must be opened to burn at all there might be something restricting the channels. Even a properly managed masonry heater will accumulate dust in those channels and must be vacuumed out every few years or so.

In the fire box too much ash can restrict the draught, (air intake) our door (with integrated draught) has a warning in German not to allow too much ash to accumulate. Some systems have an ash drawer that must be emptied to keep the air flowing.

I re-split our wood quite small with a kinetic electric splitter. It’s so fast and fun it’s hard not to turn everything to kindling:-) I pile 25 to 35 pounds of <20% moisture wood in a ‘crib’ (ie. piled criss cross), with about an inch between sticks and with the largest pieces at the bottom. Some kindling and a fire starter on top and Claire and I sit back and enjoy.

You might find a stove mason in your area to consult with at https://masoncontractors.org/author/masonry-heater-association-of-north-america/

Cheers, Rob Rhodes

Yes, that's the way ours works too. It burns for around an hour or so and we turn the draft way down once the flames are gone. Then we go back and shut it down completely about an hour or 2 later.

I can confirm that damp newsprint and ashes is the best way to clean glass. I learned that from my mother decades ago and was very pleased to find it worked just as well as I remembered and better than I hoped when I tried it with our stove.

Edited 2024-05-21 04:42 (UTC)

Hi there,

I‘m not sure why yours needs four hours (unless you light it several times a day?). Ours takes an hour to burn down, maybe. And once it burns, it burns - we simply have to adjust the door setting once when it got going (although we could probably do without this step), and then close the door completely when it‘s burned down. Maybe yours is slightly different in build?

For getting it going on cold days if it hasn‘t been „on“ before, have you tried a „teaser fire“? If you have access to your chimney somewhere (e.g. through a cleaning opening in the basement), you can light a bundle of old newspaper or similar stuff straight in the chimney to heat up the air there. If the chimney is really cold, you might have to do that several times to get it up to a sufficient temperature. Then light the main fire right away, and the chimney will pull a lot better.

If you don‘t have cleaning access to the chimney, try the teaser fire in the main fire-room and see if that helps.

We usually do this in autumn before the first fire, and also if there hasn’t been a fire for a few days in winter. Not sure if this will be sufficient in very cold areas, but it certainly works for us.

Milkyway

An Utterly Serious Warning

Re: Savings

Re: Savings

Re: Savings

Re: Savings

Re: Savings

Re: Savings

Re: Savings

Re: Savings