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

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)

An Utterly Serious Warning

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