right, the wood demand has just jumped. I got the hearth laid yesterday, stove lifted in, connected up and draw tested today. We are ready for a burn tomorrow to cure the paint
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Must be some odd smudge on the camera phone lens...I had to go check but the wall is not actually filthy! Would have been peeved it was, I only painted it recently! Actually....no the skirting boards are clean too....ooo err...must have been some weird shadowing thing. Trust me, the house really isn't filthy!
This is stove #2 and has been totally refurbished by me. Its a Franco Belge Belfort, that's another little 5Kw stove from a French maker. Oldish design but reputation for being built like the proverbial brick ****house. Good job really as this one was in a state when I got it but thankfully the castings were all fine. Got on Ebay for ...errr about £75 iirc, a year ago now. It had been run on coal and very VERY hard, I'm guessing they'ed used bituminous coal and over cooked the stove on a regular basis. Baffle was destroyed, top plate heat shield destroyed, grate destroyed, refractory bricks ....yep...destroyed, paint work turned white, door catch worn out and rope seals...what rope seals! So I bought a new grate and baffle, had to fabricate a new stainless steel top heat shield as I couldn't get a replacement, had the top plate casting off to re-rope and seal, made new bricks from vermiculite board, machined up a new door catch and fitted new rope seals, made my own ash pan handle and riddling grate wiggling tool (original had been lost), wire brushed the old paint off, cleaned with meths and with cellulose thinners, then resprayed with several coats of stovebright paint. Its good as new now and including my fuel when i collected it I've just under £200 into it, which isn't bad, they are £650 new and I could sell it for a small profit in this condition. I also know this stove very well, its the same model my parents have had for 20 years this winter.
Good job I've got about 25m3 of wood in (I burnt about 6.5m3 last winter)