Wood Stove Saga

When we moved into the house here, the landlord said he’d get the wood stove attached.  It was sitting in place, but was not attached to the chimney.  A year later he hadn’t done it.  I talked to him, and he said he couldn’t find anyone that wanted to come out and do that small a job.

 

John researched where to get the necessary part, and we purchased them.  After detailed instructions from the fireplace shop, John came home and installed the wood stove.  The sealers needed 48 hours to cure, which we gave them.  In the meantime, John had a large bag of hard wood delivered.  We excitedly started our first fire on a snowy March night.  There was some smoke, but John thought it was due to the fire not having enough kindling to really get going.  So he added more paper.  It produced more smoke.  As the ground floor filled with smoke, we took the fire apart and put the still hot wood outside in the snow. A disaster and the main rooms were colder than before as I had opened all the windows and the French doors so the smoke would blow out.

The next day, when everything was cool, John pulled it all apart and looked up the chimney.  He couldn’t tell for sure, but it looked like something was in the chimney.  He borrowed a strong light from a co-worker, and sure enough the chimney was packed with sticks. 

Sack full of sticks removed from chimney- great kindling

Stick that were in chimney

That weekend he moved all the furniture, and the rug out of the room and with a long tool pulled all the twigs out of the chimney that had plugged it.  He finally saw day light. The stove was reassembled, and it worked fine.  A week later, I heard something fall down the chimney and hit the stove.  John ran outside and there were birds on top of the chimney throwing stick down trying to build another nest.  We built a fire, and they flew away.  Not wanting to have a fire going all summer to chase the birds away, we called our landlord and he had someone come the next day and they put a cover on the chimney to keep the birds out!

 

It all works well now, but with spring we haven’t used it that much. England is cool so I know we will.