Tree Identification

[Daswulf]

11 hours ago, ThomasPowers said:

locust makes long burning hot coals.

There is a lot around my area and a lot of dead standing. It's my favorite to use in the woorburner for that reason. 

I don't know how well it would work for hammer handles tho. Never tried it. It is a strong wood. Might have to try it some time. Right now all I have is reserved to the woodburner to reduce the insanely high winter natural gas bill. 

Pressure, you already have a picture of the inside up above.

[ThomasPowers]

Self induced injury,  No natural gas into our house. (The funny thing is my wife says our cooling bills are cheaper than in Columbus Ohio too, here in New Mexico.)

[Daswulf]

This is Elizabeths first year working a woodburner. I keep the thermostat set at 70°f for the gas furnace. One day i got home from work and it was in the mid 80°s in the house. She said she had to open a few windows for a bit because it was too warm. I told her she didn't Have to keep feeding the fire all day if it got warmed up in the house... I'm still working with her on using the burner and she doesn't understand the damper on it yet.   (her dad didn't teach her to do anything like that, just told her not to touch the thermostat,  so she wont.) 

Our wodburner is tied into the furnace as far as the blower and ducting for the heated air, so it pumps heat through the house once it's up to temp.

[ThomasPowers]

My wife is 72 and runs the woodstove on her own  as I'm generally 200+ miles away; she even has cooked on a wood burning range back in the late 1960's.  Now thermostats we have had some learning experiences with---like turning it way up does not cause the furnace to heat the house any faster than just getting the furnace to come on.

[Daswulf]

When I moved into the house (was my grandparents house) we had a bad snow storm where the power was out for a week. I was Not prepared for that at the time. That was with an ex at the time. The best I could do was run the gas logs in the fireplace and even cooked and heated water by setting pans on the fake logs. With a blanket covering the opening to the living room it wasn't too bad. I did have candles and flashlights for light. 

I'm Much more prepared for such things now. 

[ThomasPowers]

Living in the country, that's SOP, got a kerosene lantern on top of the refrigerator with a box of kitchen matches next to it.  That will get me to the other lanterns.  My dining nook has a light on a chain and I have a couple of S hooks hooked into that chain so I can hang a lantern there.  Propane kitchen range no no problem there, propane how water heater; but the landlord's well has an electric pump...

[Daswulf]

My cistern has an an electric pump as well. There is a well on the property but from what I heard from my dad it didnt produce enough. Thats been many years and I'm tempted to purchase a good manual pump for it. I can see that the water level in it fluctuates a bit. Its It's basically about a 4-6" pipe going in the ground. The township ran a city water line through and forced me to block off my cistern lines in the house and run their water. ( if I hadn't I'd have been fined yearly.) 

A little back on topic, I was looking and Have seen people making hammer handles from locust wood. 

[ThomasPowers]

At my northern place; the house behind mine used to share a well with my house---until city water came along.  Unfortunately the well was on their lot when the houses were divided. My new neighbors replaced the well pump and are watering like crazy; I don't think they are following the ordinances. (Water is tightly controlled out here. When I signed up for city water I had to sign a paper saying I would not pump that amount of water from a well as the Polvadera Mutual Domestic Water Consumers Association would get those household draw rights.  Luckily we can use the acronym on our checks!)

When I lived in Fayetteville AR the city used to come around on a regular basis and tell us we had to shut down our septic tank and use the city's sewers---at a high cost.  Well I was upset; but my wife told me just to agree to everything as it was her house before I even met her.  So I did and a couple of weeks later they came back and told us we were too low to connect into the sewer and whatever gave us the idea we should! My wife said they had been doing that for more than a decade and never seem to be able to mark it on their map so the next city enforcer would know not to hassle us.

[Daswulf]

There was a good well, that fed two houses, in my grandfathers old workshop across the road. When he lost that property, house and workshop after my uncles passing another man bought the shop and built it into a house. He having the well, regularly complained about it not being good enough for the now 3 houses so my grandfather put in a cistern. I still have plans to tie in the gutters on the house and garage, along with a filter system to feed into the cistern, just haven't had the time or motivation yet. It's still hooked into the house just capped off where it tied into the house plumbing. Having water here is rarely a problem. Lately we have had way too much. 

 

[ThomasPowers]

Hey; we have had an inch of rain this month; were almost floating down the valley!

[51 Papy]

On October 29, 2018 at 10:09 AM, Daswulf said:

 She said she had to open a few windows for a bit because it was too warm. I told her she didn't Have to keep feeding the fire all day if it got warmed up in the house.  she doesn't understand the damper on it yet.  

Das I just read this to my wife.  We are both still laughing and she's saying unkind things about MY instructions many years ago after she did the same thing.  Thanks for the laugh.  

[Daswulf]

Lol. Your welcome to laugh at my misery. 

[Frosty]

Running a wood stove is a skill set a lot of gals don't seem to get. Maybe you could get Aus to explain Damper to her, I understand it perfectly now. 

Frosty The Lucky.

[Glenn]

Remember when the grandmother cooked on a wood fired kitchen stove. No measuring cups or measuring spoons, just a hand full of this, a pinch of that, and that amount looks about right, as measurements. She used her hand to FEEL the heat of the stove and stoves oven to know when things were at the correct temperature for cooking. She knew when to add more wood, and how much, to maintain an even heat. No one turned up their nose, refused to eat, or walking away from the table hungry. And all this was done using a wood fuel live fire in a fire box attached to the stove. The water for tea and coffee was heated on the wood fired stove.

Now the grandmother did have strict requirements on the size of the wood split for HER stove. She also had a particular type of wood and would sometimes claim THAT tree for the stove wood. It was then dedicated to only be used for the kitchen stove. 

[Glenn II]

My ancestors settled in South Central North Dakota. My great grandmother used corn cobs for fuel in the kitchen stove. Of course corn cobs were often used for many things on that farm, with 17 children, the Sears catalog often didn't last too long, according to my grandpa. Not too many trees in that area for wood, so they were resourceful for heating and cooking fuel. Great grandpa would make 2 trips to town with the older boys on horse and wagon to purchase coal in the fall, for long winters, another trip may have been made with the sleigh nearer to spring. Grandpa said the sleigh trips we're miserable. If the sleigh broke through the snow they had to unload the coal so the horses could pull it out, then shovel it back on the sleigh to continue. Was 11miles to town. Up and down hills both ways. Haha

[ThomasPowers]

Corncobs---they were lucky; I was reading a book on weapons and skills of the western settlers last night and they had an actual photograph of a woman pushing a wheelbarrow piled high with dried bison "flops" which was the fuel they had access to...lived in a Soddie. (One of my Great Great Uncles used to live in a soddie in Oklahoma...but he had access to wood for cooking and heating)

I've also seen references to forging with dung fires...

[JHCC]

Dried herbivore dung is excellent fuel: there's a lot of undigested vegetable matter in a compact and easy-to-handle mass that burns a lot slower than an equal mass of grass or straw. Got to make sure it's thoroughly dried first, though.

[Glenn II]

My grandpa told me the "little kids" (he was 3rd born) would spend their late summer afternoons in the cow pasture collecting "fuel" for the heat stove in the basement. "Ma would never let that near the cook stove, those came in the cellar door and stacked the other side of the basement, away from her Crocks and cannings." 

Was just thinking now how very blessed I am to have had 25 yrs to spend hearing stories like that. 

[arkie]

"Cow patties" (any herbivore pattie") were a mainstay fuel source in the old days on the prairies of the Midwest...not many trees for firewood, but lots of grass for the "fuel source".

As a kid, when we went rabbit hunting on the ranches in W. Texas and needed to build a fire to warm up in cold weather, we gathered up cow chips to burn.  Makes a way hot fire!

Two very important rules: (1) if you picked up a soft one, put it back down, and (2) don't roast your hot dog weiners over that fire!!!

[mcostello]

Friends Wife from Kansas had a big family 13 of them. Had no money for shoes till  the snow was on the ground. When it was "only" frost they walked through all the pastures on the way to school and sought out the warm cow patties to warm out their feet. 13 kids + 2 adults and only 4 beds.

[51 Papy]

Das. Laughing at Our misery. After 30 years things like that are funny.  Even if at that moment they weren't.  Must have been 100 degrees in the house.  Good times!