Temperature Data

Now that winter weather has arrived, my office can be a bit chilly. While the wood stove is nearby (in the next room), it is difficult to move the warm air from the stove to my desk. A former homeowner's solution was to install a duct in the attic with an intake vent above the stove and an outflow vent above my desk. In the middle of the duct-work is a small fan, positioned to move air from the warm side to the cool side. What a good idea. I mean, that is virtually free heat.

When we moved in, the fan didn't work. I fiddled with it this fall, and even took it to my father-in-law for some maintenance. I finally got it working and felt pretty good about this new way of heating the office. The only problem was that my self-satisfaction seemed to be the only warm glow associated with the project. After a day or two, even I had to admit that it didn't feel much warmer at the desk than it had before. So, I decided to collected some data to see how well it was working.

For 90 minutes on Wednesday, from 8a to 9:30a, I kept the door to the wood stove closed while I ran the fan. The temperature went from 52.6F to 52.2F and back again. (See above.) At 9:30a, I opened the door and shut off the fan. The temperature went from 52.6F to 59.8F over the next 90 minutes. Now, I ain't too good at statistics, so I don't know if my data are significant, but it looks to me like the fan is making things worse. How can this be?

The only thing I can think of is that the air is traveling slowly through an unheated attic and cooling as it moves. The length of the duct is about 30 feet, the attic is cold, and all the heat is gone before it arrives. It is hard for me to believe this, since the ducting is insulated, the air above the stove is super-hot, and 30 feet isn't all that far, but I can't think of anything else. The fan is an old, slow, and probably ineffective squirrel cage, so perhaps it just can't move the air fast enough.

How Not to Cut a Tree

I was in the woods yesterday hurrying to fill another firewood permit before the snow flies later today. I found a smallish, standing-dead Douglas fir. It was leaning the wrong way, but I figured that I could out-smart it and drop it where I needed it. Wrong. I put on a short primer called "how not to cut a tree" and ended up having it settle on my back-cut, closing the kerf and irrevocably pinching my bar and chain. This is never a good situation, but it is even worse when the tree is standing over your head and you are no longer in control of it. It is a recipe for a broken neck.

The first thing I did was unbolt the rest of the saw from the bar, no sense having the whole saw destroyed just because the bar was likely to be ruined. Next, I pounded a wedge into a small crack in the kerf next to the bar. It wasn't much, but I hoped to lift the tree enough to wiggle the bar. No luck. So, I went to the truck for a rope and a cam-strap. I gingerly positioned the strap as high on the stem as I could reach and cammed it to the rope. I took the rope to a small cottonwood and made a Z-drag. I pulled it tight and went back to the tree; I pounded the wedge; I went to the cottonwood and tightened the rope; I went to the tree and pounded the wedge; I went back to the rope and pulled it again. When I returned to the tree, low and behold, it had let go of my bar and chain. I inspected the bar and could find nothing wrong, so I put it back on the saw. Amazingly, it was completely undamaged.

I was back in the Douglas fir business, so I grabbed a couple of extra wedges, doubled them up, and pounded them into the now open kerf. The tree started to go, so I ran away. Instead of a satisfying crash, however, I heard nothing. I turned back to look. The small branches of my dead tree had become entangled with the live branches of a neighboring tree, and the whole thing was hung up. This, dear reader, is the time to go home. This is the time to collect all of your functioning equipment, not to mention your good health, and slope off to the nearest pub for some cold refreshment and a few moments of silent reflection.

Unless, of course, you want to give it one last try before you go . . . . Foolishly, perhaps, I tightened my Z-drag one last time and began some careful cutting just above my original cut. This is a dangerous business because the butt of the tree can snap loose at any time and take your head with it. Without any further mishap, however, I was able to carefully re-cut it and have it fall exactly where I had planned. The Douglas fir is now in my wood pile. I told you that I was smarter than a dead tree.

Robespierre

Jerry, my neighbor, stopped by the other day and dropped off a machine to help me with the box elder. Now, I can't prove that this thing was used during the French Revolution, but I can't prove that it wasn't either. It is no longer in service as a guillotine, but it had a lot of work to do on the box elder. That stuff was twisted. And, coming from me, that is saying something. I had split a fair amount of it by hand, but some of the pieces were virtually impossible. In one case I had buried multiple wedges in a chunk and had to hit them about 60 times each. Robespierre groaned and smoked a little bit on that particular one, but got 'er done.

Black Gold

It is time to put the garden to bed. We've planned to have our friend, Dr. Free, come over from Paragonah with his tractor to till it, but weve wanted to have some organic material mixed in, something more than leaves. Today I went over to the horse barns at the county fair grounds. Bingo. Black Gold. I mean, this stuff would cost $5 per bag at Home Depot. It is a mix of hay and horse poop, but it has been self-composting for who knows how long. It was steaming as I shoveled it into the truck. I think we'll be back here every day. This stuff is going on the garden, on the lawn, on the orchard, on the dinner salad . . . .