Hey Rick,
Glad to hear you survived the flu. So did I, but for awhile there death was welcome. Not really. You'll love your barrel stove. I've had both the single 55 gallon drum and the smaller double barrel type and they will crank out the heat for sure. Take care leaving it un-attended with the draft open. 25 or 30 years ago I was living in an old Finnish squared log house of four rooms which I was heating with a barrel stove. It was a cold night of some 30 below 0 and the log chinking was missing in places allowing the wiind and snow to come inside. (Sometimes my wife and I would wake up in the morning with snow on top of the blanket, which did not put a smile on her face.) The night in question I was determined we were going to stay warm so I had the barrel stove draft wide open and had put some tamarac firewood inside, which burns very hot. I loaded up up good so I wouldn't have to crawl out from under the covers for a good while. Several hours later I woke up in what felt like the inside of a locomotive. The whole building was shaking in a rhythmic "whump, whump, whump"! Upon investigation the barrel stove was cherry red, so I shut that down and went outside to look and the chimney was belching sparks and fire. Oh, man, a chimney fire! A lot of homes have been lost that way. In my min's eye I can still see us standing out in the cold with a canopy of stars above... watching to see if we were going to lose the old farmhouse we had just purchased a few months before. Gradually the sparks died out and the huffing stopped. Not something I would care to repeat. .Take care, but stay warm.
SB
Glad to hear you survived the flu. So did I, but for awhile there death was welcome. Not really. You'll love your barrel stove. I've had both the single 55 gallon drum and the smaller double barrel type and they will crank out the heat for sure. Take care leaving it un-attended with the draft open. 25 or 30 years ago I was living in an old Finnish squared log house of four rooms which I was heating with a barrel stove. It was a cold night of some 30 below 0 and the log chinking was missing in places allowing the wiind and snow to come inside. (Sometimes my wife and I would wake up in the morning with snow on top of the blanket, which did not put a smile on her face.) The night in question I was determined we were going to stay warm so I had the barrel stove draft wide open and had put some tamarac firewood inside, which burns very hot. I loaded up up good so I wouldn't have to crawl out from under the covers for a good while. Several hours later I woke up in what felt like the inside of a locomotive. The whole building was shaking in a rhythmic "whump, whump, whump"! Upon investigation the barrel stove was cherry red, so I shut that down and went outside to look and the chimney was belching sparks and fire. Oh, man, a chimney fire! A lot of homes have been lost that way. In my min's eye I can still see us standing out in the cold with a canopy of stars above... watching to see if we were going to lose the old farmhouse we had just purchased a few months before. Gradually the sparks died out and the huffing stopped. Not something I would care to repeat. .Take care, but stay warm.
SB
