Hello All,
We headed up Saturday morning with the intention of doing nothing but installing our new Hobbit SE wood stove, now nicknamed ‘Frodo’. Our first stop early Saturday morning was hitting the HD store in Kingman, where our Duravent ‘through-wall’ chimney kit, and chimney section awaited us.
We were there early, and picked up our items…then continued our 1 1/2 hour drive to the ranch. Well, one thing to always remember when picking up ordered things from either of the big box stores…check your damn order!! We learned the hard way. Our through-wall chimney kit was missing a key item (9″ chimney second that goes through the wall) and the 6″ Duravent chimney section…which they somehow mixed up with a 4″. So, this led to our slow progress installing the stove, and the early morning drive back to Kingman to retrieve the correct parts.
In our “ideal” planning, we wanted to be sitting around that stove when the sun set. Well, we ought to know, projects always take longer and things don’t always go to plan. Of course, our stove install was no exception. Let’s begin with Saturday and how we progressed. The plan was for Sheralee to burn in our stove, lighting several small fires in it to prep it for long term burning. Of course it was windy windy outside, so adjusting the stove to the right angle took some time, and for the stove to burn properly.
Recall how Frodo looked prior to his paint job.
This is the first fire raging in our new wood stove.
While Sheralee was getting Frodo warmed up, I started the through-wall installation. First step, cutting through the skin of Rusty…sounds worse than it is.
Finally had a nice 14 1/2 inch hole for the thimble section of the kit. Next I had to frame in where the thimble would attach. You can see where we attached the cement backer board on once side. We then had to insulate the wall before adding the cement backer board on the stove wall.
You might notice some shelving brackets on the studs, and in the opposite wall. Sheralee found this great site where she got this idea. When possible, we are going to pre-mount shelving brackets behind any wall covering. This will give us a floating shelf, and we are doing 3 of those types of shelves above the wood stove.
I believe this portion ended our Saturday, as the sun starts to go down between 4:30p and 5:00p. It was windy and cold, so fires were started and bed was soon to follow….and as you can see, no sitting around a roaring fire in the wood stove.
Sunday, we were up and gone before the sun came up..heading to Kingman to retrieve the items that HD messed up. All of that process went well, but just took time. When we got back to the ranch, we started right away in installing the chimney parts so we could proceed inside.
You can see in the above pictures we installed the Tee section, and then a 36″ chimney section with the cap. Now, here is where we think we ran into ‘operational’ issues in burning. Now, after more research we believe that having the chimney this low, being blocked by Rusty, is causing a downdraft in our chimney, hence blowing smoke into the container and not burning correctly at all. If anyone has thoughts on this, please let me know. We have a plan to change this, but just wondering about personal experiences.
Once we had the chimney in place, we could work on sealing up the inside and making it the way we want. We wanted to add galvanized corrugated metal on the cement backer board.
Sheralee came up with sitting the stove on a concrete base, and we decided to add ‘used’ bricks as the foundation to lift it a little of the floor. Our floor for that is a 24×24 sheet metal piece that the bricks sit on. Then the concrete base.
It really looks amazing! Remember the shelving brackets….well this is what they will eventually look like.
This will look amazing once we add sheet rock and more wood planking! So nice to see something that came from our heads come to fruition.
While Sheralee was working with the burning phase, which created the aforementioned smoke in the container, I was adding some insulation in our entry way. Because one wall faces West, and the afternoon sun in the summer is pretty intense, we went with R30 9″ thick insulation in those walls.
Things are coming along nicely. Now it is time for a Turkey day break and re-assess what we need for chimney parts.
Happy Thanksgiving All!!!
