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[Jazzwolf]

I've been using MJ 8.0 all night and I have been ripping, burning and listening and although once or twice I had to restart it, I haven't really had any problems with it. I did have one SERIOUS problem with a visualization, I had maximized it to fill the screen and when I turned it off and went back to the program, it had screwed up my whole screen display. Rebooting didn't fix it, naturally I panicked but I grabbed a hold of myself and after about a half hour of fiddling with my monitors display controls I got it back to where it should be. I won't maximize any visuals until the bugs get worked out..BUT.. I will NEVER,NEVER,NEVER,NEVER go back to MJ 7.2!
This program is fantastic!

I thought I would get that off my chest

[JimH]

Jazzwolf,
Glad we could make you feel better.  I've got a lot of stuff I'd like to get off my chest, too.

The power went off last night, and it wasn't too cold out so not a big deal.  This morning the house was about 55 degrees and because we have a well, the water supply was only OK so long as there was pressure.  Enough water to wash hands but not enough water to flush toilets more than a couple times.

Making coffee was interesting.  I got the old camp coffee pot and stove out and started to get a fire going.  Getting it going wasn't hard.  Getting it stopped turned out to be a job for the fire extinguisher.

After the routine Sunday trip to Best Buy and CompUSA, the power still wasn't on.  Elizabeth was out, so I thought I'd surprise her.  Went up to the old garage and found my old Lange wood stove, a real beauty, a red enameled old style Danish stove that hasn't been used now for about fifteen years.  Nearly killed myself laying it down to unbolt the legs and ash tray, then managed to get it into the wheelbarrow and roll it down to the house and up a plank into the living room.  First time the orange wheelbarrow has been in the living room.  

It took me another hour of huffing and puffing and applied elbow grease to get the red beauty into the fireplace, properly situated, cleaned and burning.  Just in time for herself indoors to return home to a smoky house and a grinning boy scout.  

And of course, the power came right back on, so I turned the heat off.  I think I'll turn the lights off tonight and enjoy a quiet gin and tonic by the old red Lange.  It's the same stove I used to sit by in a rocker to rock my two daughters to sleep.  Good stove.

[sekim]

What is it about woodstoves that is so comforting?

When I was in my early teens we moved to a large house that had two large stone fireplaces. At first they didn't see much use. Then Dad got the bright idea to make a woodstove. A friend of his was a tinknocker and very good welder. Well, the fire place in the basement was close to the boiler and the room wasn't used for much. So additional pipes were routed to the fireplace where this "thing" Dad and his friend built, and installed into the actual fireplace. It also had tunnels, or heat exchangers as the case may be, running along one side and across the top of the firebox. Attached at the front was a squirrel cage fan that ran nonstop.

Now this is where I come into the picture. My job was to split wood and keep that monster stoked at all times. What a drag for a 12-13 year old kid. I'll tell ya, oak splits much easier when it's below zero. Never had more than an axe, a couple of wedges, and maul. Splitters may have existed elsewhere, but not in my backyard.

After all this work I'd be dragging my a**, and bring an arm load in to feed the beast. After performing the ritual I'd plop down in a chair set off to the side. Being that there was a fan blowing really warm air, it was an often event to have the old man shaking me on the shoulder and telling me to get to bed.

I miss that thing.

[Leonardo]

Starting a wood stove poetry and prose link is in order!

[Jazzwolf]

I bought the house I live in about 9 years ago and there is a cast iron wood stove in the basement that is not connected to anything. I still can't figure out what it's doing there, lots of friends and family have "offered" to take it out of my hands. I finally painted it last year and it looks beautiful. One of these days when I have some extra money (yeah, right) I will have someone come in and hook it up or build an exhaust pipe and finally get the darn thing started. That basement gets MIGHTY cold in the winter.

[tullio]

Back in the 70s I went "back to the land" for a few years ("back" being a totally inappropriate word for someone raised on the concrete sidewalks of a NJ city).  Built a house on 200 acres of Maine wilderness and heated it entirely with two wood stoves.  One was a Norwegian cast iron model called Jotul.  The other was made in Austria and I can't remember the name, but it was a white enameled-metal cookstove with a water jacket around the firebox. The water jacket fed into a hot water tank on the second floor.  At first we used nothing but convection to move the water and had some problems, but after we got electricity, I hooked up a small pump, and it worked beautifully.

We used about 5 cords of wood a year.  AE (after electricity) I installed some baseboard heaters for backup, but we never used them.  The house was just under 3000 square feet and very well insulated, and we were never uncomforatable, even when the temp dropped below -25 F and froze the septic system.

Machinehead, Mainers have a saying that firewood warms you twice, once when you split it and once when you burn it.  In a burst of youthful enthusiasm I split all the wood myself the first year.  Had it delievered in 4 foot lengths, cut it to size to fit the two stoves (2 feet and 12 inches), split it with wedges and stacked it.  Second year I had it cut to size before delivery.  Third year onward, I rented a splitter.  The trees on my property were mostly softwood, evergreens and poplar.  So I had to buy firewood.  Actually, it was more like barter.  I paid something ridiculously low like $15 a cord in exchange for letting the logger hunt my land (we had a lot of deer and some bear).

You often hear the phrase "cozy up to the stove,"and it's absolutely accurate.  There is a sense that the heat just reaches out and envelops you.  The Jotul had doors that opened so that it could be used as a fireplace, and it was especially comforting to sit in front of it on a night when the wind was howling outside and you could hear the trees cracking in the cold.

[Harry The Hipster]

Evocative, Tullio. Were you up by Moosehead Lake? Beautiful country, quite isolated.

HTH

[JimH]

Tullio,
> The other was made in Austria and I can't remember the name, but it was a white enameled-metal cookstove with a water jacket around the firebox. The water jacket fed into a hot water tank on the second floor.

Probably a Tirolia.  I used one to cook one whole summer.  They are really well insulated.

The Jotul was probably a #4 or a #6.  The #4 had a door that slid underneath.  The #6 had two doors that slid back to the sides.

From 1974 to 1980, I had a small store a block from here where I sold about 500 woodstoves a year.  Mostly Scandinavian stoves at first, then later the Vermont Castings stoves.

I bought an Apple II in 1979 and tried to use it for accounting.  That led me into the crazyquilt world of software.

[tullio]

JimH

Tirolia it was!  Thanks.  People never believe me when I tell them we cooked on it all year.  Thanks for the corroboration.  Not only did we cook, but we heated our water with the stove even in the summer.  The nights were cool enough that we could load the stove and open the vents a bit at bed time.  By morning our 80 gallon water tank had enough hot water for the day.  And of course every time we cooked, we also heated the water a bit.  I loved cooking on that stove.  Move the pot an inch or two one way or the other to alter the temp.  My wife got really good at baking bread in it.

The Jotul had two doors that opened out.  So I guess it was a 6.  It was a big stove that easily handled 2 foot logs.  In fact, the major problem we had with it was that it could make the place uncomfortably hot unless we kept the fires small.

500 wood stoves a year is impressive.  You must be some salesman or else you had a lot of cold customers.  I knew guys in Maine that wouldn't sell that many in a decade.

I got my first computer about the same time as you, but mine was a Sinclair.  (Remember them?)  Then I went the Radio Shack route for a while.

HarryTH

We weren't as far north as Moosehead, which, I agree is really beautiful (if you have enough DEET to enjoy the scenery).  We were about 20 miles inland from Belfast in a township called Knox, in Waldo County (not to be confused with the township of Waldo in Knox County).  The closest community of any size was Thorndike.  It isn't the prettiest part of Maine, but hardly ugly.  We moved there because land was cheap.  I believe we paid $75 an acre in 1976.