The batteries will operate more efficiently being in the house where it's warm.

in cold your battery loses alot of its power out put to draw down. but also lives a longer life if you dont draw it down too low. taking a small charge out over time may not have any significant effects either way. car type batteries operate most efficiently at about 65 degrees.
for instance if you store your flashlight batteries in the refrigerator they will last longer than if inside the house. if you turn on the flashlight it will go dead faster in the refrigerator.

Ray Zee is Martha Stewart's fake account? ... awesome suggestions, agreed on a bunch ... been meaning to ask about the blocks around the stove and whether they help or hurt my setup.... Also, surrounding the stovepipe with heat bricks, but at least partially that keeps heat off the back wall.

Smaller lampshades. That's a definite. These were $1 pickups at the thrift.

Interesting thinking on the photos ... I have a lot of art I want to hang but I may rotate fewer pieces because you're right, one side of the cabin seems much more open than the other right now.

Thanks for all the suggestions!

So, by "stairs" I was going to add two shelves below an entry point, essentially ... a 2x6 w some carpet on it would work, but it's basically the same thing ... question is just where to put it and how long a ramp ...

Biked into town last night, had a few drinks, had a few more, took an Uber home and my driver was this fantastic Colombian professor working a weekend job ... hey, she's already seen where I live, so hopefully dinner happens. ... We hung out a bit, I made coffee .... I get really talkative in Spanish when I'm half drunk ...

ETA: I don't speak particularly well.

If I remove almost all the bricks from the stove setup, it frees up quite a bit of space.

Thanks for the updates, ElSapo. This is a cool setup you've got.

you can easily make a sheet metal deflector and paint it black for behind the stove.

Yes, I've been thinking about making something, basically a piece of sheet metal with a hole in it, cut in half and fit around the pipe, flush to the brick. My thinking, anyway.

So, back to the bricks for a second: So ditch em all?

you want an air space behind the deflector so your wall wont get hot.

ive done this on wood stoves before that needed them. if your wall or anything flammable gets hot over and over sooner or later its flash point lowers until bam.
you can make a freestanding one from a square piece and bend the sides in so it stands upright. any sheet metal shop can do it in their breaker or even build it for you. not much cost.

Sitting here staring at the room and realized I could move the batteries under the bed.

I bought this inverter a few months ago. It has a fan that turns on as load rises. ... Fan seems to come on around 30 watts, which is just about where my load usually sits, so it's this constant start-stop of the fan.... very annoying, I'd rather it was always on or off.

It is so finely balanced that sometimes the fan is off, but when I move the mouse on my laptop, it fires back up.

Getting a lot of rain this week, which has me thinking about the roof of the container. ... The roof has some rust, as do most all containers you'd buy. The only real problem is a dent on one corner, where water pools. Elsewhere on the roof, the water slides off as it should.

Thinking to sand off the rust, use a rust converter, then bondo to fill in the dent followed by roofing cement.

I'd take small hydraulic jack (or a car jack) and a 4"x4" post and push that dent up from the inside. Lay down some plywood or a couple of 2"x's on the floor inside first and slowly raise the jack to push up on that spot and you should be able to push that dent out.

yep push the dent out. but fix the spot as well. and you may want to put a coating on the roof. quick fix is put a piece of plywood over it with a rock on top

First time I saw him do this, I couldn't stop laughing. And then one night he wanted to get down and he dropped on me like a ****ing ninja in a James Bond movie, boom, straight outta the rafters onto my head.

Fall update ....

I think it officially became fall sometime last week, and today it feels like it. Cool, crisp, clear skies. The cat is asleep in the chair next to the wood stove, and this morning I made a small fire since temperatures got chilly last night.

Almost an idyllic moment of cabin life.



While fall is my favorite season it's also a big reminder that winter is coming and the woodpile is not big enough yet. Last year I wound up buying wood--which most people tell me I should just do anyway. But I felt a bit foolish and lazy, seeing as I have a forest full of prime wood.

But just like last year, I'm definitely behind in the wood-cutting. I still have some of the wood I bought left over from last season (under the tarp), and though it was a little green last year it should be perfect now.



The stuff on the left is hardwood I split and which looks almost respectable. The pile is a mix of chunks of pine and thick branches of hardwood ... I have this game I play where I try and keep the pile as big as possible for as long as possible, before I move on to the stacked stuff.



I'm really interested to see how this winter plays out, because I've made some big changes in the last few months.

I added three feet to the chimney, which almost doubles it. I also sealed up some cracks on the stove. The fire seems to burn slower now, and maintains a small flame better.

I pulled out the bricks which had surrounded the stove, also, which were an attempt to store heat.

Unfortunately, replacing some stovepipe I didn't put it all back together quite right and for the two recent storms I had water dripping in. I think I've put it back together now, the pipes a good fit.



The addition of the storage container-shed also let me redesign the cabin inside. There is dramatically more space, but also the loft. And while doing that construction, I added insulation to the walls beneath the loft. In the last month, I've noticed the cabin seems to retain heat a bit better. Like at night, temperatures don't fall as they do outside.





The cabin redesign is also a huge morale booster. I wasn't down, so maybe that's not the best way to explain, but I think it will make winters much more enjoyable.





This isn't much of a picture, but I also enjoyed having an archery target and "range" set up this summer.



& Ranch is coming up on its 4th issue, which means somehow converting all those folks who supported the first Kickstarter into continuing subscribers. Initially, I was thinking this was the end of it, and hey maybe it is, but I am starting to think of it as an opportunity.

Last time around I had virtually no success in getting people to share the campaign. I'm hoping to change that, and have started thinking about letters to subscribers and so on.



It's a small number, but I'd like to get to 100 subscribers, that would be roughly break-even on a print run of 250. Right now it's a bit less than 50. ... Whatever happens, it's a fun and fascinating process to make something, and that's on the list of things to do before the end of the year.

Financially, I'm getting there but it is slower than I'd hoped (of course). I have about $18,000 remaining in debt to chew through. Once I get that paid off and have a bit in savings I've been thinking about spending a year volunteering somehow. But that's a bit down the line.

This character Yuri I created actually has the life I want--he writes and focuses on all that, and when he needs money he goes out and does odd jobs on the farms.

Thoreau's writing on work as a day laborer struck a chord with me:

Anyways, that's that. A friend visited recently and so I spent a long weekend showing him around, playing tourist. It was a great reminder of how awesome this place is. He told me later I looked happier than he'd seen in a while, which I expect is true.

even though it isnt a metal roof, with your chimney down so low you might need a snow diverter, or also called a wedge, to keep the snow and ice build up above it from pushing it over somewhat and breaking your seals. tons of weight there to push. it looks to me that a snow buildup will take your chimney out with how you have it anchored.
its hard to fix it in the winter when that happens. ive even had two i put up fail at my mountain cabin in the past. i made the mistake of running wires to also hold it up to the roof peak and the snow bent it upwards.

a chimney by code must be 3 feet above the roof where it is located and then two or three feet above anything within ten feet/

this is also so that it draws well. any outside chimney wont draw well anyway.

Thoughts on this idea?

The above is a diagram of my stove setup. The green line represents the cabin wall the chimney passes through. ... I have found that during heavy rains, water comes in trough the chimney and leaks inside, into the stove.

I'm considering maybe drilling 3-5 small holes in the bottom of the horizontal piece of stovepipe, outside the cabin, to allow the water to drain out rather than accumulating and dripping in.

It doesn't seem to me that this is going to hurt the draft too much--the extra 3 feet of chimney has really improved the stove's performance so far, and when it's not raining plugging the holes could be an option .... Adding a wind guard around the holes could also address any impact on stove draft.

Way off? What am I missing here? Is this a common problem?

Just wanted to see if maybe someone had other ideas.

with the proper cap no rain should even get in in the first place. and a few drops wouldnt make it into the stove. are your joints in the pipe the facing the right way so it doesnt get in them that way?

also you do have double wall pipe going through the wall i assume.

but a small hole in the bottom of the horizontal pipe wouldnt affect anything.

I don't know, honestly. You mean, which one fit inside the other? The system isn't set up differently than it was in the past three years, but that doesn't mean I haven't made a mistake. The rain leakage is a new problem, this year, since replacing the stovepipe.

Taking another look, I think the 90-degree angle on the outside probably *should* be reversed from where it is, but then the rest doesn't fit.

Why didn't you set the outside part of the pipe not so that it shows vertically to the sky with opening, but so that it is positioned slightly downwards with opening direction earth? Is it somehow a pipe joint system that you can do it only that way? I have never thought about actual setup of such pipes but spontaneously I would assume that the only reason for vertical setup is space and trying to direct the smoke upwards. Both things are irrelevant for you.

the joints need to go such that water running down outside of the pipe doesnt go into the crack where they fit together. in other words the smaller end points upward and the wider end fits over that.

the smaller end goes into your stove outlet and you go from there. until you reach the cap which goes over the end of the vertical pipe.

lapka read post 718

Sorry. have read only the last couple of posts.
I understand now why such setup. Tx for the explanation.