Pruners only worked Wed/Thur/Fri this week. The weather is going to shut us down next week. Monday would be good but Cameron will likely not be available. The rest of the week is compliments of Punxsutawney Phil – winter is hard upon the Northwest. Looks to be messy or cold; maybe single digit temperature by mid-week.
I’ve worked on the wood stove and the flue. The picture below shows what the catalytic combustor looks like. It is 10 inches by 3.5 inches and has about 1,750 holes. I’m using white pipe cleaners (2 shown). The bright spot in the middle is from a small flashlight behind a cleaned part.
The next image shows ash encrusted holes (top) and cleaned holes below. On the left is my last dollar smothered with the fine light brown ash. These are tiny grains of minerals that could not burn even at a temperature above 500°F. Most of the burning time is closer to 1,000°F.
Unfortunately, I didn’t think to keep and measure it all. I’ll guess there will be between ½ and a cup. I’ve run the pipe cleaners through about 80% (1,400) holes. This is a slow and tedious process, so I have been doing only about 4 rows per session. Thus, 2 more sessions to go.
I need to get the stove working again by Tuesday – when the Arctic air begins to seep onto the Naneum Fan.
New combustors for my stove are $300.00. There are other shapes and sizes of catalytic combustors for wood stoves. Some can be seen using an image search with the following:
steelcat condor catalytic combustor
My stove is a Blaze King and there is one shown for it. Autos and trucks have similar things but searching for images is unhelpful. What a search shows is the outside view of the “housing” and the working part is hidden.
The funniest sign for the week:
Of interest from 1983: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/99_Luftballons
Keeping Track
on the Naneum Fan
John