Homestead mailing list

[Gene GeRue <genegerue AT ruralize.com>]

On Nov 20, 2007, at 2:11 PM, Franklin W. Davis wrote:

>   Hi Gene...before ya light your wood fire... ball up a bunch of  
> newspaper and put it in your stove...and touch it off... it will  
> preheat your flu so that the draft will be there when ya get your  
> wood goin'...and ya won't smoke yerself out...;-) tip from an  
> Ol'Mainer...;-) Franklin

Yeah, I know that, and have done it many times. I have gotten away  
from paying for news so don't have near the handy paper that I did  
years back. I get most of my news today from the Net.

A bigger issue is what happens when a stove or fireplace fire dies  
down during the night, toward morning. As the fuel wanes down to  
coals there is a time when you get a bigger load of smoke relative to  
the heat. At that time, with a timer or a heat sensor, if a very  
small fan kicked in then all the smoke and incompletely consumed  
gases would harmlessly go up and out.