Multi match club. Who's in?

Hey NS, how do you fit that whole family of yours in that little 3400 sq shack that you got there? Must be awful close quarters.

lol thats funny

Well we are kind of at a cross roads. We have the new baby on the way and because we are a blended family, with each of our three girls (ages 5,6 and 7) having their day with their other biological parent at varying times, so we like the idea of each one of them having their own room. It is a privacy thing, and here the rule is, when the other sister is not home; you cannot go in their room and mess with their stuff. In a normal family, sharing a room is no big deal, but with a blended family, personal space is HUGE.

So with a baby coming, we cannot figure out a good way to rearrange walls so that we can squeeze in another bedroom for the boy/girl. We discussed at length yesterday the combining of the laundry room, with our second bathroom, and moving the laundry room "stuff" out into our mudroom, but that would be an awkward arrangement with a room that was not rectangular, but zee-shaped, so we nixed that idea. Then we thought we could build a second story master bedroom suite on top of our ranch style home, but where do you put the stairs...since this house is Tee-shaped, that was a tricky spot to layout...so we nixed that idea. We ultimately keep coming back to adding a Master bedroom Suite onto the end of the house, but since we live on a hill, that means adding onto the footprint of the house...and digging into the hillside on this hill, a little more.

I did run the numbers and for a 12X20 bedroom suite from concrete to roof, the cost would be about 4 grand. That is doable I guess. (We got plenty of land, a sawmill and even a shingle mill so that is why the cost isn't too bad.) It's just...when is this building my house going to end? I already got my kitchen half built/demolished, got a new barn to build for the sheep and would like to park my cars in a garage at some point. I guess the biggest question is:

WHY DOES A 21 inch BABY NEED SO MUCH ROOM!

I'm in....well only becuase I just fired up both the Channing and the Stoker II tonite.

I fired back up this morning too. Outdoor temp fell 20° in 2 hours! The indoor temp wasn't far behind ....

Can I join? Is there a multi-match-box club? LOL How about a 10-starter club? Well, so far, I've been through... umm 7 I think.

Got my two lights in for season. Shut down to do replumb of system. That should be it till spring and warmer weather.

MarySthewriter wrote:Can I join? Is there a multi-match-box club? LOL How about a 10-starter club? Well, so far, I've been through... umm 7 I think.

No Need for a new club. You are a high ranking 7th degree member!

LOL I just keep adding to my numbers... went through another 4 home-made starters yesterday before figuring out the pellet starters I bought from Agway work better without paper. :-p Just mix them with the coal and light 'er up... After 2 trips to the store trying to replace the acorn nut on the feeder rod that went missing... *sigh*

I pastor a small church which is in the middle of the Southern Coal Region in Locustdale Pa. and it just seemed wrong to be burning oil to heat our church. I haven't found the chapter and verse in the bible that says "Thou shalt not burn oil when coal is available," but I am still looking.

The church is 10 minutes from UAE Harmony mine, 15 minutes from Reading Coal, 13 minutes from Gilberton coal and 15 minutes from Keystone Anthracite. We acquired the building and held our first service last year on August 7th. Over our first winter we burned about 570 gallons of oil at 3.25 a gallon. We are a small church and really can't afford to keep doing that. Early one morning while sipping coffee and cruising the "coal board," I got an "I wonder" moment. I had a 1980's vintage D&S rice coal burning stoker btu rating unknown. When this thing was built they didn't do BTU ratings. I am guessing it's somewhere around 70K BTU. It has a half moon paddle type feeder that does a pretty good job so decided to move it to my church basement to cut down on some of the oil we were burning. The church has a HUGE single flue chamber unlined brick chimney with three, count them three, thimbles in it. I was told the church, back in the day, had two big cast iron American Standard coal burning steam boilers that were pulled out and scrapped along with all the piping about 20 years before we acquired the building. A 140K btu hot air oil furnace was installed which I rebuilt last fall. New combustion chamber, renewed the troweled on refractory lining and changed the nozzle and filter.

I had read on here where someone used a jig saw and metal cutting blades to cut a hole in the top of their stoves outer convection jacket. I decided to try it. It took a while but I got it done. This stove was built when they built them with real American 1/4 inch steel!!!! It took over 2 hours and 7 blades but I got er done! I took a round sheet metal duct adapter and stuck it into the hole I cut, and blocked the front vent with a piece of curtain rod held in place with a C clamp. I tied the stove which is now technically now a field modified furnace (?) into one of the vents in the sanctuary using 8 feet of metal flex duct work. It's not pretty but it works. I installed a 6 inch MPD in the duct so I could block it off from the oil furnace blower plenum. That will allow the stove convection fan to push the hot air up one branch of the duct work and into the sanctuary and only a little bit will go into the supply plenum on the oil guzzling hot air furnace.

Our new to the church modified coal stove/furnace is too small to rely on to totally heat the sanctuary but we can use it to base load the temps in the sanctuary to around 45-50 so we won't use as much oil on Sunday mornings and evenings. We also started turning off the oil furnace and just let the coal stove/furnace heat the church now. I am projecting that we will only burn around 100 gallons vrs the 570 gallons we burned last year. I found out that I need to burn it hot in order for it to do it's new assignment properly. It also does a absolute great job of grinding coal into dust when the ash fuses and turns into a flat clinker that goes off the end of the grate and hits the front door. Then the unburned coal just starts to pile up, spill over the sides and the fire goes out requiring a restart about once a week. Nope before you ask no flapper on the combustion air fan inlet that I can adjust. I used a flat refrigerator advertising magnet that covered about 1/4 of the fan inlet but I needed it to burn to the max so I started buying Reading Coal instead of UAE. Reading coal ash doesn't fuse like UAE does when it's burned hot so that stopped the ash fusion problem. I have had to do 4 restarts on the church stove. I have to put a 5 gallon bucket a day in the stove/furnace and twice I forgot to stop by the church and do that so it went out. Due to an extremely oversized chimney the draft is pretty bad. So each restart takes at least two burn bags to generate enough heat to get a draft going. That makes at least 10 honest to goodness, kitchen strike on the box matches, on that stove alone.

I burn a LL Econo1 at home that I lit early because Momma said she was cold. What the Director of Domestic Tranquility asks for she gets. There were three restarts due to temps jumping around. I shut it down over Thanksgiving to do the final check and cleaning before setting it to run all winter. So that is 4 more honest to goodness kitchen strike on the box matches for 4 burn bags.

That makes a total of at least 14 matches from the last week in September till yesterday November 26th. I forget the rules. Does forgetting to put coal in count or are those instances disqualified? If forgetting to put in coal doesn't count then I have 10 matches instead of 14.

What's the ruling gentleman? Do I get 14 matches or do I have to drop off 4 penalty matches for a total of 10?

blrman07 wrote:4 penalty matches for a total of 10?

I like that,thats a good saying. "Penality Matches"

"15 minutes from Reading Coal" Whatever you do, don't buy this brand of coal. Worst stuff I have ever used in 10 years of burning........

Burning Reading coal right now. Other than it's a little larger and not uniform it seems to burn just fine.

Yeah, Jeddo burned better, have not tried Harmony but will next year and be damed the expeience getting it to the house.
C.

blrman07 wrote: What's the ruling gentleman? Do I get 14 matches or do I have to drop off 4 penalty matches for a total of 10?

You are a premium member! We don't care how the fire goes out. A match is a match! We'll place the bar on the ground for ya just don't trip on it.