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| Dan removes frozen corn from the pile. |
It was cool inside the house last week. Our 1½-year-old outdoor pellet/corn furnace had
been operating in fits and starts, even after replacing both moving and
stationary parts and an electronic panel.
The thing still snuffs out at the
most inopportune times – and always when the temperature drops to negative
numbers.
Now, I’ll admit that I didn’t mind finding the bottle of tapwater
I keep on the bedside table slightly chilled, but I was quite put out to awaken
in a room too cold to want to get out from under the covers. I have a heated waterbed, trust me; there was
little motivation to go fix breakfast.
The indoor propane fireplace picked up the slack during the
day so my husband and I needn’t have feared freezing to death watching TV in
our comfy chairs, nor having to put up with the cold-showered double-sweatered
pissy version of me for very long. At
least, until that fire stopped working, too.
When Fireplace Guy arrived to repair it, he might as well
have been wearing red tights and a cape; I felt like raising a cheer.
He removed a mummified bat, moth casings and some soot from
the inner workings. I placed blame on the
bat for the ignition problems because after it was sucked into a Shop-Vac, the thermostat
mysteriously began working again.
Back to that outdoor furnace!
Cold house and faulty parts? I’ve whinged about them plenty, but I’ve come
up with two additional reasons to be a hater.
Our big Maine Coon cat recently killed two mice without
assistance from Dan, who has made thumping the half-live ones that MC and the
smaller cat bring into the house a morning ritual.
(Sometimes there’s an afternoon delight, as the last live
one was stuck inside a roach motel, and the smaller cat somehow carried the
whole thing up from the basement to show us.)
Bless their little kitty hearts! One or both has taken to leaving dead ones on
the threshold, and we have to step over them to get in and out of the house.
Dan takes care of the carcasses. I’m pretty sure I know where, and there are
starting to be way too many to simply continue flushing them down the toilet.
We used to place those dead things in a cardboard box headed
straight for the wood-burning furnace, but the pellet burner doesn’t have a
firebox that is serviceable as such.
No vermin cremation function - that’s reason one.
This furnace creates way more ash than the old woodburner,
and it is interspersed with scorched, non-burned, and partially burned corn.
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| Ugly Ash-pile; I think it is giving me the finger. |
I’m pretty sure that indicates it isn’t efficient, and besides
being an eyesore, the ash pile is home to at least one, possibly more, tunnel-dwelling
rats.
They are (thank God) not getting into the house – but why
would they even be tempted? They sleep right
next door to the five tons of corn that we fuel the furnace with.
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| At bottom of vent is large hole/tunnel leading to the snowbank. |
A ratty campground and all-you-can-eat self-serve – that’s enough
for reason two.
Note: I think they are using passive air to heat their home, and probably stealing electricity and internet access from me as well.
Note: I think they are using passive air to heat their home, and probably stealing electricity and internet access from me as well.
