Stove

We've had the new stove installed on Friday. It's a Dunsley Yorkshire woodburner, and we hope it's going to mean the sitting room can be made nice and toasty, without having to turn up the whole house's heating. Some before/during/after photos!

The open fire (© Ian 2012)

With fire basket, accessories, and canopy removed (© Ian 2012)

With stove installed! (© Ian 2012)

We've since put the bits and pieces back, and stacked some wood in the inglenook, and tonight lit the first fire in it. The first few are meant to be on the small side, as the paint cures, the firebricks dry out, and the seals firm up. The fire cement also needed 48 hours to dry, but fortunately we've had the weekend at Alan and Ann's, in Newmarket, so we were away and couldn't be tempted to light a fire.

It was a really enjoyable weekend, too: plenty of board games (Cities & Knights, and Alhambra), a good film (Inception), and good food. It's been a while since we've seen them (October, I think), and it was good to catch up. We called in on Rachel and Philip for lunch on the way home, which was a nice opportunity to see their new house again (we called in briefly a fortnight ago). They've adopted a couple of old rugs, and a garden table, from us: it's good to see them in use.

Also on Friday, we had the partition wall that separates the boiler room from the garage taken down. Having decided on a biomass boiler, we needed to make access to fit the accumulator tank (2000l, and 150cm in diameter, 220cm tall) into the boiler room: it wouldn't go through the existing doorway. I attempted to take the breeze-block wall down, but it wasn't happening (the mortar was much stronger than needed). Builder's cut-off saw made short work of it (his more muscular frame probably helped, too). I need to make a 'hatch' in the garage ceiling, because the access between joists is limited to about 40cm, and an expansion tank will be going in the loft space. My plan is to make a 80cm square opening, which will only entail cutting one joist, but that's for later this week.

More stove reports when we've had a chance to try it out properly...