Skip to main content

Stupid is as stupid does

   Hey everyone!  Did you know that this page now has a companion Facebook page?   It will have articles, memes and such that interest me that relate to this page but don't really apply.  Be sure to check it out!

  
    To be honest I expected errors, I expected mistakes, missteps and even the occasional "oops."   This is new to me, and I'm doing things like I've never done before.  

    This time however I let myself get carried a way a bit and made an error that could have been costly indeed.   

   


    Our wood pellet stove needs cleaned out at least once a week.  You can push it a few more days but the ash does build up.   This time we didn't have the air intake for the fire set right and the pellets built up, all the way to the hopper gate.  This concerns me because we have a friend that had the fire in their auger which ended up destroying their stove.   A rarity to be sure, but if their is one thing I've learned in my life...is that the million and one stuff will happen to me.

    So I turned off the stove and let it cool, and started to clean it out with an older shop vac we have.   Problem was, is that the ash wasn't completely cold.   

    Most of you already know where this story is going don't you?

    Realizing that the embers were still hot, but unwilling to let them cool down anymore I finished the job, put the unit back together and restarted the fire.   I then took the shop vac out into the garage and took the unit apart.

    As I feared some of the embers were catching the vacuum filter on fire.   So I took that part outside and rubbed snow all over the filter.   I didn't see any more embers and assumed I got them all.

    Most of you already know where this story is going don't you? 

    Of course, while I was doing this it never occurred to me to remove the vacuum bag from the top of the other unit.

    Yep.  Not only did the bag burn up, but it left a hole in the top of the shop bag unit, burning right through the plastic.  Luckily, I had left that part of the unit outside in the snow, thinking that any additional embers would be to wet to catch fire, I guess I was wrong there.  But at least I left it outside.

    Nothing else was damaged and overall it's not much of a story to tell.   I'm actually very embarrassed by it.   However part of the reason for this blog is to prevent someone else from doing something stupid.   

    The shop vac was pretty old, I'm not even sure how it came into my possession, so it's loss isn't that big of a deal.  I could have had the unit sitting inside my garage were there are currently nearly two tons of wood pellets, gasoline, wood and cardboard.   Playing the "What If " game serves no purpose.   I was stupid, it won't happen again.  

    I'm not sure if there will be a Holiday edition of this blog or not.  So Happy Holiday's to you and yours!

 


 

Labels:
Location: Stoneboro, PA 16153, USA

Comments

Post a Comment

What all the cool kids are reading.

On Marches, Strikes and being a keyboard warrior.

 This is not the America I grew up in.    It occurs to me that those days are long gone, and that I am probably looking back on those days with rose colored glasses as well.   However there was a time in America when, if two parties disagreed, they could hammer out some sort of compromise.   Where opposing viewpoints were respected.   Where, if a heated argument did break out the chance of violence was very low. I miss that America.    Recently I was threatened with physical violence for something that I posted online.   I ignored the comment, I didn't bother to respond to it.  Not because I feared the person - I've no idea who they were, etc. - but because I am a pacifist.  To respond to violence with more violence makes little sense to me.  Plus, it's been my experience that such people are paper tigers.   The anger that is felt however, by both the right and the left is very real.  I can no...
Post a Comment
Read more

Maybe it's time I got serious about solar

  When my wife and I bought this house nearly 6 years ago, we made some upgrades.   We put on a metal roof, replacing the original shingles, replaced the floor in the kitchen, both bathrooms and the downstairs den.  We ended up upgrading the pellet stove (twice!) and added some insulation; one of the jobs I want to do in the coming year is to insulate the garage, mostly to keep the freezers we have in the garage from becoming damaged. It's only in various home improvement shows that the work to improve your home is done all at once and somehow in 1 hour.  For most of us its an ongoing never ending project. One of the important improvements that I've been wanting to make but have kept putting off for various reasons has been solar panels.  Now, I'm thinking that it may be time to least do something. The main reason we have been putting off this improvement was cost and how long it would actually take us to pay off the panels.   I'm 60 years old now...
Post a Comment
Read more

Honoring the past - Thinking more about "invasive" plant species.

 Recently I've been giving some thought to invasive species.  I had received both positive and negative feedback on the blog post concerning kudzu and recently I came across a very well hidden, and very small, wild cherry tree while doing some yard work.  Since it's against the house it would have to be removed since the root systems could damage my foundation.   A buddy of mine at work was asking if I was going to transfer it, his logic being that it was a fruiting tree that would not only attract a variety of pollinator's but that the deer would eat the bark and cherries, keeping them away from the garden (which Sue and I swore we were not going to do this year).  It occurred to me that I was going to have to do a slightly better job of identification, since black cherries are native to America , where as other types of cherries are not.  Being able to make a precise identification would be helpful.   I used to be able to identify all these tre...
Post a Comment
Read more