Build thread: house of freedom

Today's projects:

Cut some brush to make a trail to the back property line.
Cut up some fallen branches into firewood. Wife wanted to drive the lawn tractor down there to bring the logs up and got sketched out by the slope. 🤣

Kids got a ride. Youngest has a blue mouth, working on his Halloween candy I see.

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Today's projects:

Cut some brush to make a trail to the back property line.
Cut up some fallen branches into firewood. Wife wanted to drive the lawn tractor down there to bring the logs up and got sketched out by the slope. 🤣

Kids got a ride. Youngest has a blue mouth, working on his Halloween candy I see.

View attachment 473129

I’ve got that same little trailer

Good lord that thing had a lot of bolts to assemble

Good times with the family right there- Really take time to drink it in. You’ll be glad later.
 
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I’ve got that same little trailer

Good lord that thing I had a lot of bolts to assemble

Good times with the family right there- Really take time to drink it in. You’ll be glad later.

You got that right!! Wow....so many bolts.
 
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I've got this temporary firewood rack set up just to get stuff off the ground until I build something more permanent. I have about 4 more trees (already cut) that are still piled where I cut them, and 1 standing dead trunk about 12" wide and 16' tall that I need to cut down. Then I have about 8 more small to medium sized post oaks and an elm that have to go eventually just because they're in the way or sick but since they're still alive and not at risk of falling on anybody I'm leaving them alone until I have a place to put them.

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The bulk of this work has been done with the Milwaukee M18 16" chainsaw. It's better in every way to the previous Poulan Pro I got at Walmart years ago...which it should be because it was 4x the price. But so far I have zero regrets getting that vs a similarly priced Echo or Stihl. I concede that it could simply be because I've never used one of those higher end saws and don't know what I'm missing...but ignorance is bliss.
 
I've got this temporary firewood rack set up just to get stuff off the ground until I build something more permanent. I have about 4 more trees (already cut) that are still piled where I cut them, and 1 standing dead trunk about 12" wide and 16' tall that I need to cut down. Then I have about 8 more small to medium sized post oaks and an elm that have to go eventually just because they're in the way or sick but since they're still alive and not at risk of falling on anybody I'm leaving them alone until I have a place to put them.

View attachment 474519

The bulk of this work has been done with the Milwaukee M18 16" chainsaw. It's better in every way to the previous Poulan Pro I got at Walmart years ago...which it should be because it was 4x the price. But so far I have zero regrets getting that vs a similarly priced Echo or Stihl. I concede that it could simply be because I've never used one of those higher end saws and don't know what I'm missing...but ignorance is bliss.

I’m glad you posted that I picked up one of those the other day and I haven’t got it out of the box but I thought it would be good to have handy
 
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I could load a lot more wood in this thing and as it is I'm getting almost 250F air out of it and the 1000sf upstairs has warmed by 6F in 2 hours.

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I had to wear a glove to get the temp because it's painful to have bare skin within 18" of it for more than a few seconds.

I'm gonna have to do some sort of door or a curtain over this opening to the upstairs loft to keep some of the heat down here. I've also considered rigging up a plenum in the attic and connect all my return ducts to it along with some dampers so I can make the downstairs unit pull from the upstairs returns and bring some of the heat back down once it gets up there.

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When I started the fire it was 65 downstairs and 63 upstairs. Now it's 68 down and 69 up.
 
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I'm gonna have to do some sort of door or a curtain over this opening to the upstairs loft to keep some of the heat down here. I've also considered rigging up a plenum in the attic and connect all my return ducts to it along with some dampers so I can make the downstairs unit pull from the upstairs returns and bring some of the heat back down once it gets up there.
My last house had a similar stove installation, except I burned coal, and not wood. Anyway, I installed a grate in the ceiling above the stove that lead to the floor above. I had a floor grate on the floor of the upper level and sheet metal connecting the two grates. Between the grates I installed a small fan, about the size of a desktop computer fan.

Hot air rises, and the fan helped it along. I had an open staircase, similar to your house. The staircase acted as the "cold" air return. I was amazed at how well the heat got distributed on the that end of the house. I sold the house before I connected any type of heat input to the houses duct work that served the far end of the house.

Is your ceiling fan able to draw air up or only blow air down?