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If you did not get your driveway cleared by the late afternoon it froze into a block of cement that would have to be chiseled out. A front end loader on a tractor makes short work out of situations like that one. Two passes and you're done.
If you did not get your driveway cleared by the late afternoon it froze into a block of cement that would have to be chiseled out.
I had that happen to my car once while it was parked on a NYC street during a northeaster.
I was ill at the time, so I didn't get around to digging my car out from under the plowed snow until a couple days later;by then it was no longer snow--it was mostly solid ice.
Plow guys are for the most part reliable ...after all they get paid by the job.
hehe... well if this wasn't a Public "thread to the whole world".. I'd tell you about a plow guy that would make your black coffee turn white.
Here are some highlights
This plower is probably the only one I know that gets 25.00 for a 3 minute plow job.
( the poor folks see their drive way disappear through out the year.) What I mean by that is he drives in and drive out and leaves. By the time the snows are over, you have no clear walk way to your door or garage. HOw he continues to have customers is simply a shock.
(Some people maybe familar with drop and drag) I think he thinks that something people do if they smoke a cigerette and fall down.
What "energy efficient" funace did you buy, so that I don't ever buy one of those. I'm planning on replacing my 30 year old Riteway model 37 with a Pacific Energy Summit Classic. I've never heard anything bad about them.
But I would never buy a stove, any stove where I don't put in a damper in both the exhaust gases and the air intake. There will always come some time when some unusual set of circumstance cause the stove to over fire.
Last night I had an over firing. The chimney was clean so there was no fire. I came down stairs to the stove room when I smelled hot pipe---that would mean that the paint high up on the pipe was starting to burn off volatiles. Sure enough, the stove pipe temp gauge was reading 800 degrees F.
I closed the exhaust draft door, and the air intake door had already closed(thermo controled intake air), but the pipe was still very hot and temp not going down. I went outside to see if there were sparks coming out of the top of the chimney, but there weren't. So I went back in and the stove was really pumping out the heat and the pipe was still 800 degrees. So I got the shop vac and sprayed room air all over the pipe. The temps went back down, and when I took the air away they didn't go back up.
It seemed to have been a combination of 15 degree temps outside(huge sucking draft), my setting the air intake too far open before the thermo intake closed, and my not closing the exhaust out take damper far enough down. A perfect storm.
I don't care what the manufacturer says about the stoves abilities, never ever have a scenario where you cannot close both the exhaust and the air intake to starve the fire in the stove, and have a fan available to cool the stove itself if necessary.
What "energy efficient" funace did you buy, so that I don't ever buy one of those. I'm planning on replacing my 30 year old Riteway model 37 with a Pacific Energy Summit Classic. I've never heard anything bad about them.
But I would never buy a stove, any stove where I don't put in a damper in both the exhaust gases and the air intake. There will always come some time when some unusual set of circumstance cause the stove to over fire.
Last night I had an over firing. The chimney was clean so there was no fire. I came down stairs to the stove room when I smelled hot pipe---that would mean that the paint high up on the pipe was starting to burn off volatiles. Sure enough, the stove pipe temp gauge was reading 800 degrees F.
I closed the exhaust draft door, and the air intake door had already closed(thermo controled intake air), but the pipe was still very hot and temp not going down. I went outside to see if there were sparks coming out of the top of the chimney, but there weren't. So I went back in and the stove was really pumping out the heat and the pipe was still 800 degrees. So I got the shop vac and sprayed room air all over the pipe. The temps went back down, and when I took the air away they didn't go back up.
It seemed to have been a combination of 15 degree temps outside(huge sucking draft), my setting the air intake too far open before the thermo intake closed, and my not closing the exhaust out take damper far enough down. A perfect storm.
I don't care what the manufacturer says about the stoves abilities, never ever have a scenario where you cannot close both the exhaust and the air intake to starve the fire in the stove, and have a fan available to cool the stove itself if necessary.
30 years of heating with wood teaches lessons.
zarathu
The oil boiler is a System 2000. Just google that and you can read all their propaganda. It runs OK but I do not like the long recovery time or the luke warm hot water it produces through a tiny heat exchanger. I will see if there are tweaks the oil burner guy can do to make it run better and perhaps a bigger heat exchanger to make hotter water.
Our woodstove got hot last night too. I shut down the air intake to nothing and it eventually calmed down. It has a glass door which helps us determine how much wood we need to put into it. Plus it runs hotter now that we have a full stainless chimney liner running to it, much more draft. It's amazing how little wood it burns to heat this house.
The oil boiler is a System 2000. Just google that and you can read all their propaganda. It runs OK but I do not like the long recovery time or the luke warm hot water it produces through a tiny heat exchanger. I will see if there are tweaks the oil burner guy can do to make it run better and perhaps a bigger heat exchanger to make hotter water.
Our woodstove got hot last night too. I shut down the air intake to nothing and it eventually calmed down. It has a glass door which helps us determine how much wood we need to put into it. Plus it runs hotter now that we have a full stainless chimney liner running to it, much more draft. It's amazing how little wood it burns to heat this house.
If your new boiler has the outside reset the setting may need to be adjusted. It takes a lot of messing around with those to get them set up right. I have a similar one in an apartment building and eventually bypassed the outside reset controller.
I had that happen to my car once while it was parked on a NYC street during a northeaster.
I was ill at the time, so I didn't get around to digging my car out from under the plowed snow until a couple days later;by then it was no longer snow--it was mostly solid ice.
Fortunately a neighbor had a pick axe he lent me.
I also had this happen to me when I was in my 20's and came home from Iraq in Feb. to find my pickup truck burried in my parents back yard in about 4 feet of snow. I think it took me, dad and brother the whole day to get it out. We had to use hot water around the tires to get them to move. What a shock to the system leaving the desert to below zero temps.
If your new boiler has the outside reset the setting may need to be adjusted. It takes a lot of messing around with those to get them set up right. I have a similar one in an apartment building and eventually bypassed the outside reset controller.
I'll ask the boiler man about that...thanks. It runs OK it just has short cycles. It's definately heating the water for the circulator hot enough it just does everything in slow motion. I'm used to turning up the thermostat and having the room warm in minutes not hours. Once it reaches the temp you set it maintains it fine it's just getting there that takes a while. We usually set the thermostat at 62 when we go to bed and turn it up to 68-70 when we get up. The old boiler would bring the house up to 70 degrees in about 20 minutes. This one takes three hours to rise 7-8 degrees. I know it's using the heat more efficiently and not blasting a bunch of unused heat up the chimney but 'cmon three hours for 7-8 degrees!
Our woodstove got hot last night too. I shut down the air intake to nothing and it eventually calmed down. It has a glass door which helps us determine how much wood we need to put into it. Plus it runs hotter now that we have a full stainless chimney liner running to it, much more draft. It's amazing how little wood it burns to heat this house.
If you bought your stove since the EPA regs took effect in the 90"s which if its got a ceramic see thru door, that is most likely true, then you cannot turn the air intake all the way down to nothing. They are designed so that you can't produce creosote and they have to have a certain "minimum" amount of air. The only problem with that is that they have no design to protect the owner from a combination of wild huge draft and fast burning fire. Sometimes when you have a wind blowing off the top of the stove pipe it can cause a vacuum in the pipe which suck air in at a furious rate. I have an external 7 inch SS pipe that is 30 feet high. When the wind blows across the top of it and its really cold, I can get a hellish draft. No airtight stove is really airtight. Air can, with enough vacuum suck, be pulled through the seals on the door and elsewhere to keep the fire howling.
You have to be able to cut the draft to about 1/10 of what it is with a full open pipe, and to cut the air intake to zero. Turning down the air intake to zero on these new EPA stoves is not zero.
When I put my Pacific Energy machine into my house in Bar harbor, I will use basement air but I will put in some kind of magnetic box in the basement with a door that I can release which will cut off the intake air to zero if I need it, on a little cable from the upstairs.
If you bought your stove since the EPA regs took effect in the 90"s which if its got a ceramic see thru door, that is most likely true, then you cannot turn the air intake all the way down to nothing. They are designed so that you can't produce creosote and they have to have a certain "minimum" amount of air. The only problem with that is that they have no design to protect the owner from a combination of wild huge draft and fast burning fire. Sometimes when you have a wind blowing off the top of the stove pipe it can cause a vacuum in the pipe which suck air in at a furious rate. I have an external 7 inch SS pipe that is 30 feet high. When the wind blows across the top of it and its really cold, I can get a hellish draft. No airtight stove is really airtight. Air can, with enough vacuum suck, be pulled through the seals on the door and elsewhere to keep the fire howling.
You have to be able to cut the draft to about 1/10 of what it is with a full open pipe, and to cut the air intake to zero. Turning down the air intake to zero on these new EPA stoves is not zero.
When I put my Pacific Energy machine into my house in Bar harbor, I will use basement air but I will put in some kind of magnetic box in the basement with a door that I can release which will cut off the intake air to zero if I need it, on a little cable from the upstairs.
zarathu
I bought this stove in 2008 so it's state of the art. It's a 55,000 BTU Hearthstone airtight stove with a secondary combustion chamber. I had it reinstalled this year by professionals who ran a 5 inch stainless flex pipe through the chimney to a stainless cap on the top. While I agree with you that wind can make it draw a bit more it does not affect it all that much with the cap, screen and the fact it terminates below the top of the brick. In fact it's blowing pretty hard right now and I have it running on the minimum intake setting and it's just flickering along happily putting out a nice even heat.. It draws better than it did last year when it had just a short piece of flex pipe on it terminating 6 feet up the fireplace flue. It may draw some air around the doors and cleanout door but it is very minimal. After all it's only a year old. In fact it will not start even with the air lever wide open unless the cleanout door is open or the side door is left ajar a bit as it cannot draw enough air to continue burning until it gets hot enough to establish the draft through the air control. Closing off the air control all the way slows the fire down to a flicker. It's still hot enough for secondary combustion though I do not think it could produce a runaway fire unless it was damaged in some way. Even an outside air shutoff will not stop a fire out of control from damaged gaskets, chipped viewing glass, or a faulty seal. If a fire burns too hot you really need to figure out why before you continue to use the stove. I think my problem last night was letting it burn too hot for too long and it took it a long time to calm down.
Last edited by Maineah; 12-12-2009 at 10:38 AM..
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the poor folks see their drive way disappear through out the year.) 
What I mean by that is he drives in and drive out and leaves. By the time the snows are over, you have no clear walk way to your door or garage. 
(Some people maybe familar with drop and drag) I think he thinks that something people do if they smoke a cigerette and fall down.
