Breakthrough!
It's still in the -30's here. When we got up this morning in Fraser Lake it was -38 with a windchill warning of -57. So were not taking the fireplace out until we have a replacement back up. My brother Tiny came up and we got the skidsteer running. Which involved a new fan belt, new exhaust manifold bolts, a replacement circulating water heater and a re-cored radiator install. While it was only -20 when we were working on it, there was a slight wind and it was cold. I had an electric heater under the tarp that kept blowing hot air on us as we worked which helped a lot. The Skid steer is sitting under the tarp now with a space heater, battery charger and block heater on. I don't want to run it unless I have to. Weird things happen to metal parts when they get this cold. So that left us some time to get on with the chimney replacement project.
We don't want to leave ourselves with out wood heat just in case we have a power outage. In any case it's needed to keep the chill off the place. The electric furnace by itself just doesn't do the job. We started re-structuring the basement joists to install the main furnace replacement chimney. The floor was warped around the fireplace and chimney hole as it wasn't correctly structured. The 400 lbs or so of chimney was resting on the plywood subfloor instead of two by 10 joists and stringers. That's all repaired with about 30 feet of two by 10's that we added after using a couple of screw jacks to level the joists in the basement.
You call that a saw! Let me show you a real saw.
My sawzall wouldn't fit so Tiny brought out his favorite power tool. We're keeping warm right now burning the off cuts. Finally we installed the connection to the black pipe from the furnace and installed a piece of chimney. It's the bright shiny cylinder next to the soon to disappear, old zero clearance fireplace.
Today the plan is to clean up the basement remove the aluminum flashing and start grinding the overhead logs that were hidden in the fireplace blocking.
Clearance reductions, once the new chimney is in, will make grinding difficult to do. Now how to keep the vitamin pine out of everything. My four inch grinder with a twenty grit, 5" sanding disk really raises a lot of sawdust. Blocking it off with plastic is problematical as the fire place is still burning.. but first some ham and eggs.
We don't want to leave ourselves with out wood heat just in case we have a power outage. In any case it's needed to keep the chill off the place. The electric furnace by itself just doesn't do the job. We started re-structuring the basement joists to install the main furnace replacement chimney. The floor was warped around the fireplace and chimney hole as it wasn't correctly structured. The 400 lbs or so of chimney was resting on the plywood subfloor instead of two by 10 joists and stringers. That's all repaired with about 30 feet of two by 10's that we added after using a couple of screw jacks to level the joists in the basement.
You call that a saw! Let me show you a real saw.
My sawzall wouldn't fit so Tiny brought out his favorite power tool. We're keeping warm right now burning the off cuts. Finally we installed the connection to the black pipe from the furnace and installed a piece of chimney. It's the bright shiny cylinder next to the soon to disappear, old zero clearance fireplace.
Today the plan is to clean up the basement remove the aluminum flashing and start grinding the overhead logs that were hidden in the fireplace blocking.
Clearance reductions, once the new chimney is in, will make grinding difficult to do. Now how to keep the vitamin pine out of everything. My four inch grinder with a twenty grit, 5" sanding disk really raises a lot of sawdust. Blocking it off with plastic is problematical as the fire place is still burning.. but first some ham and eggs.
Comments
I like the look of the place without the wall.
14" or so of snow and counting!
Kev