Wednesday, January 12, 2011

I can remain silent no longer

I have prowling tiny house and micro cabin sites.

-No Shit Sherlock! You aint been talking about much else.-

True Watson, but one thing has been grating upon me for ages. These guys, mostly sensible people, have been bemoaning the high price of a chimney for a wood stove. Even if the chimney is astronomical, it's just a tube of sheet metal, with the purpose of conducting the smoke outside the house. I have made vent tubes from everything from pringles tubes, to juice cans, to 4 and 6 inch sewer pipes for wood stove chimneys.

If you are looking at $300 prices for 15 to 20 odd feet of chimney, get a book on fireplace building from Half.com, and David Gingery's Sheet metal book. The late David Gingery is famous for his series of foundry books starting with making an aluminum melting furnace, and using it to build a metalworking shop from aluminum cans.

His most remembered quote, will be "Half of my time I'm trying to figure out how to do something for 50 cents, the other half I'm trying to scare up the 50 cents."

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