What Is In Your Stove Right Now?

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A dead bird that I need to take out, and put a mesh screen over my chimney cap because this is the second one :(.
 
Thought I posted a pic the other day but I guess it didn’t take.

[Hearth.com] What Is In Your Stove Right Now?
 
Our temp was 51.1 this morning, we have a forecast high of 77 today.
 
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The 2 month long humid heat wave finally broke this week after last weeks week long rain. This is the summer weather I like. High 70s- mid 80s low humidity.
 
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We did hit the forecast low of 49 this morning, we didn't have a fire but I did run the furnace for seven minutes while we had coffee.
 
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We bottomed out at 8.6::C Wife started the pellet stove to take the chill off
Year 23 for that stove started like a charm. I never had to do a major repair just cleaning
I can not be happier with this old Enviro.
 
Had some nice weather this week. Got me in the splitting mood.

[Hearth.com] What Is In Your Stove Right Now?
 
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Yellow jackets! Actually, they're more "on" the stove than "in" the stove. The fireplace shown in my avatar is one of four in this house, this and one other being of the cooking (aka "walk-in") variety. It's part of the old summer kitchen, which I believe was added to the house with the 1775 addition, but I guess could be older (oldest part of house is 1730's).

Anyway, there's a cedar shake roof on the part of this fireplace that protrudes outside, thru the wall of the 1990's addition that now encompasses it, and yellowjackets had built a nice big nest in the little "attic" formed by that roof, finding access between two of the cedar shakes... which are probably way-overdue for replacement.

We hadn't noticed them all summer long, but with cooler weather setting in last week, they started coming into the house. They seem to have tunneled thru the bedding mortar (mud) and knocked out a spot of pointing (lime mortar), to find their way into the house thru the fireplace. Add another item to my revolving "to do" list.

I killed 10 last Friday, and 14 on Saturday, before getting out there with some foaming wasp spray to hit them Sunday morning. My work slowed them down, but didn't kill the nest, so we had a pro stop by last week. He sprayed some dust into their entrance hole, and then we were finding dead or dying yellowjackets on our floors and windowsills for about 3 days... averaging maybe 60 - 90 specimens per day. There must have been hundreds of them in that nest.

There's another nest in the chimney of our patio fireplace, but I just leave them alone. When cool evenings hit this fall, and kids still want to use the swimming pool, I'll light that so they can sit by the fire when they hop out of the pool. That should get rid of anyone still there, by then.

I've mentioned here many times, that I always have one small fire in each stove in the fall, before doing my annual sweeping. This is why, I always imagine the possibility of knocking a giant wasp nest out of a chimney, and having them come pouring out of the stove, if I do it late summer. I also imagine the possibility of finding a chimney dangerously plugged with a nest in October, if I did my sweeping in May or June, like most folks. A small fire late September, the day before sweeping, can make sure that anything in the chimney is dead or vacated, before I sweep everything clean in preparation for October heating.
 
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It is cool this morning but sunny the forecast is for a low of 4 ::C
Just short of a frost. It's a tad early hope not still lots to harvest in the garden
 
We have a Frost Advisory on tonight, we'll just cycle the furnace if it's needed. We'll have a nice warmup coming in after tonight, hopefully we can wait on heating with wood.
 
In the past we've started burning on this date with shoulder season wood but with the temps in the 80's, it won't happen anytime soon. I was looking at the long range forecast for our area, it looks like we can wait until October 1st before we start burning unless things change.
 
In the past we've started burning on this date with shoulder season wood but with the temps in the 80's, it won't happen anytime soon. I was looking at the long range forecast for our area, it looks like we can wait until October 1st before we start burning unless things change.
Seeing the same here. Usually start shoulder burning mid to late September. Overnight lows are getting into the 40s & 50s but with highs in the 70s for the distant future I don’t see me starting to burn until October.

Still filled my kindling can and filled my hoop with shoulder season wood so I’m ready to go if/when that day comes.
 
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Seeing the same here. Usually start shoulder burning mid to late September. Overnight lows are getting into the 40s & 50s but with highs in the 70s for the distant future I don’t see me starting to burn until October.

Still filled my kindling can and filled my hoop with shoulder season wood so I’m ready to go if/when that day comes.
Once I see some heavy rains coming our way, I'll start getting some shoulder season wood in.
 
We have had no rain for about 10 days and finally have some rain in the forecast Tuesday into Wednesday.
Our next rain according to AccuWeather is September 25 but I'm sure that will change.
 
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Same here, highs in the mid 80’s and no rain for the last couple weeks. Looks like maybe the end of Sep til I burn. I also need to cut down some dead trees but I hate doing it in this heat.
 
The last 4 mornings we had temps of 55.9,57.6,55.4 and 52.7 with the high temp of the day in the low 80's. The forecast for next week has us getting over 2 inches of rain coming in on Wednesday for about 3 days, we'll see how much the forecast changes.

We'll start putting in some shoulder season wood before the rains move in.
 
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