We haven’t had a morning this chilly (44°F) since spring. I was comfortable in just a t-shirt (yes, I was wearing pants) while taking the dogs out, but only because there was no wind. I’m not complaining — it was exhilarating, the way every day should begin.
With a shiver.
Three years ago we enjoyed a day almost identical to this one. We woke up in West Glacier, Montana and undertook our first day of sightseeing in Glacier Park, including Bloody Marys before noon in Apgar and a visit to Polebridge. Good times.
I seem to have miscalculated about how much trash we’d accumulated since my last trip to the county transfer station. Our smaller garbage can, devoted to cleaning up after the dogs, has been a reliable gauge for when it’s time to bag’n’haul the rest, and by this morning it was full.
The can reserved for household trash, however, was less than half-full. Strange. I guess we’re generating less refuse than I thought.
So today, only one bag went to the transfer station. Two bucks.
I mentioned on Saturday that the Silverado’s windshield washer isn’t working. Since it quit on me, every now and then I’ve been stopping by the hydrant on my way up the driveway and hosing off the glass. I did that this morning when I returned from town.
Then I got to feeling guilty that I hadn’t washed my trusty truck in over a year. I kept going.
No soap. No scrubbing. I just hosed the whole thing down.
It’s not beautiful, but it’s better-lookin’ than before.
Those old barn-tin heat shields I put up on Saturday deserve a few more pictures and a little more explanation of why we did what we did around the woodstove.
Before I get into that, let me just say that I’d never done anything like this until I started working on our cabin. I researched the daylights outta the subject and did my best to understand the science behind it. Then I looked at what smart people had done to make sure that their stoves were effective and efficient while managing the whole safety thang.
You’ll remember that we put mineral-wool insulation in the wall behind the woodstove, then covered it with cement board. Ditto the ceiling.
Cement board went down on the floor, too, before we laid a hearth of concrete paver bricks.
Taken together, these non-combustible materials are a barrier between the woodstove and the structure of the cabin — within reason, I mean. Nothing we did fireproofs the space.
The barn tin was the last step. It mitigates the effects of sustained high temperatures on studs, sheathing, and so on. Heat shields, properly designed and installed, can help limit what’s called “pyrolysis” — the thermal decomposition of wood that can reduce its ignition threshold from 400°F to as low as 200°F.
For our heat shields to be effective, they’d require air circulation. We mounted the wall shield an inch off the brick floor and an inch from the tin on the ceiling. One-inch standoffs, cut from 3/4-inch ID PVC pipe, hold it away from the cement board on the wall.
Air will circulate on all sides of our barn-tin shield.
For the record, I’ll be keeping a close watch on the standoffs. We chose PVC over alternative materials to help reduce heat transfer to the wall. Others report using the material with success, and its ignition temperature (736°F) certainly isn’t a concern.
PVC may soften, however, somewhere between 140°F and 210°F, and that could weaken the shields’ supports. Knowing this beforehand, I arranged the standoffs so that they’re as far as possible from high-heat areas of the shield. Of the dozen I installed, only two might be vulnerable, and neither of those bears weight.
We’ll see. Should there be an issue, we’ll replace the PVC standoffs with different material.
And now you know what’s behind our woodstove.
We’re now inside two months ’til Election Day. So-called “early voting” begins soon. Rhetoric has grown sharper and vitriol is on the rise, from the presidential candidates and their surrogates.
Chuckles continues to show herself to be a certified idiot, second only to those who support her. All are, as the Soviets used to say, “useful idiots” — easily manipulated, willing and yet unwitting tools for advancing a anti-American agenda.
If turnout is the key to winning this election — and it is — each candidate must rally their base while not unduly antagonizing (motivating, that is) the opposition. Acknowledging that immutable law of politics, then, it puzzles me that Chuckles and her brain-dead mouthpieces are pushing an issue that’s virtually guaranteed to get more Trump voters to the polls.
Gun confiscation.
The way I see it, one of two things is true — either the campaign knows it won’t win, or the campaign knows it can’t lose. Think about that.
While you’re at it, think about this — suddenly, coinciding inexplicably with the Left’s call to ban and confiscate what they call “assault weapons,” a school shooting in Georgia makes headlines. Cable news is all over some nutjob firing on vehicles traveling I-75 in Kentucky.
Both reportedly involve… wait for it… AR-15s. Weird, huh?
Is it a PSYOP or merely a warning? You decide. All I know is that shit’s about to get real. Put your affairs in order.
And vote, dammit.
Take care of yourselves, Patriots. Stay calm. Stay sharp. Stay free.
#WiseUp #LibertyOrDeath #Ungovernable
#LetsGoBrandon #FJB