The Walden Effect: Farming, simple living, permaculture, and invention.

Kitchen remodelling the Walden Effect way

Kitchen shelvesWe've decided to make a tiny addition to the trailer to ease wood stove installation.  The four foot by two foot "room" will give us a bit more air space around the stove inside and (more importantly) will allow us to send the stove pipe straight up and then out a roof built around it, rather than risking causing leaks by cutting a hole in the trailer roof.  The supreme ease with which you can extend the wall by a couple of feet is one of my favorite parts of trailer life.

While Mark is making space outside, I took on the task of clearing space inside.  Kitchen remodeling, Walden Effect style, consists of finding room for endless sacks of sweet potatoes and garlic.  Oh, and can I fit a few more butternut squash on that shelf?  I was very proud of myself for being able to take down shelves from one wall and put them up in a new order on the other wall --- an easy task for Mark, but I wouldn't have even known where to start when faced with such a project just four years ago.  Everything I build could be better, but I don't mind living with my imperfections since each is a lesson in self-sufficiency.

Treat your chickens to the healthiest and cleanest waterer around, the Avian Aqua Miser.


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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.



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Why not make it a four foot room and use part of the extra 2 ft for storage. Then you'd have space for a cement board hearth covered with tile. Cement board makes good sense, too, for the wall behind the stove. And a ceramic tile out the wall for the stovepipe is a good idea for roofs. And for safety you might even invest in some chimney blocks (they don't rust) with liners.
Comment by Errol Thu Nov 11 08:53:20 2010

Our plan is to add roofing tin to the side of the new room, spaced out 1" from the wall. This is supposed to be the best way to protect your wall and is rated to allow you to put your stove closer to the wall than with the method you're suggesting. We'll definitely make some sort of floor protection too, though we haven't decided out of what yet.

Also, from what I've read, you get more efficiency out of your stove and it's supposed to be safer if you don't add elbows. That's why we decided to go out the roof rather than the wall.

We would extend the room out more, but then it would be too close to my asparagus... :-)

Comment by anna Thu Nov 11 11:40:10 2010

I checked it out for my recent gas heater installation with a ≈2" pipe; the resistance of a 90° elbow was roughly equivalent to a yard of pipe. (it depends on the diameter of the pipe, the construction of the elbow and the expected gas speed)

Usually there is a restriction to the length of the stove pipe you can use on a furnace.

Comment by Roland_Smith Thu Nov 11 15:42:49 2010
I love that precise math --- a 90 degree elbow is equal to a yard of pipe. I didn't realize that the length of your stove pipe will increase the resistance, but of course that makes sense.
Comment by anna Thu Nov 11 16:30:53 2010





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