The Hot Box, Part 2

In Part 1 we were successful in the first part of installing a wood stove in our cabin at Sweetwater.

Now came the hard part.

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In my last post I got the support box for the insulated chimney pipe installed without ever climbing into, and crawling around in, the attic.  It wasn’t easy, but I came up with a plan, worked it carefully, and adjusted it as needed.

Success!  Um, if you don’t count the screw-ups.  We won’t.

Now I needed to figure out a way to make a hole exactly centered above the support box.

How was I going to do that?  You see, although, in the video I took during the work,  it looks like the top of the support box ends just below the roof, there was actually about a foot between them.  In other words, my short arms wouldn’t come anywhere near reaching that far.

So, I could have measured the distance of the support box from the south end of the roof and the distance from the ceiling’s peak from the same box, then go up on the roof and measure those same distances and cut a hole there.  However, one problem with that plan was that I would have to trust that the peak of the ceiling trusses was directly below the peak of the roof. 

A bigger problem was that measuring from the box to the edge of the roof included going through a wall, a window, some siding, and, only then, the roof.  Then I would have to add all those measurements together, figure out any discrepancies intrinsic to the measuring/adding process, correct for those, then enjoy the process of measuring on a pitched roof with precarious footing and a rounded peak.

Needless to say, I wasn’t comfortable with trusting that method.

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I chose to use masking tape to attach a marker to the end of a yard stick, push this creation through the hole in the support box, and do my best to be consistent as I marked the corners of the box onto the underside of the roof.

I then tried to use those corners to find the center of the implied square so that I could then drill a hole through the roof and start the detail work of cutting the hole.

Only then did I realize that it wouldn’t work without more dependable creativity.  I could not reliably use those corners to find the center of said square. 

Oops.

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After wasting my time with that less-than-perfect idea I came up with another.  I used the same masking tape to attach my Ryobi drill to the yard stick along with a flashlight to be sure I could see what I was doing.

You’re probably ahead of me in noting that wooden yardsticks are too flimsy to hold that much weight steady.  You may have also realized that the heavy weight on the end of the stick just might break it while I was holding it up into the attic, dropping my drill, which would by necessity be running at the time, into inaccessible morass that is the attic.

Yeah.

Were you also ahead of me by realizing that the drill/stick/flashlight bulk might not fit through the hole in the bottom of the support box, at least with the 40 amp battery I had to use.

Yeah, no.  Me neither.

Luckily, after searching through almost a dozen 40-amp batteries I found my one remaining 20-amp battery.  Even more luckily the battery was just enough smaller than the forty to allow the drill assembly to fit through the hole…barely.

Yay, me!

The size of the tool assembly made it more than half the size of the support box (in the more important dimension) so I modified a little geometry trick I learned in high school.  I put the bottom of the battery in one corner of the box and rotated it as I drilled a few very shallow holes in the surface of the roof’s sheathing.  Then I moved the drill to the opposite corner and did the same.  Because of the imprecise corners offered by the box that had been deformed by being attached to the frame I’d put in the attic side of the ceiling, I chose to go ahead and do the same with the other two corners.

Then I “guesstimated” the center of those little holes and drilled all the way through the roof.

Yes, I finally committed to my self-confidence.  Now there was no turning back.

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I took a wad of 550 cord (parachute cord) as I climbed onto the roof and located the hole I’d drilled.  I pushed one end of the cord through the hole followed by more length until Annie told me it hung into the living room.  My wife/assistant tied a big hex-head nut onto the end of the cord and helped it stop swinging until it was still enough that she could measure how far the motionless cord hung from each side of the circular hole in the bottom of the box, north, south, east, and west.

I have to brag that my initially centered hole was less than an inch off in any direction.

Again, yay me.

I then used those measurements to mark the appropriate places on the tin roof.  After that I used the bottom of a five-gallon bucket as a template to draw a circle on the tin.

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Now, the hole in the support box was just big enough for the insulated pipe to slip right on through.  Along with the box, the manufactures had shipped a flange that the buyer was supposed to attach to the bottom edge of the pipe.  This allowed it to sit neatly centered into the support box hole.  I had drilled the appropriate holes in the chosen bottom section of pipe and attached the flange.

Now it’s important to remember that, since I had no usable access to the attic, the pipe had to go through the roof with the flange already attached.  So, the hole in the roof had to be big enough for the pipe-and-flange assembly to go through all-together. 

Keep that in mind.

As it happens, the diameter of the flange when attached was almost exactly the same as the bottom of the bucket.  Thus the use of said bucket as a template.

As I said earlier, the whole setup was originally designed for the pipe to be passed through the roof before having the flange attached.  This would allow the edges of the hole to be small enough to add stability to the pipe.  So, since I couldn’t get into the attic and had thus been forced to run the pipe through a larger hole in the roof with the flange already attached, I now had to find a way to stabilize the pipe so that it wouldn’t sway from side to side in a strong wind.  That swaying would eventually cause the pipe to break off at a joint and fall, destroying the cap and pipe section and allowing rain and snow through the remaining pipe and into the cabin.  From past experience I figure the damage would occur when we were not at the cabin, and would remain an open wound until we arrived to discover it. Then we would have to wait for the weather to clear up enough that I could get up on the roof to fix it.

Yeah.

Also, whatever I did to stabilize the pipe had to fit under the weatherizing boot that was designed to prevent moisture in all forms from penetrating around the pipe.

I had some pieces of 1”x1” that were left over from installing the railing around the porch.  I cut those to length and attached three of them to the roof to stabilize as described above.

Then I cut the rubber boot to fit and slid it down over the pipe and attached it to the roof using caulking to seal it well.

I attached the last section of pipe to make the chimney tall enough for proper draft, and installed the cap.

Wow!

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I know nobody likes a complainer but Annie has let me sleep indoors for almost forty years now so it is just possible that the statement is an oversimplification.  Besides that, sometimes Annie is actually involved and understands the gripes personally.

Such was the case when I was working on the roof.

I wore soft-sole shoes for the best grip while working on the roof.  Yet, as both hands were involved in work, my feet were slo-o-o-owly sliding downhill.  That would have been bad enough if I were working on the uphill side of the roof where a fall would have been one story onto the grassy ground.  Not me, though.  Nope, I was on the side of the roof that presented a two-story fall onto a rocky hillside below.

Anyway, as I endeavored to cut the hole, insert the pipe, and attach the boot, any pressure I applied in a downward direction with my upper body translated to a loss of pressure on my lower body.  Yeah, my feet.  That means sliding.

Yup.

So I tried as much as possible to position my feet on the upslope side of one of the screws attaching the sheets of steel to the roof.  So far, so good.  I also had to corral any tools and construction supplies on the same sloped roof.  I tried to position them on the upslope side of roofing-metal screws too, but any cutting, drilling, screw-driving, etc. caused enough vibration that everything precariously balanced above a screw head was shaken just enough to begin a bouncing trip downhill.

Remember my beautiful and long-suffering (forty years with me, right?) wife/assistant?  She bravely climbed onto the roof to help corral needed supplies.  I saw to it that she clung to the high-side of the roof so that any fall would be the lower, one story one. 

Yeah, I’m nice that way.

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Anyway, with my lovely wife’s irreplaceable assistance, we managed to get all the roof work done with the total loss of one roofing screw and the washer that should have been under another.

No lives lost, no permanent paralysis but, old bodies being what they are, plenty of sore muscles the next morning…muscles that I didn’t even remember using.

Sucks to get old.  Still better than the alternative.

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Once back inside the cabin we needed to install the single-wall stove pipe between the stove and the insulated chimney pipe in the support box.

Now, the absolute best way to install a chimney is perfectly vertical, with no elbows or bends.  It can also be the most difficult, since there are no bends to add flex to the length.

I say that to explain why I had to cut the pipe to exactly the right length…not a fraction too long so that it wouldn’t fit, and not a fraction too short so that it would work loose, leaving a gap for smoke and fire to escape into the cabin.

Yeah.

Now, Annie is a fitness phenomenon (for a grandmother in the second half of her first century) but I had to enlist her help to hold the stove leaning on its two front legs while I maneuvered and forced the ends of the stove pipe to slip into place when we eased the stove back onto all-fours.

That all worked with only one unfortunate accident.  Just as we got the pipe sections almost fitted together, I commented, more to myself than to her, but loud enough that she thought I wanted her to, “look at that.”

She lowered the stove, crinkling the end of one pipe considerably.  The only good thing to come from that was, once I used needle-nose pliers to straighten the pipe, the next section fit in nicely.

It works fine; it just looks bad.

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I started a fire in the now complete heat producer and it worked!  You know me though; I can’t complete a project without just one more complication. 

The cold spell we’d been experiencing around the cabin had turned into a warm snap while I was installing the chimney.

I started a fire in the stove to make sure everything worked as we wanted it to and would heat the cabin.  The good news is, yes, it did.  The bad news is, yes, it did.  It got HOT in that living room.  We’re talking sweaty hot.

No worries though, we’ll learn the proper method to adjust the heat from the stove and I expect to have a lot more warm winter nights in the cabin and a lot less cold ones.

Should I say it?  Yeah, like I’d pass up a chance to throw in a good pun.

I’d say it is cool to be warm.

There it is.  You are now free to cringe and moan all you want.

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