Yesterday started out as a sunny day and I decided to make it one both inside and out (following the frustrations from the day before). So I did nothing at all with the smoking rocket 🙂

I did however manage to solve the smoking stove problem by removing some of the firebricks we put in to increase the heat-efficiency of the oven. Andreea suggested that as we tried everything else and nothing seemed to help. So today, before lighting the stove in the morning … I pulled out the oven … and smoke no more.

Instead I set up the saw horses and continued work on our bedroom cabinet. I continued the cutting (the circular saw did a wonderful job of converting thick 2 by 10’s into cabinet posts. I also did a lot of planing … though it didn’t go very smoothly because the wood is very green, probably greener then the first batch I used … so in many places the grain either got torn out completely or did not catch on the knife at all.

I folded up in the later afternoon and set out to pick up Andreea from the village center. She finally got back from a magical home-birth … we had a lot of talking to do that night. Andreea arranged a pile of mattresses and blankets into a bed and we slept in the living room where the wood stove is working.

Today we started the day by helping our neighbor bring over a few large sacks of animal feed from a neighboring village. It was from a large pig farm … another example of an old-school farming business (done the hard way) having a hard time surviving in current market conditions (low prices, low quality). Anyways …

We got back and got to work on the rocket once again. Long story short we have a working almost-rocket-stove. The feeding chamber is the part that failed us so it is currently a manual feed rocket. The day included much more frustration … but once Andreea convinced me to give up on the feed as it is by the book … we arrived at a working rocket. It’s gotten very warm very fast on very little wood. It came to life just in time … because as it got warm we realized the room was very humid (it was very cold for many days) … so it is now drying up and hopefully regaining a healthy balance. Though it is already warm … we’ll probably sleep the night in the living room again … and tomorrow we’ll resume sleeping in our pleasantly warm bedroom.

I am very curious to see which room will be warmer in the morning, the rocket with all its thermal mass or the room we will sleep in with the traditional metal box 🙂

Looks we will be taking time off from work this Saturday and visiting the city … we’ve been invited to an … inviting event 🙂 and will probably take an easy day of rest (though I am sure by then something will come up that we need from the city 🙂