Back online!

This is sort of rough. I haven't even spell checked it. Tomorrow will be my first day back to work after being off for a week. I don't want to leave it unposted. I will follow up later in the week. So, here it is, my post for Dec 18th:

I have been out sick for the past week. Ugh! It was a nasty chest cold that really got me down. So, not much has happened on the blog or the web site this past week. Today is the first day I have totally human again.

I had a couple of events this past week. The first, happily was the day before I got sick, rather than the day after. I went down to check on the furnace and discovered the fire seemed to be weak. It was not burning strong like normal and the furnace should have been at full burn. The draft fan was blowing but I felt like it wasn't really putting out that much air. I did a little more checking and felt like the draft fan was not putting out anywhere near the normal amount of air. This is the second time I have had trouble with a draft fan. This time though the warrenty on the boiler had expired.

Rather than contact Traeger and deal with them shipping me one out of Canada and the delay involved there I went downtown to a place that had a "motor repair" sign out front. I figured they could either repair it or maybe they would have a line on a new one. As it turns out, the motor repair place was pretty nice. They took one look at my blower fan and said "You a corn burner or pellet?" Wow, I guess they know their motors! I confessed to corn. They said "You been oiling this motor?" Ummmm. Oil? Uhhhh, no, I didn't know I was supposed to oil it.

So, I walked out of the place with a brand new blower fan and motor assembly, just exactly like the one I brought in. ...It seems I am not the only idiot who doesn't know to oil the draft fan so the place keeps a good stock onhand for people like me. In fact, I was told that I was the second person that day to have exactly the same problem. The owner said that the dust from the corn settles into the bearings. No big problem, just oil the fan twice a season and everything is fine. Don't oil them, however, and the bushings overheat really fast and the motor is ruined. You can see here in this picture that I have pointed out the oil weep holes. If you zoom in on the picture, you can see the holes packed with dust. This fan does not run right, it can be used as a spare for a few days. Even though I have now oiled it, it still doesn't run at the speed it should. Still, if I needed to get by for a couple of days, it could be pressed into service.

The oiling process is quite easy. The oil bottle the motor place sold me had an extendible tube that came out of the bottle about eight inches. It was simply a matter of putting the tube into the weep hole and filling it up with oil. The motor place suggested a very heavy oiling considering the environment the motor runs in. Any excess oil will simply drip out. I would say I put about 1/8th oz. of oil into this motor before it began to drip out. Really not much dripped out either so it must have been quite hungry.

So, quite an adventure. I really hate running into stuff where I don't know to do something. I didn't see anywhere in the Traeger manual where it says to oil the draft fan motor twice a season. Now I know though.
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The second thing that happened this week is I had scheduled up a meeting with the Icynene Insulation Sales Person. A few of you have written to me asking about what kind of house we are trying to heat with corn. I can give you a very vivid discription. It is 3500 square feet of living space, just shy of one hundred years old. It has seventy five windows, 50 of which are the age of the house. There is an 1,100 sq foot third floor/attic space that has zero insulation. The side walls are insulated with (mouse friendly) wood chips. I have seen barns that would be easier to heat, it is pretty much a miracle we can heat the place at all!

I have done some checking around and find that Icynene is some of the best foam insulation out there. There are a couple of reasons why I want to go foam. First off, with no real bearing on the quality, I have done too much insulation without a mask in my past. So putting in the pink fiberglass myself, unless I am wearing a resperator, is totally out of the question. But yet, I have done so much of it in the past that I can't quite bring myself to spend the money to have it done. So, that is weighing in my mind. The main thing though, I think the foam insulation is much better than fiberglass. What I am thinking about here is redoing the entire third floor. With foam insulation it can be sprayed right against the roof. I don't need any air space. That will allow me to finish the very top of the house, a smaller fourth floor space into storage.

The other thing that is very nice is foam insulation is a vapor and air infiltration barrier. So, no need for visqueen inside. No more bats in the attic any more.