Do’s and don’ts of solid fuel stoves
Boater Kathryn Clover shares her own tips.
IF YOU are considering buying a wood/coal stove, it should give you many years of romance from the warm glow of a well-seasoned hawthorn log.
• Installing the stove: official line, use an approved installer. What can actually happen is that, like me, you may attempt this yourself, weeping over a packet of Hobnobs, using a hammer and a chisel to cut a ragged star of a chimney hole through thick gauge aluminium and pine tongue and groove. At least, borrow a jig saw and a generator.
• Lighting the stove: bone dry newspaper, little sticks, progressively bigger sticks, then carefully placed log/coal. Problems arise when this stuff is already damp. Keep some paraffin firelighters handy, or some eco-friendly ones.
• Maintenance: one golden rule – sweep thy chimney every few weeks. If you don’t, black residue will eventually cause your stove to release carbon monoxide back into your boat, which is really not very good for you. Invest in an alarm. I had my own ‘narrow’ escape (excuse the pun) from death when my first lovely vintage enamel stove backed up while I was sleeping, melting the brand new alarm I’d placed too close to the stove and thankfully setting off the one on my bedroom ceiling, which the boat surveyor had assured me did not work. Don’t be put off, just buy a chimney brush and give cheery hellos to towpath travellers as you scrub out clouds of black soot. Apart from that, replace the flue rope around the inside of the door and around the flue, and the fire cement that sticks it together if it is cracked.
• Other fun things: occasionally the ash pan will stick. Shake it from side to side and hopefully you will remove it without the ash forming a Pompeiistyle eruption over your saloon. Empty the ash pan every day that you use the stove. On my Morso Squirrel the top door pin has snapped off, as a result of me not cleaning the scurf off the inside of it and having to force the door closed with increasing pressure, so learn from my mistakes!
• Cooking on your stove: the delights of a foil-wrapped baked potato, toasted Welsh cake and steaming copper kettle using your wood stove cannot be overestimated. I have also baked chestnuts and damper bread in the ash pan. Always use wood, never coal, for cookery – coal burns too hot.
• Last but not least, remember to mark the date the lovely traditional fuel boats chug through. It is one of life’s great joys to pass canal gossip with your local thickly insulated traders on an icy winter’s day as they load your boat with Excel and Supertherm.
Nothing beats an evening by your hearty stove, different forest woods crackling away with all their characters, your cheeks rosy. Like children, a stove can be hard work, but it’s worth the hassle. Just let it know who’s boss!