Out with the old and in with the new - stove that is!

The mess has begun! In our old house, built way back when, we still hold Sunday school for our children and teens. We have been doing this since we moved out of the old house and into the new house back in December of  2012. Without a warm little family living inside, cooking, baking, and keeping the stove stoked, the house is even colder inside. We have said that if the house was warmer, we could hold other meetings in it and it would just plain make Sunday school more pleasant. However, we were not able to afford to put in a new heating system in the old house when it at least had this stove in it,

...and the new house had no heating system at all.

Thankfully, once all was prepped and ready for us to put a coal burning stove into the new house we received a substantial love offering which allowed us to purchase this stove.

I won't go into all the details about the installation of this stove as that is described in several older posts here and here. Needless to say, it is a huge process.

We moved into our new house on Christmas Eve of 2011. We enjoyed our heating system which provided much more heat than we ever "experienced" in our old house. One thing about heating a house in the middle of Siberia is that even after the hours of planning, it is still "trial and error" once everything is up and running. In the time since our installation, we have realized a few changes that we need to make like installing a few more radiators in certain rooms.
As we spent the next few winters using the coal burning stove we learned through experience that it has to be maintained about every 2-3 hours maximum in the colder months. It is just as time consuming as that old stove in the old house pictured up above, with the exception that you had to go outside to stoke the newer one while the older one was in our kitchen! One problem that we didn't foresee with the coal/wood burning stove was the increased exposure to fumes and smoke. My husband tended to the stove most of the time. After a month or two of being exposed to that smoke, he became ill with bronchitis. For two weeks, I took care of the 'stove stoking' and his condition improved. So, we had him go back into our stove room a few times a day and immediately he started coughing again.
My husband had been looking into pellet stoves since we began this heating system journey. We had always dreamed of one day buying a pellet stove for several reasons: it is a much cleaner way to heat, the inconsistency in the quality of coal here varies greatly, and eventually, we could even possibly make our own pellets. As we looked further into pellet stoves, my husband was able to find some difficult parts in another city. The Lord worked it out for them to then be packed in a friend's mom's container to be shipped by train along with an order she had made, decreasing the shipping cost greatly. Things seemed to be coming together for us to one day own a pellet stove, except the stove itself. They were still pretty pricey.
In 2013, and just as we were about to leave to the US on furlough, another missionary who was coming to live in our house and take care of our ministry while we were gone, decided that a pellet stove was sounding pretty tempting to keep from having to run outside every 2-3 hours to stoke the coal stove. So, they were kind enough to purchase the stove with our approval, install it as my husband planned, and use it in our absence. We are still paying that purchase back to the missionary I believe, but we look forward to trying it out ourselves this winter!

Here she is!

That pipe that you see leading out of the range of the photo connects to a barrel which holds the pellets. 

The temperature can be set and an auger feeds the pellets into the stove so there is little to no "maintaining" the stove. It's pretty basic and low maintenance! Perfect! My husband could probably explain it all in greater detail so if you have any questions, just ask them in the comments below and I will have him answer them. :)

The building the stove is housed in was an old "banya" built by the previous owners of the property and small house. We plan on tearing it all down and rebuilding a nicer building which will also serve as a warm room for garden seedlings and be connected to a stable for our goats to winter in. The goal was to do tear down and rebuild this past summer, but we were financially unable to do so in time before summer ended and the time when we need to use the heating system approached.

So, having said all that we can return to the stove in the old house. Only now, it looks more like this:

Then, my hubby was able to do some more work on it a few days ago and now it looks like this:

Now that we have the pellet stove to use for the new house this winter, we can put the coal burning stove into the old house, in the same spot where the original stove was located. I am so excited! Normally, we can not take our gloves and hats off in the winter time during Sunday school. Even with this stove going and a cannon heater right beside us, it is cold. We are planning on purchasing radiators just as we did in our new house to install in each of the four rooms of the old house. If the coal burning stove is positioned in the place of the original one, it will be in the middle of the house thus making it easier to design a circulating pipe system to reach all four rooms. This house being much smaller in size, the job will be completed quickly once we have the necessary supplies. 

We had a bathroom in the old house for our family to use, but without the house being heated year round, we removed the tub and closed off the wall temporarily before removing the toilet and bathroom completely (to the right of this pic below). We had a terrible time with mold and mildew in the house while we lived in it. So, we are trying to keep all moisture out of it as much as possible. I would also love to re-wallpaper the walls since, in the treatment of the house twice for mold and mildew, some of the wallpaper had to be removed from the lower parts of the walls (also visible in this pic). Another reason for taking out the bathroom is that it wasn't convenient to have a bathroom right in our bedroom/living room and it still wouldn't be convenient to have it in the middle of our Sunday school room! We still have an outhouse on the property so that is sufficient for now. 

We would also love to begin teen meetings (in the old house) during the week as that is something we headed up during our years of living in the city and working at Krasnoyarsk Baptist Church. We have had several parents mention their desire to see us begin holding these meetings. We need to get an effective heating system installed as soon as possible in order to hold more meetings in the house. Even though the kids are from Siberia, they don't like to be cold! ;)

Back to School Sunday - August 2014

Please pray for us in the endeavor to purchase the necessary items including radiators, pipes, and all the little parts that are necessary for us to be able to get this project completed before November arrives and the weather gets really cold. I will be sharing this post on our ministry blog as well.

We look forward to posting pictures of the completed project!

Coal burning stove installation

Well, here it is...the moment many of you have been waiting for, definitely a moment we have been waiting for! We were able to install our coal burning stove just before the really cold weather set in.

As a "for now" measure, we used the "banya" building that already existed when we purchased the house and property. Thank the Lord for the friends who sent us special love offerings "out of the blue" which allowed us to buy this stove. We know God works all things out for our good and there are no mistakes with Him!

We did have to break up the concrete floor and dig a ditch out from the banya to the new house like you saw in a previous post.

We also had to cut a hole through the ceiling of the banya and the roof in order to place the smoke stack. Then through a hole in the side of the attic space of the banya we insulated around the smokestack with special heat resistant insulation to prevent the immediate area around the stack  from getting too hot.

Here we are just giving everyone one more reason to pray for us - putting in a smoke stack on a frozen roof in the middle of Siberia! ;)

In this photo, my husband is preparing to tether the smokestack in place.

A smoking smokestack on a cold winter day is a beautiful thing!

Heating System (Connecting it all together)

Even though I have not posted much on this blog lately about the progress of our home building, things have been happening...BIG, important things like the heating system to keep the house warm. We did suffer from sickness for a week or two and so we had to take some necessary time away from the work. Besides the terrible weak feeling, I just couldn't see myself installing insulation with a sinus infection. Just the idea of it all even sounded painful! However, now we are back in the swing of things and working away to get it done!

I know you will all be shocked to see that the weather here in Siberia already looks like this...

So, the time has long come for us to be able to keep the inside of the house warm so we can continue to hang drywall and other work that needs to be done in non-freezing temperatures. 

Putting together a heating system is quite a task as I have learned! First of all, you need a plan. So, my great hubby drew it all up after giving it much, maybe even months of thought. 

 Then, you need to find a place to buy the parts cheap enough and go crazy buying bags and bags of...parts.

Here are the bags.

Here are the parts.

Big parts, little parts, parts that open and close (valves).

The next step is to begin connecting all the parts to each other using this plastic welding tool. I had never used one of these before but now I know how to use this tool for sure!

This time we were able to use the table but often we were standing on ladders and whatever else to reach up high and connect pipe sections. It was quite comical at times and thankfully, we escaped with me only burning my hubby twice!

Once the main stretches of pipelines were connected, David began working on connecting the major valves, filters, pump and other larger components before we carried them downstairs to the basement for further...connecting.

Once all of our main pipe sections were hung in place in the basement and connected up through the floors to each radiator, we could work on the most important part of the system.

David connecting the in-line filter to the system.

This white box is the electric heater that heats the fluid which flows through the pipes and radiators. Initially, this heater alone will be used to heat our house. The pipes we buried in the ditch we dug from the house to the old "banya" on our property  (which we described in this post), will eventually connect a coal burning boiler stove to the heating system inside the basement to provide heat for the house. We will purchase this stove as soon as we are able. The valves are already in place to allow us to change the heat source over from the electric stove to the boiler stove with little or no problems.

As soon as our circuit was complete and all parts were in place, we were able to begin pumping the fluid from this large container through the pipes!

Although it sounds exciting, the work is not over. The next step is to find all of the air pockets trapped in the system which can block the fluid from entering and exiting the radiators. You also must run around and check for leaks in each of the radiators as they fill up. A little difficulty initially is normal with this type of system. However, once it is set up and the fluid is flowing smoothly through the circuit, those warm radiators are a real blessing! Other than one possibly damaged at the factory radiator, we are up and running with all of the radiators in working order downstairs and two working upstairs. We still have a few to connect to the pipes already in place and each room will have a warm radiator! 

So, do you know how hard it is to be patient and not want to move into a nice warm house, even though it is not ready?! 

Trust me, very!

Heating System (in house pipe lines to radiators)

Just wanted to give you at least a glimpse of what will be the heating system for our house. Obviously keeping a house warm in such an extreme climate is quite a job so much time and thought must go into the planning of the heating system. One of our previous posts was about the pipes that run from the house to the small building which will be our boiler room,our stove will be located in this boiler room. Below you can see the two lines (in and out) which run from the small building into the basement of our house. They are the smaller lines with the white pipe in the center of each of them. 

These lines will be connected to the heating system which includes a series of pipes running all through the house. A special fluid runs through the pipes and is heated by the stove back in the boiler room. We also will integrate a special pump into the system to help circulate the fluid through all of the pipes.

Lines coming down from the first floor into the basement.

Now we can show you what work is going into running the lines inside the house to each radiator.

David working on positioning the pipes in our bedroom and preparing them to connect to a radiator.

Due to the urgency of our need to move into the house as quickly as possible, we will initially use an electric heater to heat the fluid in the system. This will warm the house enough for us to be able to live in it and work in it during these coming weeks before winter arrives. As soon as we can, we will purchase the larger stove in which we will initially burn coal for heat. Pray for us as we work on getting the whole system ready to go; that it will flow smoothly and work efficiently! 

Heating System (In ground pipes from house to stove)

A heating system for a home in Siberia has to be quite the system to keep a house warm in such extreme temperatures. We do not have central heating systems available here in Krasnoyarsk. David and I did see some sort of the thing at a building expo but it was a huge set up for larger buildings. Since we will be heating with coal, we planned on putting to use an existing building on our property to house the stove. Keeping the stove in a seperate area away from the house helps to lessen the mess as well as providing an added safety measure of being away from our living quarters. It is also a good use of a very thick walled "banya" or Russian sauna that would be more work than it would be worth to tear down!

The process began with the digging of a ditch for lines to come from the 'banya" to the new house. We also dug under the foundation of the "banya" to allow for two pipes to be run through the ditch up to the stove system housed inside the building.

We then drilled two holes through the basement wall to facilitate the lines that we would be running to the house.

We used white polypropylene pipe; inside of insulated wrap; inside rigid conduit pipe.

After adding some insulation along the sides of the pipes, Rebekah and Ryan added some sand to further insulate the lines.

Then we add more insulation and fill the rest with dirt. Glad to have this job done! Now on to the next thing!