My In-laws had both a free standing woodstove and a fireplace insert with the fan. Both did a very good job.
Just read in the local newspaper about a woman who had a close call with her woodstove. Here is the story:
Jan Walker was sitting on the couch with her dog on Thanksgiving Eve when her wood-burning stove exploded, sending metal and river rocks flying across the room and through the wall.
"It was a miracle I wasn't killed," the Stevensville woman said Friday, when she went public with the story in hopes of preventing a tragedy elsewhere.
Walker, who moved into the house on Middle Burnt Fork Road two years ago, recently installed a new heating system.
As part of the replacement, workers capped a water pipe that ran to the wood-burning stove in the living room - which both burned wood and heated water that kept the floors warm.
No one realized, though, that water remained inside the wood stove - trapped once the pipe was capped.
So when Walker made a fire and sat down with her dog, a papillon, to relax Wednesday night, a time bomb started ticking.
Inside the wood stove, the trapped water heated and turned to steam, eventually running out of room to expand and exploding.
"It made a bomb," Walker said.
"That 1,000-pound metal stove blew right out of the fireplace and into the wall," she said.
And kept going: "The back of it went up a small hill and into the garage, where it destroyed my Mercedes Benz and my pickup truck."
And kept going: "Out the metal garage door and into the driveway."
"If I had had company, someone would have been killed," Walker said. "You just can't believe the devastation."
By Friday, the walls had been patched with plywood, but Walker remained shaken by the blast and worried that others could suffer a similar fate.
"I just want to warn people that they should never cap the water pipe going to a wood-burning stove," she said. "I've got at least $100,000 to $150,000 in damage."
"Tons of rock flew over our heads," Walker said. "It was just so dangerous. Every fireman who was here said I was lucky not to have been killed.
"And I am. Very very lucky, and glad to be in one piece."
) , but think about it...The satisfaction that comes when you do something with your own hands, maybe off your own land, to be self sufficient and provide for your self...Asserting your Independence from the "Mega Monopoly" and "Capitalist Machine" that is the Oil Industry...Thumbing your nose in the face of those who would "enslave" you an additive dependence on "their" Black Gold...
