There's snow everywhere. It's wet, heavy, dripping stuff, the kind that seeps in to your boots. My feet are cold. I look north and east towards the mountains every five minutes. Dark thick clouds will pile up there soon. Another storm is on the way.
I jam the jigsaw blade in to the hole I drilled a second ago and cut a ragged seven inch diameter hole in the roof of Serenity. Sheet metal shavings and bits of pink foam swirl away in a gust of wind. I look down through two layers of insulation into my tiny little home and hope I haven't massively screwed this one up.
I used to suffer from analysis paralysis. I had to have everything completely figured out before I could begin any project. At any point if something didn't go according to plan, I went back to my calculations, notes, or drawings and re-figured it. It made for an excruciatingly slow rate of progress.
One of the best ways to get over this affliction is to put yourself in situations where you will fail if you dawdle too long, where speed is a necessary component of success. Installing a wood stove in your home so you don't freeze to death or succumb to toxic mold, for example, while a three-day winter storm is bearing down on you, does wonders for your ability to act quickly.
I didn't design Serenity for winter. I told people that her heating system is her wheels: when it gets too cold, I hitch her up and roll her somewhere warmer. (Her A/C system works on a similar principle: too hot? Drive north and/or up). This plan worked well for about two weeks, which is how long I lived in Serenity on the road before meeting Robyn in Truckee. How many well thought out plans have been laid waste by the fateful meeting of a woman?
Serenity barely survived that winter. The story of zoological assault, breaking free from a wintry entombment, and a perilous flight to safety in the desert will be recounted later. The point is that I've once again hauled her in the opposite direction she was designed for, up in to the mountains in winter, and I now know from bitter experience that without a source of dry heat she'll be cold, moldy, or both.
It is that circumstance that led me to the top of an icy ladder in wet boots, gritting my teeth through the pain in my toes of what ice climbers call ‘the screaming barfies’, gazing down through a hole I just ripped in her roof, with ominous clouds lurking over the horizon.
It is amazing what you can accomplish with the proper motivation. It also continues to amaze me how seemingly large, complicated, long projects tend to melt in to small little jobs when I stop whining and just get after it. The stove install took barely two hours. If I were drinking at the moment, I’d consider it a one-beer job (not including the pre-job thinkin’-it-through beer and the post-job cleanup/celebration beer).
I even screwed it up and it’s fine. I installed the roof sleeve upside down and forgot to install the sleeve support brackets until the stove jack was already epoxied to the roof, but the stove drafts smartly and there are no leaks. The build is a functional success, if not the cleanest work I've ever done.
This is one of the smallest wood stoves you'll find - in precise technical terms, it's about the same size as my face - but it's capable of turning my 68 square foot living space in to a sauna. A week later, after the storm cleared and the power came back on, I repeated the process and installed the slightly larger stove in the container. It took longer because 1/8” thick mild steel takes longer to cut through than flimsy aluminum, but at least I got the sleeve installed right way up this time.
Frequently Asked Questions about Tiny Little Stoves:
Q: Good lord that’s tiny!
A: Yes. That’s not a question. Do you have a question? This is a FAQ.
Q: I bet you have to stoke it every 30 minutes!
A: Only if I don’t want it to go out. That’s still not really a question, try to focus.
Q: Do you have to wake up all night to feed it?
A: No, I have lots of covers and just let it go out. I rebuild it in the morning if I want to warm the space up. Also, all my builds are well insulated, so unless it’s well below 0 Fahrenheit nothing is going to freeze solid.
Q: How long does it take to warm up Serenity?
A: About seven minutes from “I can see my breath” to “coconut bra time”.
Q: How long does it take to warm up the container?
A: About twenty minutes, but the container is still a work in progress - I need to seal and insulate around the door, which will improve things, and I need to make and install some windows, which will do the opposite. I’ll report back later.
Q: What do you burn in there?
A: Oak.