How many shopsmiths have you had?

["Wild Bad Bob"]

Robinson, warm basement?? Heat with wood???
Lower back pain if not disc related can be from weak abdominal muscles, and or tight ham string muscles that then pull on the lower back, for what it is worth.

[robinson46176]

Robinson, warm basement?? Heat with wood???
Lower back pain if not disc related can be from weak abdominal muscles, and or tight ham string muscles that then pull on the lower back, for what it is worth.

Yes, we heat with wood. It is about the only way we can afford to heat this house even though it is fairly well insulated. We heat around 4,000 square feet.
The chimney in the old central part of the house is very old and made with soft brick and is not suitable for use with a wood stove. What we call the west wing only has a gas vent. The only good lined safe chimney is in the east wing and falls right in the center of the 24' x 40' room that I walled off for the woodshop. Just a little too much heat in one place. Especially a place where you tend to get more physical than TV watching.
I was going to put up a new chimney last fall so I could move the wood furnace to another smaller room in the basement where it will sit near the open stairway to the upstairs. (Well, DUH! Where else would a stairway in a basement go to... )
Anyway, the dicky-ticker thing and the following quad bypass kind of put a halt to that. I'm starting on it again now. We have a stack of bricks there now and I have some other materials to move there. The new chimney will sit out about 6' from the house and will not touch the house at any point. The furnace flue pipe will run from the house to the base of the chimney in a smallish tunnel with a top that can be opened for maintenance. My son is going to bring home a small mini-excavator and dig the deep footing for the chimney. While it will be completely outside it will be insulated to keep the operating temps up to reduce creosoting.
One heat outlet will be connected to the old gas furnace as it is now (I just use it as an air handler) and the other will just point up the open stairway.

Previous gas bills, before I had it completely disconnected several years ago, had risen to running $600 to $1,000 a month in the coldest months. With the wood furnace even if we buy 100% of our wood it doesn't cost over $200 a month in the coldest 4 months. This year we will not be buying all of our wood if any at all. I hope to saw a little lumber this summer and fall and will have both the slab-wood and the tops to cut into firewood.

We consider the many trips a day up and down the stairs to be a good thing rather than a burden. Even in bad weather it keeps us limbered up pretty well. We also use a treadmill in bad weather. We also get a lot of exercise working with the horses.
We have no illusions about being able to do this stuff indefinitely but hope to be able to do it as long as possible. The plan is to start installing a mix of deep water geothermal heat pump and solar heat to eventually replace the wood heat.
We have several alternate plans that we have studied too.

The back thing shows no specific injury or failing. I've had it off and on much of my life and my back has been through a lot. I shudder to think of how many thousands of bushels of grain and ear corn I have scooped over a lifetime of farming. How many thousands of bales of hay and straw I have carried and tossed up above my head to stack. Tons of ground feed in 100#+ bags carried across muddy hog lots etc. etc. etc.
I think part of the current problem has come as a result of decreased heavy activity both leading up to the bypass and the kind of long recovery after. You kind of learn little tricks to living with it.


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["Wild Bad Bob"]

Heating with wood, warms you so many times and even B4 combustion!!!!

[Mason]

I have a Mark VII Shopsmith that keeps blowing my 20 amp fuses
Do you have any idea what is causing this and do you have the repair part for sale
Could it be the switches ? Thanks

[JPG]

I have a Mark VII Shopsmith that keeps blowing my 20 amp fuses
Do you have any idea what is causing this and do you have the repair part for sale
Could it be the switches ? Thanks

This belongs in a thread all it's own, but does it blow the fuses when attempting to start it?

Answer in a new thread.