Building A Log Cabin To Raise My Family In | Wood Stove Install | First Fire

So the wood stove, in my opinion, hands down the most important item in the cabin. So this cabin is 24 foot wide by 32 foot long, which equals 768 square feet. But this wood stove will heat up to 2,000 square feet. So it's a good size one. Couple reasons I wanted to upsize it like that. A, like let's say you had a 1,000 square foot cabin. Personally, I would not put a 1,000 square foot wood stove in it. I'd put like a 1,500 square foot wood stove in it. Cause like I've said before, you really don't know how they're testing these. You know, are they testing it at 32 degrees in a very well insulated house? You know, you don't want to find out that your stove's not big enough when it's 40 below and you need it. With this being 2,000 square feet, that's pretty overkill for this cabin. But we're definitely going to do an addition onto this at some point. I don't know when it'll be. It might be a year, might be three, might be five. I don't know. But our family's growing. You know, we're about to have two kids now. So an addition is pretty much inevitable. So I wanted to get a big enough stove where it'll heat to that addition as well when the time comes. You know, I didn't want to buy a smaller stove and then end up having to take that one out and put in a bigger one. I wanted to get a stove, you know, that's big enough to heat the entire thing so I don't have to do this again. Also, the bigger the wood stove, the bigger the firebox, which means less time between reloads, which is nice if you want to get a good night's sleep. But with this thing here, I'll be able to load this up full at night, shut the door, damper it down, go to bed, and there'll still be coals in here in the morning. So the stove's going in the corner, of course. The pipe will come up and I am going to change through these logs and make an opening for my pipe to go out. Let's see what our clearances are. Every new stove, when you buy one, will have a chart showing your clearances to combustibles. I'm doing a corner installation, so I'm looking at this one. So my clearance to combustibles from the corners here is 12 inches. But you can reduce that by up to 2 3rds with a properly installed heat shield, which I'm using metal, and a one-inch air gap between that metal and my logs. That's not going to stay as cement board. You know, I'll put brick or something on top of it at some point. So this stove will get a gate around it as well to keep the kids away from it until they know better than to not touch the stove. So I remember this with my last stove, the same one, different size. I don't know why, but this blue collar that you start off with, the crimped end doesn't fit in it. You have to put it in this way. Which, to me, technically that's wrong because you always want your crimped ends down, facing down, so then your next pipe, the crimped end would go into this. That way, if you have any creosote, you know, it runs into the pipe rather than outside of it. That's how you're supposed to do it. But this one, yeah, I don't know why. You have to start off this way, which is weird to me, but it is what it is. Can't change it. But I'm gonna go ahead and put my damper in this pipe, and then I might just dry fit my section that's gonna go out the wall, get it marked out, but I'm not gonna cut it tonight. It's already getting kind of late. Plus, it's pouring and windy out. I had to drive quite a ways to get this stove this morning, so I didn't get started till later, but we'll cut the opening first thing in the morning. So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna cut this crimped end off, so then my crimped end can go down in that pipe. So that's ready to go. Like I said, I'll cut that opening in the morning when it's not rainy and windy. But I think to wrap up the evening, I'm gonna cut my spacers for my heat shield. I just use half-inch conduit for that. It's always worked out well. Okay, here's my pile of spacers. So those will go against the logs like that, and that will give me my air gap between the heat shield and these logs. Very important. But I think that is gonna do it for me tonight. I got all the prep work done, the stove's in here, and spacers are cut, and I got an idea of where I'm gonna cut this hole through the logs. So stay tuned for that in the morning, and I'll see you then. Okay, you can see my marks on these logs. So I'm gonna make a cut right here, all the way through, and right here. That'll leave me with this square. I'll then put a piece of metal on here. My insulated chimney pipe will go through that. I got plenty of space all the way around to meet my clearances for that insulated pipe. So I'll go ahead and slap a brand new chain on my saw. I think I am gonna miss those log screws, because just from muscle memory, I know that those log screws are about right in here, and then my other ones are right in here. So I should miss those all together. At least I hope so. All right, well, ain't nothing to it but to do it. Ventilation going in here before we CO2 ourselves. Sweet, we're in business. I will clean all this sawdust up before I do anything else, because that made quite a mess. So I'm outside of the cabin with my pipe, which is a good deal. I meet all my clearances. Anytime I penetrate through a wall or a roof, I always use the insulated chimney, because with the single wall pipe, your clearance to combustibles is 18 inches. With this insulated stuff, it's two, which I have like five inches all the way around. So plenty safe there. Hey, there's my pipe. When I install my fascia board, I'll strap the pipe to that as well. So the last thing I need to do with this is to run a bead of high temp silicone around the pipe to make a tight seal. And that's how I always do it. It works out well. My pipes are all screwed together with stainless steel fasteners. I always use stainless steel screws because most screws are zinc, but zinc has a lower melting temperature than steel. So you might as well go with steel, a little safer, and then you don't have to worry about your screws melting. But with that, I think we're ready to light the first fire in the cabin. Actually, I need to put this air deflector on. And that goes on the back of the stove. And then my handles as well. And then we're ready. I'm a big fan of these fire plugs from Blaze. Little family owned company, but a pack like this will last me like all winter. And I keep them in my camping supplies too. They're waterproof and then you just split them open like so, and really you can just get by with a half. If you can see there or not, I have the door cracked just a little bit, but it's drafting pretty well. Once this gets going in about a minute here, I'll be able to shut the door. All right, it's drafting good. I've had the door shut for about a minute now. So I'll give you a look behind the heat shield. It's what these spacers look like. They say to do an inch, I did an inch and a half just because I want to keep them away from the logs. You know, cause these logs, it's not a flat surface like you would have in a house, you know, like against sheet rock or something. You know, the logs, each one's different. So I actually made some of them longer than the others if the log protruded out a little more, but I maintained a generous inch and a half all the way around with my heat shield. And then on the bottom, there's a gap as well. So this metal, you know, if I have the stove going really hot, it'll get somewhat warm, but I have that air gap. So any, you know, it's not right up against the log so that heat will just, it's got plenty of room to escape. You know, I'm not transferring that heat to the logs cause I have this air gap. So, you know, the heat will just escape out. You see a lot of people that'll put their heat shields, they'll just screw it right to their combustible material, which that's not what you want. You want that air gap. Otherwise the heat shield's not really doing much. Well, the stove's been burning for two hours, maybe three. I never did take it outside and burn the paint off. I just did it in here. I have every window open, patio door open, front door open. So there's tons of ventilation in here. Plus it was windy, which helped. So the little bit of fumes that did burn off from the paint there, you know, they exited the cabin immediately. But what an exciting thing to have done. We have a heater. I'm happy with the install. Everything came out nice. And I'm happy with the stove so far. I think it's definitely going to be hot in here. But that's a lot better than the alternative. That's for sure. So I will do some brick around the stove. I may start on that tomorrow, actually. I'll have to run to town and get supplies for that. Also get my pipe caulked with that high temp silicone. So that way that's all sealed up and then we'll be ready to go for winter. Also real soon, I'll be starting the chinking. That might actually be next video. I just assumed get the inside chinked at least. And then from there, it's just moving in furniture. We already got our fridge in there. Yeah, wood stove's in there. And then it's just, you know, getting a bed in and building out the kitchen. That'll take a little bit of time. Yeah, I'm excited. I think we'll definitely be in there in a couple of weeks. So I'm looking forward to it. Well, that's going to do it for this one. The wood stove's installed. It's a huge deal. But as always, I appreciate you watching and I will see you soon.