the Anne Marie

  • the Anne Marie
  • Blog
    • Updates
    • Photos
    • Adventures
    • All
  • Gallery
  • Contact

2015/04/02 By John Leave a Comment

Light a Fire

With our hearth done, the next step is to make our wood stove usable. We need to run some stove pipe up and out of the roof. First, we secured the stove to the floor so we have a steady starting point. I’d never drilled into masonry before, but it turns out that with a masonry bit it’s pretty easy. Everything is easy with the right tools.

Masonry Drilling

Next we start building up the stove pipe from the back of the stove. This is the moment of truth, since I did my best to estimate the lengths necessary to vent the stove where we want it, but it was still just a guess.

DSC02057

Success! It landed right where we want it. The stove itself is located directly underneath a solar panel, so we can’t just have a straight pipe going up through the roof. We needed to come over a few feet to clear the panel. Yes, we could have moved the stove’s location, but we would have lost the ability to use the second starboard bench as a bed. It would have simply been too short.

DSC02058

So we cut a hole in the wood, then in the metal roof.

DSC02061

Then we cut a hole in the deck.

DSC02062

To keep any water from getting inside, we used the manufacturer’s flashing and some Henry’s roof tar. I was really impressed with this stuff, and would have used it far more often had I been familiar with it.

DSC02078

We finished by running the pipe all the way up and out the deck. The pipe has double wall construction and 1″ clearances to combustibles. I’ve made sure to test this part of the deck while the stove is running and it stays very cool.

DSC02077

We’re using their basic chimney cap up top. It seems to have no issues with either wind or rain so far. The last foot of pipe and the cap itself are able to be removed for travel.

20150402_112531

Inside, we covered the ceiling hole with another piece of the DuraVent flashing. Nishi trimmed it to a perfect circle, and it looks great.

20150402_112456

All that was left was to actually start her up!

20150227_115304

The stove burns very nicely and, as advertised, we have a smokeless burn in around twenty minutes. I’m still playing around with finding the perfect fuel. The wood needs to be cut much shorter than anything I’m used to, and I haven’t found the sweet spot yet. I have found that the compressed sawdust logs I’ve used in larger wood stoves don’t work that well in here.

We still need insulating curtains over the windows to hold the heat generated by this little stove. The heat difference at the ceiling above the windows is dramatic, and along with a few small circulating fans the curtains will make this quite the toasty space.

Filed Under: Updates Tagged With: Chimney, Construction, Hearth, Woodstove

2014/11/09 By John Leave a Comment

Hearth

Every home needs a hearth. It’s the beating heart of a living space. Our bus is no exception.

Our hearth is almost purely for aesthetics. The Kimberly woodstove we’re using has ridiculously tiny clearances, and we have given it much more room than is necessary. In addition, the vent pipe we’re using only has a 1″ clearance to combustibles, so let me preface all this by saying the space we’ve allocated is overkill.

We left a nearly 3′ by 3′ space between the two starboard benches, with the plan of fitting our woodstove right in the middle. Since we’re in a relatively tiny space, I made a hole in the floor for external combustion air. On top of that, we cut and attached our cement board. While the cement board could be helpful to deal with the heat, in practice it’s really just to keep the masonry in place while the wood elsewhere expands and contracts.

DSC01926.jpg

We’re using a thin cut brick for our hearth. They’re smaller than standard bricks, which works to our advantage. The thinner/smaller the building materials we’re able to use the more space we appear to have inside. We attached them to the cement board with Liquid Nails.

DSC01929.jpg

While Nishi was able to space out the bricks on the floor without a guide, we needed to cut some small spacers for our walls. Neither of us remember figuring this out in advance, but our hearth measurements perfectly accommodate our bricks. We didn’t need to make any tough cuts.

DSC01941.jpg

Our hearth looked pretty cool with bricks alone, but it still needed mortar between those joints.

DSC01947.jpg

The joints between our bricks are smaller than most, in part because our bricks are narrower to start. We tried at first using a tiny clay sculpting tool to lay the mortar, but it was imprecise and slow. We just adopted the finger-painting method. A word of warning to anyone who decides to give this a try: do not take breaks. The mortar dries your skin really quickly and will wear through your fingers before you realize it.

DSC01963.jpg

We let it sit a few days, then brushed and vacuumed away whatever was loose. It came out pretty clean.

DSC01985.jpg

Our stove will be sitting nearly dead center in the square. Again, total overkill for both stove and pipe clearances, but it’ll give us a good spot to store other stove-related items.

DSC01994.jpg

We had some brick left over, and used it to make a little accent wall along our counter.

DSC01997.jpg

Things are coming together, and as soon as the stove is good to go, we’ll be secure in our ability to work through the winter. Nishi took this fantastic picture one night after work.

DSC01949.jpg

Filed Under: Updates Tagged With: Brick, Hearth, Woodstove

2013/11/20 By John Leave a Comment

D.C. Diversion

DSC00683.jpg

Let me just take a moment to brag: the woodstove I have is awesome, and I’m lucky to call the people who make it friends. I know I’ve previously just mentioned it in passing, but this woodstove is an incredibly important part of my bus. We’re designing the bus with four seasons in mind, and winter is a hard season on a bus. It had been sitting in our living room for a month or so when Roger, the stove’s inventor, called me up and asked me to come down to D.C.. They were entered in a woodstove competition taking place on the Mall, and their stove had been damaged in transport by the TSA. I had the closest stove on the East Coast, and shipping a new stove from Washington state was slow and expensive. Obviously I said yes.

DSC00684.jpg

This competition featured the best of the best in super efficient woodstoves from around the world, showcasing the top 12 of the 200 or so entries. The Kimberly Gasifier stove was one of these 12. The stove works by keeping a small, smoldering fire at the bottom of the stove, which generates wood gas which is fully combusted at the top of the stove. It’s physically tiny, with extremely low clearances, and still cranks out 40,000 btu. It’s a perfect fit for anyone living in a small space, and I can’t recommend it highly enough.

DSC00693.jpg

Kimberly didn’t win, but it definitely turned some heads. It weighs only 56lbs, and was the only stove that was actually checked as luggage on the plane ride out. It was awesome to be able to see it in action, and gave me some insight to how to further refine my installation. We’re hoping the stove will be installed in the near future, and keep us toasty warm throughout this winter.

Filed Under: Adventures Tagged With: Woodstove

2013/10/25 By John 2 Comments

Countertop complete

We finished laminating the countertop!

DSC00579.jpg

We just bought a roll of slate print laminate to attach to our plywood counter. It was actually pretty easy to install. We didn’t take any process pictures, but there’s a tutorial on youtube that we leaned pretty heavily on, and I highly recommend it if you’re looking to try this instead of buying an already finished countertop.

This had the added bonus of allowing us to use a little of the excess laminate to make our refrigerator match the counter.

DSC00573.jpg

 

In other news, our woodstove has arrived!

It’s a cool little gasifier woodstove originally designed for use in boats. It’s really tiny with minimal clearances, and uses small stove pipe, so it’ll be a great fit. There’s lots more info here. It still remains to be seen whether we work on installing this next, or our electrical system.

Either way, we start attaching our ceiling tomorrow, so things are about to get weird. Brace yourself.

Filed Under: Updates Tagged With: Construction, Counter, Woodstove

Categories

  • Adventures
  • Photos
  • Updates

Tags

Anxiety Bed Brick Ceiling Chimney Clearance lights Compost Construction Cooktop Counter Demolition Desk Festivals Flooring floorplan Fridge Hearth Inspiration Insulation Kitchen Leaks Lights Performance Port Bench Roof Roof deck Rust Sink Snow Toilet Tour Upholstery Video Walls Water Heater Woodstove

Other Conversions

  • A Buffalo Bus
  • Suzie Blue Bus
  • guydogbus
  • Our Bus Adventure
  • Outside Found
  • Live Love Travel Dream
  • the Juan Way Tour
See The Full List

Resources

  • Skoolie.net
  • Tiny House Blog
  • Cheap RV Living
  • faircompanies.com
  • Schoolbus Homes
  • Skoolie Converters
  • /r/skoolies
  • BusConversions.com

Categories

  • Adventures
  • Photos
  • Updates

Tags

Anxiety Bed Brick Ceiling Chimney Clearance lights Compost Construction Cooktop Counter Demolition Desk Festivals Flooring floorplan Fridge Hearth Inspiration Insulation Kitchen Leaks Lights Performance Port Bench Roof Roof deck Rust Sink Snow Toilet Tour Upholstery Video Walls Water Heater Woodstove
Text and photos of the Anne Marie on bus.life are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License. Use it.
This is Clear.Design