Remember our December journey up North? Ya know, the one where it was -10 outside and though Kalcifer shined on so pretty, but he still didn’t heat up the RV very well?
Well, now it was time to start finding out why… Since I already had Kalcifer out of the RV, I began by checking the inlet air tube down below the vehicle… and this is what I found.
I know it’s hard to see, so let me circle it for ya!
There it is! That is the ABS breathing tube that feeds Kalcifer oxygen. It is completely wrapped in duct tape, you can see the duct tape tail hanging off to the left. The pipe was completely wrapped in duct tape, and in the middle of it was a hole that had been poked in it about the size of a pencil. ❓
So before I removed it, I remembered the seller telling me he had the stove set up to where it ran just about perfect, so I decided to message him first and ask if there was a particular reason for this set up. 🙋
A little while later he got back to me, and said he honestly had no clue why it would be taped up like that. He speculated, but couldn’t remember for sure, that maybe it had been done to keep out bugs from getting in the vehicle. 🤔 With that I removed the tape. Laura and I cut a little circle of screen and taped it over the end of the inlet, knowing we would have to check it from time to time to make sure there was no dirt build up. Here is how it turned out afterwards:
So we would test a fire after the stove was re-installed to see if that fixed the problem. Since I was still in a grinding kind of mood anyway, I decided I was going to give ‘Ol Kalcifer and his hearth walls a much needed makeover.
As the grinder sang it’s song endlessly outside once again, Laura was getting down on cleaning up the chimney inside the Ohana. Here is what she looked like:
After Kalcifer was all shined up I went to town cleaning up the hearth panels; giving them a wire wheeled pattern.
Then we pulled the old and partially missing stove gasket from out of the stove door and installed new gasket.
With it all cleaned up, it was time to re-install Kalcifer!
And he was looking beautiful! Laura had originally called The Ohana our “Howl’s Moving Castle”. Well, now she truly had a magical fireplace to match that description! 😆🔥
Geoff Murphy 6/29/2020