I admit it, I should have figured this out and rigged it up a while ago… it isn’t particularly complicated… but something about having figured it out still feels good. What a neat thing I’ve just done.
So, as you may know, I heat the room I live in here in Pine via wood stove. If you’ve ever run a wood stove, you know that you periodically have to put more wood in it, or it will stop functioning as a heat-provider. I have a relatively small wood stove, so I have to put wood in it pretty frequently to keep it giving off heat. Which is a problem when I’m sleeping, as I do not tend to wake every half hour and get up out of bed to put wood in the stove. Most nights I sleep straight through to morning.
Except that then in the morning, my room is unconscionably cold. Like, generally lately it’s been mid-40’s cold in my room when I wake up. Obviously, if I get out of bed and light a fire, the room will warm up, but if I’m going to brave the cold long enough to get a fire started and the room warmed, I may as well just get dressed and get the day started. Which is what I’ve been doing lately.
What I did tonight was to set up and test a system for starting a fire in the stove across the room (~25 feet away) without getting out of bed. As soon as it occurred to me, it seemed obvious, it’s so simple. I happened to have an old starter and a few igniters (plus a few engines not used today) for model rockets. I attached a few matches to the igniter, and gerry-rigged the electric starter to work without the ‘safety key’ I lost countless years go. I put together the workings for a fire in the stove, carefully placed the igniter/matches at the bottom next to some carefully placed newspaper (all just inside the stove), and ran the line across the room from the stove to my bedside table. Voila! Instant, makeshift stove-lighter! I tested it, and now have a nice fire going.
Anyway, small victory for warm-bed-loving me. I don’t think it’ll get cold enough tonight to worry about using it, but it’s supposed to get back down to unbearable coldnesses next week, and barring running out of igniters, I’m set.
