To make space for the house addition and to replace the parking the addition consumed we removed a few trees and some brush. We saved the larger trunks for dad to use as firewood, gave the neighbors the smaller trunks, and Julius, a local Olalla character, came and took a truck load of the smaller stuff. The rest of the “stuff” we put into two piles and burnt. We started with one pile of materials in a size we could cope with and added more on top throughout the day with the excavator. Sean, co-worker, spent a few hours of the day operating a gas weed blower around the fire to make sure things were burning hot enough to avoid excessive smoke. Marty ran a chain saw, and I ran the machine. Everyone else helped a bit and or just looked pretty.
It’s lunch time the day after and everything has burnt into a pile of coals still smoldering a bit even after a night of heavy rains. After lunch time I’ll cover the rest with soil to finish of the parking area. The mess will be cleaned up, and we can start on another project. I started the fire at about 8am with a presto log, a propane torch and an electric weed blower. Fires take two things; material to burn, and oxygen. The more oxygen you can supply the hotter and more efficiently the fire will burn. The weed blowers add extra O2 and they help direct the fire. The little fire I started to initiate the burn was on the outside of the pile. Eventually the fire needed to burn to the middle and all the way to the other side. By blowing into the fire with the weed blower we were able to push the flames through the pile to the other side. Plus, the resulting fire was hotter and cleaner than one without a blower.
In addition to the weed blowers we used the 36″ barrel fan from the loft on the fire all day long to add more o2. The downside to all of the air being pushed into the fire, was a fire too hot to sit around. In some of the drone pictures you can see we’re sitting next to the house in a circle far from the fire. Oh well, We managed to have a great day playing in the fire and the trees anyhow. About mid-day through we’d mostly run out of things to burn and momma suggested we take out some more trees to make space for even more parking. It’s always fun to push over a tree or two so we pushed down a few more. One the trees we pushed over hit another tree on the way down the split the other tree in half. Was not planning on taking the second tree out. But split in half the tree was not going to stay health so out it came.
Some pictures of the day
What the pile looked like and outline of the trees we took out before we got too far into burning
Fire near the end of the day when were down to stumps and coals
Tiny fire from the presto log and twigs used to get the pile going in the morning
About 20 minutes later the fire has moved into the middle of the pile and things are starting to heat up
You get super-hot near the fire. Sean helped combat the heat by sitting in front of the big fan while he was running the blower
Trenton showed up and took out some brush as an excuse to operate the machine
Khaleesi sporting some shades
Marty flipping off the drone sitting with momma and the Philfam watching the fire