Note: The title does not refer to people named Angel, male, female, in-between [wink]. Hence, it does not imply you are fearful or lazy.
Another note: Our machine is not a ShopVac (r), but we'd be happy to get a freebee. Ours just sucks or blows.
There is an incredible amount of fun to be had with a shop vacuum!
And no, not the fun that hurts or gets you to the ER.
The latest episode of fun with a shop vac includes the vac, a garden hose, and masking tape.
Oh, really? Come on!
Every self respecting rural dweller needs a wood stove, right? So, our second big purchase in the K-Land was a stove/oven combination.
Pretty as can be, and heavy as fuck. Four people to get it into the kitchen. The quality of the heat from a wood stove is so far superior to the crappy warm air off of central heating radiators, it makes you wonder why it took a green movement to fuel the comeback of the wood stove.
One reason could be it needs to be cleaned. The ashes need to come out every other day or so. But ashes are extremely useful. Wood ash, not the poison from coal.
You can make your own soap, for instance or as a cleaner by itself.
Then there is the stove pipe. In a modern house, builders have wised up and use "shorties", a couple of feet long, easy to remove, clean and put back.
In an old house, you'll find the familiar long pipe going up almost to the ceiling, then into the chimney.
In an even older house, you get two bends because, well, because...
It's a little more work, but nothing compared to the innards of the stove. We lifted the small inspection piece in the top cast iron assembly and scooped some of the debris out.
We got our vac, put on the tapered tip, sucked, got a little more.
Read the manual.
A real man does not read manuals. Ever.
Read the manual, or should we talk about what being a real man means?
Where's the manual?
It was bad. Worse even than a Nespresso coffee machine crushing off brand capsules.
On the upside, the wood stove does not come with a series of electronic lights to alert you to clean it or indicate a malfunction.
Remember this post when the local government makes you install a gimmick that prevents your stove to run on a Spare The Air Day! We told you so!
And the DeLuxe version of that gimmick will be forced on repeat offenders. It will automatically shackle you to the stove when you touch it on a Spare The Air Day and call the cops. No way you are able to make off with a 500 pound cast iron stove in tow.
The manual for our stove pretty much called for dismantling the whole upper part, including both doors to access the space around the oven part.
The exhaust fumes need to swirl around the oven part, that's how it works. And ash will fill up that space, rendering the oven useless.
We decided against heavy engineering in the kitchen and continued to scoop as much as we could.
Fast forward a few years:
I can't get it in.
Gentle, move it a little bit at a time.
It's not long enough.
You said it was longer than others.
I feel inadequate.
Don't worry, it happens to everybody.
Ah...
We can try again tomorrow.
Thus, the Shop Vac FlexTender was born. Five feet of old 1/4 inch garden hose, and 20 inches of masking tape later, the short rigid adapter of the standard wide hose sported a thin hose affixed with masking tape.
Real men can use duct tape instead, works just as well.
The light bulb moment over, the blogster did what it* does best: suck and blow.
When the vacuum motor noise went from rumble to high pitch, indicating the intake was blocked, a quick yank and stub loosened the blockage, and the happy sucking went on for an hour.
A whole vac full of gunk came out of the stove.
As satisfying as the deep cleaning was the fact that the blogster did not look like a Dickensian chimney sweep.
Next year, maybe I'll do the job in a black tie outfit.
The thin hose attachment makes so much sense and can be used for a million other jobs around the house. Next time a hole needs drilling into the old walls, the tip of the hose will be taped to the drill.
The stone dust will be evacuated directly, instead of settling in my nose and then being pried out.
Don't forget: the small hose is ideal for blowing up balloons!
* The blogster decided today was a good time to try an be completely gender neutral like our boss, TheEditor. Feels weird.
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