Synthetic Fire

The fire is simply not the same.

Being fortunate enough to buy a cabin in the woods, it has provided a wonderful escape from the concrete urban jungle.  A flurry of colorful fall leaves tumble past and I absorb the beauty of the surrounding peaks powder-sugared with the season’s first snow.  One last puff of the crisp fall air and I go inside and an abrupt full body shiver has me making a fire to cut the evening chill. 

But, this newfangled contraption doesn’t require the crafty construction of exposing raw edges of split wood to the burgeoning flames from newspaper touched off by a match. This fire, literally, is as easy as pushing a silly little button.

A fan rumbles to life, pushing cold air through the heating tubes while the blower forces its jetted air into the burner tray, making small pieces of combustible material fly up and out.  I had cleaned the glass door with an acid based cleaner, which not only had the glass sparkling, but cost me a few layers of fingertip skin. The intake blower continues its forced breath as the auger periodically spins to trickle wood pellets into the burner tray. 

With each spin, fine particles blow out while the larger pieces, which look like they belong in a dish on the bottom of a gerbil's cage, are cradled in the slotted bottom of the burn tray getting a blow job. 

A red light beside “Ignitor” radiates on the control panel and soon, the pellets begin to glow.  The intensity of the redness steadily increases until combustion occurs and fire is created.

More pellets trickle in and the fire grows in size, but it looks like a firework preparing to do something spectacular.  The blower has the jetted flame licking up behind the glass like dragon’s breath.  This industrial fire brought by forced air is fed, as needed, by more pellets trickling into the tray. Lighter pieces still blow out, but heat transforms them into flying red cherry embers similar to the pizzazz from a super sized sparkler. Soot on my clean glass quickly conceals the furnace's flame.

Once the heating tubes succumb to the high temperatures, hot air finally feeds into the room.  The machine has a mind of its own as it shuts down to cool off, only to return to the heating cycle.

Meanwhile, a stack of 40 pound bags of pellets are nearby to simply pour into the hopper to continuously feed the hungry dragon’s breath.

It’s not the same!

No chainsaw dropping dead trees to be cut up into logs.  No rolling logs to an area to be worked up with sledges and wedges.  No getting out of breath being challenged by a stubborn log filled with knots resisting being broken down into firewood pieces.  No carrying these pieces and strategically stacking them in the truck to eliminate wasteful gaps to maximize the load to be hauled.  No hauling the wood and carefully doing the tetris stack near the front door.  No sense of satisfaction and accomplishment while evaluating the wall of firewood, daring winter to bring its chill.  No feeding the wood stove and listening to the snap, crackle and pop from pieces rich in resin.  No staring into the fire with gentle waves of flames slowly eating away at the wood.  No sight, or smell, of smoke rolling out of the chimney and lazily drifting into the woods.

Instead, it’s $5 a bag and push a button for a lazy man’s fire--a fake, convenient synthetic fire.

After a few days of periodic use, the auger quit spinning so  the trickling of pellets immediately ceased.  Tearing things apart revealed a stripped gear within the gearbox. 

Too many moving parts complicates life! 

Not soon enough will the pellet stove be tossed out the door and be replaced by a simply operated, cozy wood stove that is manually fed wood which heats a person up several times before it is reduced to ash.